gnu-social/doc-src/tos

<!-- Copyright 2008-2010 StatusNet Inc. and contributors. -->
<!-- Document licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported. See -->
<!-- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ for details. -->

The gist
--------

We (the folks at [%%site.broughtby%%](%%site.broughtbyurl%%)) run a
service called %%site.name%% and would love for you to use it. Our
service is designed to give you as much control and ownership over
what goes in your notice stream as possible and encourage you to
express yourself freely. However, be responsible in what you post. In
particular, make sure that none of the prohibited items listed below
appear in your notice stream or get linked to from your notice stream (things
like spam, viruses, or hate content).

You can review our [Public Stream](%%action.top%%) to get a sense
of the types of notices that are welcome on our service (or not!). If
you find a %%site.name%% account that you believe violates our terms
of service, please check our [Contact](%%doc.contact%%) documentation.

(Note: Automattic, Inc., original creators of the below Terms of
Service, decided to make them available under a Creative Commons
Sharealike license, which means you’re more than welcome to steal it
and repurpose it for your own use. Just make sure to replace
references to us with ones to you. They’d appreciate a link to
[WordPress.com](http://www.wordpress.com/) somewhere on your site.
They spent a lot of money and time on the below, and other people
shouldn’t need to do the same. (We didn't!))

Terms of Service
----------------

The following terms and conditions govern all use of the %%site.name%%
website and all content, services and products available at or through
the website (taken together, the Website). The Website is owned and
operated by %%site.broughtby%% (“Operator”). The Website is offered
subject to your acceptance without modification of all of the terms
and conditions contained herein and all other operating rules,
policies (including, without limitation, Operator’s [Privacy
Policy](%%doc.privacy%%))
and procedures that may be published from time to time on this Site by
Operator (collectively, the “Agreement”).

Please read this Agreement carefully before accessing or using the
Website. By accessing or using any part of the web site, you agree to
become bound by the terms and conditions of this agreement. If you do
not agree to all the terms and conditions of this agreement, then you
may not access the Website or use any services. If these terms and
conditions are considered an offer by Operator, acceptance is
expressly limited to these terms. The Website is available only to
individuals who are at least 13 years old.

<ol>

<li><strong>Your %%site.name%% Account and Site.</strong> If you
create a notice stream on the Website, you are responsible for
maintaining the security of your account and notice stream, and you
are fully responsible for all activities that occur under the account
and any other actions taken in connection with the notice stream. You
must not describe or assign keywords to your notice stream in a
misleading or unlawful manner, including in a manner intended to trade
on the name or reputation of others, and Operator may change or remove
any description or keyword that it considers inappropriate or
unlawful, or otherwise likely to cause Operator liability. You must
immediately notify Operator of any unauthorized uses of your notice
stream, your account or any other breaches of security. Operator will
not be liable for any acts or omissions by You, including any damages
of any kind incurred as a result of such acts or omissions.</li>

<li><strong>Responsibility of Contributors.</strong> If you operate a
notice stream, comment on a notice stream, post material to the
Website, post links on the Website, or otherwise make (or allow any
third party to make) material available by means of the Website (any
such material, “Content”), You are entirely responsible for the
content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content. That is the
case regardless of whether the Content in question constitutes text,
graphics, an audio file, or computer software. By making Content
available, you represent and warrant that:

<ul>

<li>the downloading, copying and use of the Content will not infringe
the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the copyright,
patent, trademark or trade secret rights, of any third party;</li>

<li>if your employer has rights to intellectual property you create,
you have either (i) received permission from your employer to post or
make available the Content, including but not limited to any software,
or (ii) secured from your employer a waiver as to all rights in or to
the Content;</li>

<li>you have fully complied with any third-party licenses
relating to the Content, and have done all things necessary to
successfully pass through to end users any required terms;</li>

<li>the Content does not contain or install any viruses, worms, malware,
Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content;</li>

<li>the Content is not spam, and does not contain unethical or
unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party
sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to
further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to
the source of the material (such as spoofing);</li>

<li>if the Content is machine- or randomly-generated, it is for
purposes of direct entertainment, information and/or utility for you
or other users, and not for spam,</li>

<li>the Content is not libelous or defamatory (more info on
what that means), does not contain threats or incite violence towards
individuals or entities, and does not violate the privacy or publicity
rights of any third party;</li>

<li>your notice stream is not getting advertised via unwanted electronic
messages such as spam links on newsgroups, email lists, other notice streams
and web sites, and similar unsolicited promotional methods;</li>

<li>your notice stream is not named in a manner that misleads your
readers into thinking that you are another person or company. For
example, your notice stream’s URL or name is not the name of a person other
than yourself or company other than your own; and</li>

<li>you have, in the case of Content that includes computer code,
accurately categorized and/or described the type, nature, uses and
effects of the materials, whether requested to do so by Operator or
otherwise.</li>

</ul>

<p>By submitting Content to Operator for inclusion on your Website, you
grant Operator a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license
to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the
purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your notice
stream.</p>

<p>By submitting Content to Operator for inclusion on your Website,
you grant all readers the right to use, re-use, modify and/or
re-distribute the Content under the terms of the <a
href="%%license.url%%">%%license.title%%</a>.</p>

<p>If you delete Content, Operator will use reasonable efforts to remove it from
the Website, but you acknowledge that caching or references to the
Content may not be made immediately unavailable.</p>

<p>Without limiting any of those representations or warranties, Operator
has the right (though not the obligation) to, in Operator’s sole
discretion (i) refuse or remove any content that, in Operator’s
reasonable opinion, violates any Operator policy or is in any way
harmful or objectionable, or (ii) terminate or deny access to and use
of the Website to any individual or entity for any reason, in
Operator’s sole discretion.</p>
</li>

<li><strong>Responsibility of Website Visitors.</strong> Operator has not reviewed,
and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software,
posted to the Website, and cannot therefore be responsible for that
material’s content, use or effects. By operating the Website,
Operator does not represent or imply that it endorses the material
there posted, or that it believes such material to be accurate, useful
or non-harmful. You are responsible for taking precautions as
necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses,
worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content. The
Website may contain content that is offensive, indecent, or otherwise
objectionable, as well as content containing technical inaccuracies,
typographical mistakes, and other errors. The Website may also contain
material that violates the privacy or publicity rights, or infringes
the intellectual property and other proprietary rights, of third
parties, or the downloading, copying or use of which is subject to
additional terms and conditions, stated or unstated. Operator
disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from the use by
visitors of the Website, or from any downloading by those visitors of
content there posted.</li>

<li><strong>Content Posted on Other Websites.</strong> We have not reviewed, and
cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, made
available through the websites and webpages to which %%site.name%%
links, and that link to %%site.name%%. Operator does not have any
control over those external websites and webpages, and is not
responsible for their contents or their use. By linking to a
external website or webpage, Operator does not represent or
imply that it endorses such website or webpage. You are responsible
for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your
computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful
or destructive content. Operator disclaims any responsibility for
any harm resulting from your use of external websites and
webpages.</li>

<li><strong>Copyright Infringement and DMCA Policy.</strong> As Operator asks
others to respect its intellectual property rights, it respects the
intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that material
located on or linked to by %%site.name%% violates your copyright, you
are encouraged to notify Operator in accordance with Operator’s
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”) Policy. Operator will
respond to all such notices, including as required or appropriate by
removing the infringing material or disabling all links to the
infringing material. In the case of a visitor who may infringe or
repeatedly infringes the copyrights or other intellectual property
rights of Operator or others, Operator may, in its discretion,
terminate or deny access to and use of the Website. In the case of
such termination, Operator will have no obligation to provide a
refund of any amounts previously paid to Operator.</li>

<li><strong>Intellectual Property.</strong> This Agreement does not
transfer from Operator to you any Operator or third party intellectual
property, and all right, title and interest in and to such property
will remain (as between the parties) solely with Operator.
%%site.name%%, the %%site.name%% logo, and all other trademarks,
service marks, graphics and logos used in connection with
%%site.name%%, or the Website are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Operator or Operator’s licensors. Other trademarks, service marks,
graphics and logos used in connection with the Website may be the
trademarks of other third parties. Your use of the Website grants you
no right or license to reproduce or otherwise use any Operator or
third-party trademarks.</li>

<li><strong>Changes.</strong> Operator reserves the right, at its sole
discretion, to modify or replace any part of this Agreement. It is
your responsibility to check this Agreement periodically for changes.
Your continued use of or access to the Website following the posting
of any changes to this Agreement constitutes acceptance of those
changes. Operator may also, in the future, offer new services and/or
features through the Website (including, the release of new tools and
resources). Such new features and/or services shall be subject to the
terms and conditions of this Agreement.</li>

<li><strong>Termination.</strong> Operator may terminate your access
to all or any part of the Website at any time, with or without cause,
with or without notice, effective immediately. If you wish to
terminate this Agreement or your %%site.name%% account (if you have
one), you may simply discontinue using the Website. All provisions of
this Agreement which by their nature should survive termination shall
survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership
provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity and limitations of
liability.</li>

<li><strong>Disclaimer of Warranties.</strong> The Website is provided
“as is”. Operator and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all
warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without
limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a
particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither Operator nor its
suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that the Website will be
error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted.
If you’re actually reading this, here’s a treat. You understand that
you download from, or otherwise obtain content or services through,
the Website at your own discretion and risk.</li>

<li><strong>Limitation of Liability.</strong> In no event will
Operator, or its suppliers or licensors, be liable with respect to any
subject matter of this agreement under any contract, negligence,
strict liability or other legal or equitable theory for: (i) any
special, incidental or consequential damages; (ii) the cost of
procurement or substitute products or services; (iii) for interruption
of use or loss or corruption of data; or (iv) for any amounts that
exceed the fees paid by you to Operator under this agreement during
the twelve (12) month period prior to the cause of action. Operator
shall have no liability for any failure or delay due to matters beyond
their reasonable control. The foregoing shall not apply to the extent
prohibited by applicable law.</li>

<li><strong>General Representation and Warranty.</strong> You
represent and warrant that (i) your use of the Website will be in
strict accordance with the Operator Privacy Policy, with this
Agreement and with all applicable laws and regulations (including
without limitation any local laws or regulations in your country,
state, city, or other governmental area, regarding online conduct and
acceptable content, and including all applicable laws regarding the
transmission of technical data exported from the United States or the
country in which you reside) and (ii) your use of the Website will not
infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any
third party.</li>

<li><strong>Indemnification.</strong> You agree to indemnify and hold
harmless Operator, its contractors, and its licensors, and their
respective directors, officers, employees and agents from and against
any and all claims and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, arising
out of your use of the Website, including but not limited to out of
your violation this Agreement.</li>

<li><strong>Miscellaneous.</strong> This Agreement constitutes the
entire agreement between Operator and you concerning the subject
matter hereof, and they may only be modified by a written amendment
signed by an authorized executive of Operator, or by the posting by
Operator of a revised version. If any part of this Agreement is held
invalid or unenforceable, that part will be construed to reflect the
parties’ original intent, and the remaining portions will remain in
full force and effect. A waiver by either party of any term or
condition of this Agreement or any breach thereof, in any one
instance, will not waive such term or condition or any subsequent
breach thereof. You may assign your rights under this Agreement to any
party that consents to, and agrees to be bound by, its terms and
conditions; Operator may assign its rights under this Agreement
without condition. This Agreement will be binding upon and will inure
to the benefit of the parties, their successors and permitted
assigns.</li> </ol>

*Originally published by Automattic, Inc. as the [WordPress.com Terms
of Service](http://en.wordpress.com/tos/) and made available by them
under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
Modifications to remove reference to "VIP services", rename "blog" to
"notice stream", remove the choice-of-venue clause, and add variables
specific to instances of this software made by Control Yourself, Inc.
and made available under the terms of the same license.*