6. Watch Your Links, Frames, and Inlining

Linking, framing, and inlining are common methods of connecting to information at other websites, and all carry the potential for getting into permissions trouble. Here's a brief description of each of these methods and what to watch out for.

Most of us are familiar with clicking on a link to go to another website. Common as links are, including them at your site isn't 100% risk-free. Deep links in particular can be problematic. A deep link to another site bypasses its home page and takes the user directly to an internal page. Although no U.S. court has yet ruled that to be an illegal practice, it angers some website owners who do not want visitors to bypass information and advertisements on the home page.

Framing is the process of dividing a Web page into separate framed regions and displaying the contents of someone else's site within a frame at your site. Generally speaking, site owners don't like having their content framed at another site, particularly without permission. At least one court has considered framing to be copyright infringement, and, in another case, CNN sued a news website that framed CNN news content. Under the terms of a settlement agreement, the news website agreed to stop framing and instead use text-only links.

Inlining (sometimes referred to as "mirroring") involves the process of incorporating a graphic file from one website onto another website. United Media, the copyright owner of the Dilbert comic strip, pressured a Web publisher into halting the daily inlining of comic strips taken from the United Media website. In 2003, a federal court of appeals ruled that inlining -- when it resulted in a full-size reproduction of a photograph -- was a copyright infringement. Smaller inlined "thumbnail" reproductions were permissible under fair use principles.

As a general rule, legal claims are most likely to arise if copyrighted material is modified or if customers are confused about the association between the two sites or the source of a product or service.

7. Don't Count on Fair Use: It's Not Always Fair

"Fair use" is a copyright doctrine based upon the principle that the public should be entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted material for purposes of commentary, criticism, or parody. In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose, such as to review a text or make fun of a pop song. For example, if you wish to write a review of a novel, it would be considered fair use to quote a portion of the novelist's work without asking permission.

The difficulty in claiming fair use is that there is no predictable way to guarantee that your use will actually qualify as a fair use. There are no "definites," only general rules and varying court decisions. That's because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit its definition too narrowly. They wanted it -- like free speech -- to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation. You may believe that your use qualifies, but, if the copyright owner disagrees, you may have to resolve the dispute in a courtroom. Even if you ultimately persuade the court that your use was fair, the expense and time involved in litigation may well outweigh any benefit of using the material in the first place.

8. Remove Unauthorized Material

If someone complains that you are using material on your website without proper authorization, you should immediately remove that material. In the case of unauthorized uploads, downloads, or links, you should disable access to the offending material or link. This is not to imply that you should cave into every complaint, but you should remove the material while you investigate the claim and, if necessary, talk to a lawyer. Courts often respond favorably to attempts to "contain" the damage. On the other hand, continuing to use material after being notified that you are violating someone else's rights may aggravate the claim and increase your chances of having to pay money to the owner of the work.

Removing infringing material is an element of a 1998 law establishing that an Internet Service Provider (ISP, the company that hosts the website on its computer server) can avoid liability by following certain rules, including speedy removal of the offending material.

9. Use Disclaimers

A disclaimer is a statement denying an endorsement of or affiliation with another site or company. For instance, if your website posts reviews of software and offers links to resellers, you might post a disclaimer in a visible place on your site to the effect that your site does not endorse and is not affiliated with any of the software manufacturers or resellers listed at your site.

A disclaimer is not a cure-all for infringement, but, if a disclaimer is prominently displayed and clearly written, a court may take it into consideration as a factor that limits damages in the event of a lawsuit. For example, in a case involving a dispute between two websites for restaurants named Blue Note, one factor that helped the lesser-known restaurant avoid financial liability was a prominently displayed disclaimer stating that it was not affiliated with the more-famous restaurant.