Harvard is reviewing whether Miller's activities violate the university's conflict of interest policies for faculty. Museum staff may have similar opportunities to provide distance education over the Internet, and museums and other educational institutions will have to wrestle with whether they want to allow staff members to use the museum's name in identifying themselves as part of similar outside work, whether the museum should collect a royalty if its name is used under circumstances like these, and, finally, whether the museum is failing to meet its obligations as a tax-exempt charitable organization if it allows its name, or material developed by its employees, to be exploited for profit without collecting appropriate compensation. Museums should also attend to the non-tax legal concerns about potential liability and protection of valuable intellectual property that are raised in connection with maintaining a Web site. As described elsewhere in these materials, see Section I. D. above, chat rooms and other interactive Internet activities can be set up to take initial users through a series of messages such as copyright notice, liability disclaimers and privacy alerts. The most effective are those that required users to accept the terms and conditions of the site by clicking on icons before proceeding.
Organizations sponsoring interactive sites can choose to edit their content or to stay hands-off.
There are, of course, non-legal pros and cons to each method. The primary question is one of administrative burden. Even when administering an unedited site, an organization may wish to retain the right to delete offensive material or to take away a user's ability to access the site. Legally, an organization is less likely to be held liable for content posted on unedited sites, if proper notice is given of the unedited nature of the site. It is not clear whether an organization can effectively disclaim liability for content while retaining the right to edit or delete postings.