Gaypedia Terms and Conditions

 

Terms and Conditions (“T&Cs”)

(last updated on 31 December 2007)

Welcome to Gaypedia, and you are probably already wondering what you are doing at this normally very legal section of a website! We have tried to make the terms and conditions as easy to read and as fair as possible.

These T&Cs apply to our website hosted on the address www.gaypedia.com (“our website”) which is owned and operated by Cool Ideas GmbH (“we”, “us”, “our”). These T&Cs apply to each visitor to, and user of, our website, including unregistered and registered users and members, venue owners and paying subscribers (individually “user” and collectively, “users”).

What is important about these T&Cs is that they set out the legal framework in which you participate on www.gaypedia.com, what your rights and responsibilities are and what you can expect from us – in other words, the fundamentals of our relationship

Being a legal framework it has a lot of legal stuff in it and if you get lost in it or have any questions or comments please feel free to let us know on comments@gaypedia.com.

The key points of this document are:

•    All the reviews and content you create are yours, so you are responsible for this content
•    You grant us a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty free and irrevocable license to use your User Content (e.g. blogs, reviews, descriptive content, images) in accordance with our sites policies and for the business we conduct through Gaypedia.
•    We want to ensure that everyone on Gaypedia gets the most out of the website and enjoys their time on it. In this spirit, we ask all users to act in good faith, never to harass others or to defame a business or upload material that the community may find offensive or abusive. We want our site to be clean!
•    Gaypedia should not be used to promote services (except as expressly agreed below), to spam the community or spread any malicious software that may harm other users’ computers. You also agree not to use software, such as robots, to harvest information from the site.
•    We strongly believe that sharing and acknowledging the work of others is a good thing and hope that you agree too.
•    We welcome all business owners and associates and invite you to promote, within our provided framework, your business with our users. As honesty is at the core of the website, if you are here to promote your business, you must clearly and openly state your association with the particular business.
•    If you are using material that may be protected by copyright, you must obtain permission before doing so - we don’t want you to violate any copyright or trademark laws.
•    We do not want to stop you using our site, but if you do contravene any of the above then we reserve the right to stop and/or delete your account and remove any content that you have created.

As with most T&Cs, we reserve the right to change them at any one time - we will post a message on your profile to warn you about changes but we encourage you to check them regularly.

General T&Cs

We adore Gaypedia and are fully confident that the information and services that it provides to users and members is invaluable. We want you to love the site as much as us and will do our best to offer you a service that works properly and is available at all times that you need it As such, we will schedule non-urgent maintenance and improvements to off-peak hours but we might find ourselves needing to carry out emergency maintenance at inconvenient times. As a result, we cannot guarantee accessibility at all times and we will not be liable for any losses arising as a result.

Content

The content you create belongs to you and you retain all ownership rights to content you publish on our website (your "User Content"). “User Content” means content (on our website posted by users of it (but not the structure and content of it that we create to enable you to use it)) of any type or medium, including but not limited to letters, emails or other messages, other forms of communication through our website, personal user information, board posts, comments, blogs, data, images, audio or video files and guides. You may only post content that you own or create or which you have written permission to post: we wouldn’t want you to get into trouble for posting content you don’t own. You agree that we do not endorse any User Content and are not responsible or liable for any User Content and that you indemnify us against all costs, claims and liabilities that we may incur to third parties arising from your breach of these T&Cs.

As Gaypedia grows, we may wish to advertise our service and present examples of content created by users. Advertising will increase the number of users and merchants on the site and also increase the overall quantity and quality of our website. By using our website you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and assignable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such User Content throughout the world in any media. You also grant us and our sub-licensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such User Content, if they choose but also to publish your User Content without accreditation. In other words, we can publish all or ‘teaser portions’ of your User Content online and offline and permit others to do the same.

If you choose to republish your User Content elsewhere, we ask that you refer or provide links to Gaypedia. We reserve the right to refuse, edit, move or remove any User Content from our website with or without justification at any time.

If User Content includes information on venues or events including opening times, accessibility or availability of tickets, you are advised to check with the relevant venue or organisation before setting out or incurring any expense.

Merchants

If you are a merchant, you may promote your business on Gaypedia by either creating “User Content”, or annotating your existing “User Content” of your business, as long as you clearly indicate that you are the owner or a legally authorised representative of the merchant. You will also provide us with full contact details for us to validate you as the owner or as legally authorised representative of the merchant (but not so as to impose any obligation on us to undertake such a check). If you misrepresent yourself as the owner or authorised representative of a merchant or you fail to disclose that you are connected with a merchant, we reserve the right to ban you from and to publicise your conduct on our website.

You can claim ownership of a venue posted on our site by identifying yourself in writing to us. We will require you to authenticate yourself by providing two copies of supply invoices addressed to your company and which are not older than 60 days prior to forwarding your request. If you would like to initiate this process, please e-mail us your details to comments@gaypedia.com and we will get it started for you.

Your Account

We do not have the facilities to verify the identity of the person sitting behind a computer, so you are responsible for your account and for anything done by people using your username and password, so you must keep your personal password secret at all times and notify us immediately you become aware of its use by a third party, not least as this clause means you will be legally responsible for anything they do using your ID (including posting malicious, illegal or unlawful content that may incur you with liability for the payment of damages as well as jeopardise your ability to enjoy the benefits of our website). Please note: we will never ask you to disclose your ID by email or online except in the login page so make sure you do not accidentally reveal it.

Termination of Account

We will be disappointed if you choose to leave Gaypedia, but you can cancel your account at any time by contacting our customer service team on member@gaypedia.com.

We reserve the right to cancel your account, or otherwise refuse service to you, at any time due to repeat infringement of these terms and conditions or for any other reasons we see fit. Following termination of your account for any reason (including inactivity), at their sole option, Gaypedia and its licensees may continue or stop publicly displaying some or all of your User Content.

Community Support

Gaypedia is all about communities and word of mouth exchanged between the people in them. To facilitate the spread of word of mouth between our users, we offer a series of community tools including the ability to post comments, add review, emails, chat rooms, discussion groups and discussion forums.

We do not actively monitor the community nor exercise active editorial control over user content or the content of any third party sites, electronic mail transmission, text message, news group, bulletin board, chat room or other material created or accessible over or through our website. As a result, you may be exposed to content that you find offensive, objectionable or otherwise in conflict with these T&Cs. To create an effective community we can all enjoy, we rely on users to inform us of abusive behaviour and offensive user content. We ask you to make use of these tools and help us to keep Gaypedia a vibrant and inclusive community.

Additionally, we reserve the right to monitor our discussion groups, bulletin boards, chat rooms and other interactive portions of our website and to remove any content which, in our absolute discretion, constitutes a misuse of these T&Cs and may restrict, suspend or terminate your use of our website where we believe that there has been such a misuse.

Community Conduct

We provide a vast array of community tools for users to be able to interact between each other, share User Content by word of mouth and develop meaningful relationships with other users. Because we want to ensure that everyone has a great and safe time on Gaypedia, you agree not to use the website or email service to:

•    Defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate other user’s legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity);

•    Create, host or transmit (whether in a live chat room, on a bulletin board or otherwise) any defamatory, offensive, or obscene material or engaging in activities which would cause offence to others on grounds of race, culture, religion, sexuality, creed or sex;

•    Create, host or transmit any material that threatens or encourages bodily harm or the destruction of property or would constitute a criminal offence or give rise to civil liability using the services to create, host or transmit unsolicited advertising material to other users;

•    Make fraudulent offers to sell or buy goods or services;

•    Advertise or offer to sell any goods or services for any commercial purpose in breach of these T&Cs;

•    Distribute surveys, contests, pyramid schemes, chain letters or other communications in the nature of spam;

•    Use software agents to automatically harvest information from the site;

•    Falsify or delete any author attributions, legal or other proper notices or proprietary designations or labels of the origin or source of software or other material on our website.

This list only serves to provide examples and is not an exclusive list of the type of misuses of conduct that may result in the restriction, suspension or termination of your access to our website.

Community Monitoring and Responsibilities


•    Monitoring. We do not actively moderate User Content but we reserve the right to monitor and remove content which, in our absolute discretion, constitutes a misuse of these T&Cs.

•    We do not control or endorse the content, messages or information found on our website and, therefore, we and our affiliates specifically disclaim any liability with regard to User Content and any actions resulting from your participation or the participation of others using our website.

Children

Gaypedia is not directed to children under the age of 18. Users who are under the age of 18 will be removed or not admitted to a membership on the site.

No Liability for Viruses, etc

We upload all content via reasonably up-to-date virus-checking software and we ask that you do the same with any User Content you upload. Furthermore, we advise all users to make sure that they only download material from our website if they have an up-to-date virus-checker on their machine and take regular full system and data backups to minimise disruption in the event of virus or other attack. Please note that no matter what protection we or you have, there is no guarantee that you will not be attacked, hence the need for regular backups. Therefore, we accept no responsibility for any losses arising from an attack by virus, Trojan, worm or other device having a negative impact on the use of your system or unlawfully giving third party access to your data or transmitting such data to a third party.

Liability Limits

Neither we nor our suppliers are liable for any lost profits or special incidental or consequently damages (however arising, including negligence) arising out of or in connection with your use of Gaypedia but this clause is not intended to exclude our liability in the extremely unlikely event of fraud by one of our employees or death or personal injury caused by our negligence.

Liability for Disputes Between Users & Third Parties

We are not responsible for any linked website or for what happens to you as a result of using Gaypedia (though please tell us about any problems) so we cannot intervene in any disputes between you and such website or their users. Similarly, we cannot get involved in disputes between you and other users though if their conduct is in breach of these terms, again please bring it to our attention.

You agree that you will not hold us liable for costs, claims, demands, or damages of any kind or nature arising out of or in any way connected with a dispute with any other user of Gaypedia.

Copyright Infringement

If you believe that content you own has been used on Gaypedia in a way that violates your copyright or other intellectual property rights, please provide our customer service team with the following information:

•    an electronic or physical signature of the person authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other intellectual property interest;

•    a description of the copyrighted work or other intellectual property that you claim has been infringed;

•    a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the site

•    your address, telephone number, and email address;

•    a statement by you (made under penalty of perjury) that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorised and that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright or intellectual property owner or authorised to act on the copyright or intellectual property owner's behalf and have proof of such authorisation and title to such rights.

You can make an initial contact at legal@gaypedia.com and we will deal with your claim and provide any further information that may be required.

Intellectual Property

We are the owner and/or authorised user of all trade marks, service marks, patents, copyrights, database rights and all other intellectual property appearing on or contained within Gaypedia, unless otherwise indicated. We do not grant you any right, title, interest or license in any such intellectual property and any use of it is prohibited. You further agree not to copy or use any content from the site where you do not own the intellectual property without the prior consent of either the owner of such content or Gaypedia.

Non-Waiver of Rights

Our failure to act in a particular circumstance does not waive our right to act with respect to that or other circumstances. We shall be excused for any problem due to a factor beyond our control.

Governing Laws

These T&Cs are governed by and construed in accordance with German law and you irrevocably agree that the courts of Germany will have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arise out of or in connection with these T&Cs and our website. Due to the global nature of the Internet, you agree to comply with all local laws in relation to use of our website.