Hi there. You are creating a website that will involve discussion of investment ideas about shares traded on the ASX. You have asked whether it will comply with the regulatory guidelines set by ASIC, namely Regulatory Guide 162, which allow particular internet discussion sites to operate without a licence. You have also asked whether you can legally republish material posted on your website.

Licensing of internet discussion sites

Under Australian law, a person who conducts an investment advice business must have an appropriate licence (an AFS licence). This means that an internet discussion site that allows people to exchange or disseminate information, opinions and advice about shares or securities should only be operated under a licence. However, ASIC will permit a limited type of internet discussion site to operate without a licence if particular guidelines are followed. These guidelines are set out in ASIC Regulatory Guide 162.

The guidelines require that the website be operated for the benefit of people who are not securities market professionals and that content posted by users be kept separate from commercial material. The guidelines also only apply to websites that operate within Australia or target people in Australia. If your website contains content about foreign exchanges or is targeted at people overseas, it would no longer be within ASIC’s jurisdiction and may fall subject to the financial regulations of another country.

Most importantly, ASIC’s guidelines require that your website users (both consumers and individuals who post content) receive adequate disclosures and warnings, including that material posted on the website is not professional investment advice. Depending on how your website is designed, this may mean that the warnings need to be contained in the website’s Terms of Use as well as in “pop-up” boxes at different stages of the user experience.

As the website operator, you would also need to comply with ongoing obligations under ASIC’s guidelines once the website has launched. These relate to continuous monitoring of website content and notifying ASIC if the guidelines are breached. You will also need to notify ASIC before launching if you intend to operate the website without a licence.

Republication of website content

Your website will contain user-generated content. Whether this content can be republished (on another website or in another medium such as print) depends on the ownership and intellectual property rights attached to that content.

You can draft the terms and conditions of the website (typically called the Terms of Use) such that all users agree to assign to the owner of the website the right to licence any and all intellectual property rights attached to material posted by users. Depending on the exact wording of the terms and conditions, this could effectively give you the right to republish any website content in any other format on a royalty-free basis. For this approach to work, all users would be need to “accept” the terms and conditions of the website before using the platform.