Imagine spending all the time and energy on your website. All the hard work, all the toil, all the long hours. Then you begin noticing weird behaviour. Someone takes a part of your content and posts it as their own. Full plagiarism. Not hiding anything from the original post. Your whole idea gets stolen, including your name and tagline. Your content seems dismissal and not yours anymore. This has happened to many bloggers both well-known and even those starting. In most cases, you have no idea what to do and even whom to approach. You are not sure whether you should go ahead and blast them online. This would seem unprofessional.
This is where the need for Terms and Conditions on the blog are a necessity. It is always up to you as a blogger to decide the level of protection you need. Further to this, you will need to then enlist the help of an advocate to create the best terms and conditions for use of your blog. This is however not a must but a necessity.
A Terms and Conditions agreement is also known as Terms of User agreement. This is a set of regulations which users must agree to follow in order to use the service. Terms of Use is often named Terms of Service, Terms and Conditions, or Disclaimer when addressing website usage. This agreement sets the rules that users must agree to in order to use your website.
Because of its importance, here are 4 reasons why you should have a Terms and Conditions agreement on your website.
Own your content
As the blog owner, you are the owner of your blog’s name, logo, tagline, design content and images or/and videos taken by you. In the Terms and Conditions, you can notify the users that you are the owner of the content which is protected by international copyright laws.
You can write out a thorough paragraph explaining in detail what is your copyrighted property or include a simple statement such as – Copyright © 2017. The Number One Blog.
Defamation
A Terms and Conditions Agreement is a binding clause between you and your users. This are rules and regulations that users must agree to in order to use your services both on a desktop and on mobile. Including a privacy policy agreement ensures the users are informed about what data you collect.
In this agreement, you can include the necessary sections to inform users of the guidelines of using your website and what happens if users are abusing your website.
One way of preventing defamation is by being the one to regulate the comments section both on Social media related to the blog and the blog itself.
Limit Liability
A warranty disclaimer is mostly attached to the terms and conditions that limit the website owner’s liability in cases where errors are found in the content presented on the website. As a blogger, sometimes we write content that may have edit errors no matter how small.
The users are made aware that the owner of the blog cannot be held responsible for any errors in the content presented, whether the information being provided is accurate, complete, or suitable for any purpose. You are not liable for any mistake you make.
Set the Governing Law
A governing law refers to the jurisdiction that applies to the terms presented in the agreement. This section will indicate where you are operating your blog from in terms of country or city and the users should comply with the laws governed by the specific country.