Help with legal issues and some technical support

lunardog posted this at 09:33 — 24th August 2012.

They have: 2 posts

Joined: Aug 2012

Dear friends,
I am not a webmaster myself but have come to you for your help and support.
I am in the process of starting a website for the college i used to be in, as a part of the alumni activity.

The idea is to form a community website for all the students who are, or were, from that college. to share stories, experiences, pictures, discussions etc. along with that i want to be able to share music and videos to be able to get outside traffic also, to keep the site commercially running, coz i know its gonna need money to keep it going, so advertisements and other forms of revenue generation are inevitable. on the site i also want a page where people who are looking for jobs or know about jobs available can post the requirements.

along with all of this i want to include a points system which encourage users to participate in activities online using the site. like maybe 2 points for posting in a forum discussion or 5 points for writing an article and 2 points for posting about it or something like that. and maybe later on offer gifts to the point leaders..

can someone help me with this.. even if not technical support can someone at least help me with the legal aspect of it? i am worried about the music and videos aspect of it as i have heard there are strict laws governing that. in that case, what kind of licenses or copyrights etc will i be needing?

thank you for all your help in advance.

My name is Jay and if anyone wants to get in touch with me personally my email id is
[email protected]

Regards
JB

Greg K posted this at 17:11 — 11th October 2012.

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

Not only will you need to concern yourself with the legal issues on the music and video, there may be legal issues with using trademarked logo and such for the college you are doing a site about, especially when you are intending to commercialize it.

There are plenty of systems out there, sorry I can't recommend one, as anything like that I end up just writing my own.

Does the college include areas of study that would include programming/web development? if so, check to see if a current student would be interested in helping with the project. I would start with the people who teach the classes to find out who they recommend first.) Also, another area where you can find great gems are people from art department that are interested in designing for user interfaces (there is a difference between a killer look and one that is also functional for a web site)

-Greg