Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : need web hosting beginner legal guidelines

[rams]

Dear Respected members,
Requesting for your valuable suggestion,

I would like to host a web site, which specifically allows registered users to send marriage/birthday invitations to their friends and family members. I am planning to set-up this site to allow multiple images per invitation and restricting only invited viewers to browse through the pages in the invitation. I am targeting Indian users, but I resident in USA. In future I may add little ads (not a mandatory, likely possible in one year).
I am a Software Engineer, but not much sure about legal issues, approvals, data privacy that I have to look for before setting a website. To make this site happily available to the users, what precautions should I take? Does it require a physical approvals like office or organization registration(when not planning for making money, at least before we set-up ads)?

My interest in hosting this site is to provide better features that I believe are missing in current sites. I am not looking for business or profit on this site.

Thanks,
Ram

[sbradk]

You probably want something clarifying that you do or don't allow spam; do or don't allow adult content; are or are not responsible for the user's content; etc.

[rams]

Dear sbradk,
Thanks for your response. To be very clear, I don't want to keep any adult or unwanted content. My only focus is giving users a clean worry-free web site to allow them to invite their beloved ones on special occasions with tons of features.

As a beginner, I am seeking for information on points to consider legally when starting a public writable web site.
Do I need any physical office to be run physically? is it mandatory that any web site should have other registration than domain and good hosting.

Thanks,
Rams

[sbradk]

OK, then if you don't want certain types of content, I recommend literally spelling that out in a terms & agreement document to protect yourself.

No, you do not need a physical office to be in business. More and more companies are running "virtual" over the past few years and I'd expect that trend to continue - even increase.

No, there is nothing mandatory... even domain registration isn't mandatory technically. You could give users a subdomain off your main site (client1.mydomain.com for example). I'd personally avoid that though because you are tying your identity to whatever content the user would generate under that name.

[rams]

Dear sbradk,
Thank you so much for your valuable suggestion and recommendation. It gives me a boost to proceed further. Your suggestion is helping in set-up of new site with creative features that I am thinking.
Thanks,
Rams

[rams]

I am looking for an advice on legal issue that could occur when giving public access on the web site, my point is people are free to comment, but it should lead to unexpected issues on my web site and myself. I want to provide a service with great features, so it should not become a problem to me.

Is there a low price content filter option available?, at least to restrict certain range or words.

Thanks,
Rams