Web Security and Commerce

Laws and Activism

Currently, many state legislatures are producing laws governing issues of online commerce and publication. Whether such laws are appropriate at a state level, and whether the laws are reasonable, has yet to be decided. What is important for you to know is that some of these laws set up restrictions and conditions that could adversely affect your operations.

Note that the situation is complicated by the reach of the Internet. If you set up operations in California, you can be charged with violation of laws in Georgia, and sued in Texas, all because the Internet reaches people in those states. Until the legal status of these issues is decided, this may cause you some headaches in the short term.

Here are some example issues to consider:

• Many states, and some cities, levy sales taxes on goods and services if the transactions take place in their jurisdictions. Therefore, if you have customers using electronic commerce to make purchases from those places (or if you are doing business in one of those places), then you may be responsible for calculating and collecting the appropriate taxes.

• Georgia passed a law in 1996 that makes it against the law to represent oneself on a computer system with an alias or pseudonym. This could be interpreted to cover most account names, and even some site names.

• The same law in Georgia also makes it illegal to have a link on your web pages to other sites unless you have obtained the explicit permission of the site to which you have made ...