I’m building a web application, call it http://mywebapp.com, where a user should be able to create a newsletter and email it to everyone in his user account’s contact list. So he can check mark all his friends, select an html template, fill in the body content, and send.
The only catch to this is that after the user sends the email, the recipient must NOT be allowed to trace the source of the email back to http://mywebapp.com.
The reason for this condition is because the user is a “reseller” of my business who wants to appear as if he’s an independent business. If liability issues arise due to the reseller’s unduly usage, I do not want to be caught up in the legal issues. Hence, I do not want anything about my business or technology to be traceable back to me by newsletter recipients.
What’s the best way to achieve this?
Legal department – draft a disclaimer about a) acceptable usage for your client b) your right to monitor, and c) your indemnification from anything he does.
The email you end up sending should contain unsubscribe links that can’t be changed by your client. Though, these will link back to /your/ site. However, you need to provide your victims a way to opt out. If you’re not ok with that, you should just sell (a copy of) the software outright, and let you purchaser administer the whole shebang.