If you are the owner of a website and a third party (i.e. someone visiting your website) posts content that they are using without authorization then the owner of the website may be found guilty of copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is a strict liability offense, which essentially means that the court will look at this as a black and white issue. Either you have prohibited material on your site or you don't.
What if this happens to you?
Remember because copyright infringement is strict liability you do not even have to have knowledge about the unauthorized posting.
Click on the Defenses/ Solutions link, go to Online Issues and click on the posting under this heading, "Copy Right Infringement as a Result of postings by Third Parties".
There you will find a list with possible solutions to help avoid liability.
The truth is that many of the statutes that cover other forms of advertising, such as FTC regulations concerning deception, and federal statutes pertaining to fraud cover online mediums as well. However, the law is constantly expanding to keep up with technology. Legislators have recently had SPAM and other SPAM-like advertising in their sites, and by and large these scourges have been largely reduced. However, by the time Congress got around to crafting and passing such legislation the private sector responded by creating pop-up blockers and anti-Spam software to combat the nuisance.
This self-regulation is common in the online world, in fact many companies and industries have online divisions in their trade groups and corporate digital behavior is an oft-discussed subject when these associations meet. While it is accurate that parts of the internet may be likened to the digital version of the Wild West, many more areas are being created that are far less rowdy. These associations demonstrate that while the internet may be the frontier there can be a more genteel approach to advertising.
