Terms of service of a website


Developing a beautiful website is an exciting experience. When thinking about patting yourself on the back just after pouring out all your creativity on a beautiful landing page, halt! Have you thought about a tea table discussion with your boring legal team to frame the website's Terms of service?

Why? No one reads the Terms of service!

We agree that when you are crazy about driving visitors to the website, how can you risk losing them with a puzzling pop-up showing an irritating message, “do you agree?” We are sure you would also dislike receiving legal notices for compensation claims from visitors to your website. Similarly, won’t you like to sue the infringers?

Is Terms of service a legal requirement?

Terms of service (TOS), also called Terms of use or Terms and conditions, are not mandated by law. According to Section 43(A) of the Information Technology Act 2000 and IT Rules 2011, if a business in India possesses, deals with, or handles any sensitive personal information, it must disclose its privacy policy. In the international arena, GDPR in the EU, CCPA in California, and other similar legislations in various countries make a privacy policy mandatory for using personal information. As privacy policy is mandatory to protect the user, Terms of services cover the website owner's interest.

What are the website's Terms of service, then?

It is a binding legal agreement to set a user's obligations and the service provider's responsibilities. In a nutshell, it is a valid contract by which the service provider offers services under certain conditions that the user agrees to meet.

How the website user signs the Terms of Services?

Websites follow any of the following methods:

Click-Wrap e-contract:  It is a digital binding contract where the user is prompted to accept or decline by clicking on the specified area on the screen. Here, the customer can choose to accept/ agree or reject/ disagree.

Browse-Wrap e-contract: It has two parts:

1. An hyperlink part; usually kept at the bottom or any other place on the page, and by clicking, the legal page is opened, 

2. The legal page contains an agreement stating that those terms and conditions bind the user to use the site. 

Advantages of Terms of service

  • It helps to limit the legal liability of the website.
  • Protects your on-site business by limiting legal liability.
  • Limits legal liability on comments, posts, & remarks made by users.
  • Useful in setting up the expectations of the website users. 
  • Protects your website's Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).
  • Legally prevents cyber attacks like malware, phishing, SQL injection, Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks, Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, etc., by clearly calling out conditions for termination.
  • Helps to address the legal issues related to the user's age.
  • Specifies Governing Law.

Must have clauses of website Terms of Service:

It should be easy to read and with minimum legal jargon but essentially cover the following:  

·         A user guideline (rights & obligations)

·         Privacy policy (if applicable)

·         Cookies policy (if applicable)

·         Payment & Refunds

·         Limitations of Liability

·         Intellectual Property Rights

·         Governing Law

·         Termination

·         Indemnity

·         A disclaimer about changes and revisions of the terms.

Why choose Best Legal Services?

By the numbers, most of my readers are website users, not owners. Then be careful! According to a study, website visitors invest 5.59 seconds in written content. Won’t you explore TOS instead of agreeing with the unknown? It is always recommended to take help from a legal expert to draft a suitable TOS that protects the rights of both users and developers without legal jargon.

The reasons why the best legal services (www.bestlegalservices.in)  can help you frame the Terms of Service for your website better than anyone:

  • Knowledge of latest legal developments
  • Ensures incorporation of suitable clauses and legalities for an agreement.
  • Can explain the legal terms better than other professionals.
  • Will turn as your first point of reference in any legal crisis relating to website terms and conditions drafted by them.
  • Less possibility of leaving any loop-whole in the agreement by them.

Location: India

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding the notion of TDS Return

Image
Section 191 of the Income Tax Act of 1961 establishes the TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) as a method for the income tax department to collect income tax. This was introduced by the Income Tax Department with the concept to collect tax at every source of income. A TDS return is a statement that includes all the relevant information, including full details of the payment made, taxes and TDS deducted, and other necessary information. A TDS Return includes fields like PAN No., Total payment done, TDS Amount Deducted, Type of payment, etc. It is required for an assessee who has deducted TDS to file a quarterly TDS Return . According to Section 200(3) of Income Tax Act, the due date of filing TDS return (online as well as offline) is on a quarterly basis for four times a year. However, ‘Nil’ TDS return is not necessary to file but to facilitate the deductor’s and maintain data, Taxpayer must submit declaration for not filing NIL return. The following ways are conceivable for the statem
Read more