Generally speaking, a disclaimer is a short-written declaration, which can be located on the homepage of your website. This declaration is written by you, the website owner, and marked for the attention of the reader or user. The user includes anyone visiting your website and/ or utilising the content from your website – for whatever intended purpose.
Depending on the wording and how the “topic of concern” is being addressed in the disclaimer, you, the website owner is enabled to share or shift the onus of accountability and responsibility to some extent, in the event of any possible disputes arising from the user who decided to make use of your website information through browsing, using or sharing the content which was made freely available and accessible to internet users.
ADVANTAGES
The benefits disclaimers can provide:
- Protecting your content and Intellectual Property.
- Reduce legal risks for business by reasonably eliminating or reducing accountability.
- Sharing responsibility.
- Sense of assurance that an agreement is in place with all human traffic that comes across the website by ensuring users consent to your website terms prior to any browsing or purchasing being permitted.
- Addressing use of data.
- Providing clarity between the parties around critical terms such as but not limited to ownership of content, data, privacy, confidentiality, accuracy of information, opinion v legal advice and the required or recommended professional consultation before application or use of information/data/ content and;
- Receiving the required consent around age-appropriate sites. e.g. gambling sites.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Website disclaimers cannot guarantee that no legal action will be instituted against your business. However, how the disclaimer is structured around responsibilities to illustrate your terms of the use of your content which has been made available, could greatly assist with providing clarity and consent between parties resulting in reducing the legal risks for your business.
We suggest as a business or website owner, to best protect your interests by linking the use of the site, disclaimer and terms and conditions. This will ensure each user has agreed to be bound to the terms. It is equally important to draft a tailor-made disclaimer that mitigates the risk of liability that your website/company may experience, by alleviating the sole accountability (through the contents made in the disclaimer) insofar as reasonably possible.
This information was provided by Dr Brad Beira – The Advisory Group
