6 Never collect or retain personal data unless it is strictly necessary for the organisation’s
purposes. For example, a person’s name and full address should not be required to pro-
vide an online quotation. If extra information is required for marketing purposes this
should be made clear and the provision of such information should be optional.
7 Amend incorrect data when informed and tell others. Enable correction on-site.
8 Only use data for marketing (by the company, or third parties) when a user has been
informed this is the case and has agreed to this. (This is opt-in.)
9 Provide the option for customers to stop receiving information. (This is opt-out.)
10 Use appropriate security technology to protect the customer information on your site.Other e-commerce legislation
Sparrow (2000) identified eight areas of law which need to concern online marketers.
Although laws have been refined since then, this is still a useful framework for consider-
ing the laws to which digital marketers are subject.1 Marketing your e-commerce business
At the time of writing, Sparrow used this category to refer to purchasing a domain name
for its web site. There are now other legal constraints that also fall under this category.Domain name registration
Most companies are likely to own several domains (see end of Chapter 1 for an introduc-
tion), perhaps for different product lines or countries or for specific marketing
campaigns. Domain name disputes can arise when an individual or company has regis-
tered a domain name which another company claims they have the right to. This is
sometimes referred to as ‘cybersquatting’.
One of the best-known cases was brought in 1998 by Marks and Spencer and other
high-street retailers, since another company, ‘One In a Million Limited’, had registered
names such as marks&spencer.com, britishtelecom.net and sainsbury.com. It then tried
to sell these names for a profit. The companies already had sites with more familiar
addresses such as marksandspencers.co.uk, but had not taken the precaution of register-
ing all related domains with different forms of spelling and different top-level domains
such as .net. Unsurprisingly, an injunction was issued against One in a Million which
was no longer able to use these names.
The problem of companies’ names being misappropriated was common during the
1990s, but companies still need to be sure to register all related domain names for each
brand since new top-level domain names are created through time such as .biz and .eu.
If you are responsible for web sites, you need to check that domain names are auto-
matically renewed by your hosting company (as most are today). For example, the .co.uk
domain must be renewed every two years. Companies that don’t manage this process
potentially risk losing their domain name since another company could potentially reg-
ister it if the domain name lapsed.Using competitor names and trademarks in meta-tags (for search engine optimisation)
Meta-tags, which are part of the HTML code of a site are used to market web sites by
enabling them to appear more prominently in search engines as part of search engine opti-
misation (SEO) (see Chapter 8). Some companies have tried putting the name of a
competitor company name within the meta-tags. This is not legal since case law has foundLEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES OF INTERNET USAGEDomain name
The domain name
refers to the name of
the web server and it
is usually selected to
be the same as the
name of the company,
e.g. http://www.company-
name.com, and the
extension will indicate
its type.