Uploading content to our site

Our site enables you to upload and share text, images, photographs, logos, data, information, views, graphs and/or other materials (Content). The ways in which you might publish and share Content on our site include (but are not necessarily limited to):

(a) articles;

(b) blog posts; and

(b) community content (including forum posts and user comments).

When posting Content as an article [or blog post], you undertake and agree that:

• the Content is your own original work and is not copied or adapted from any third party work without their consent;
• you have not recently published identical or substantially similar Content elsewhere on the internet;
• you will not publish such Content on other third-party sites without including a hyperlink source reference to our site;
• the Content shall be accurate in all material respects;
• we may review the Content prior to publication on our site and may make reasonable changes to the Content and/or reject publication of the Content in part or in whole.

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload Content to our site, or to make contact with other users of our site, you must comply with our acceptable use & content standards (see section below).

You warrant that any such contribution does comply with those standards, and you will be liable to us and indemnify us for any breach of that warranty. This means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of warranty.

Any Content you upload to our site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You retain all of your ownership rights in your Content, but you are required to grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide licence (including the right to sub-licence) to use, store, copy, modify and adapt that Content and to distribute and make it available to third parties.

You warrant and represent that We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any Content posted or uploaded by you to our site constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.

We will not be responsible, or liable to any third party, for the Content or accuracy of any Content posted by you or any other user of our site.

We have the right to remove any posting you make on our site for any reason whatsoever including if, in our opinion, your post does not comply with the acceptable use & content standards set out below.

The views expressed by other users on our site do not represent our views or values.

Acceptable use & Content standards

a. Prohibited uses

You may use our site only for lawful purposes. You may not use our site:

• in any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation;
• in any way that is unlawful or fraudulent, or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect;
• for the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way;
• to send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material which does not comply with our content standards (set out below);
• to transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam);
• to knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware.

You also agree:

• not to reproduce, duplicate, copy or re-sell any part of our site in contravention of the provisions of our terms of website use;
• not to access without authority, interfere with, damage or disrupt:

1. any part of our site;
2. any equipment or network on which our site is stored;
3. any software used in the provision of our site; or
4. any equipment or network or software owned or used by any third party.

b. Interactive services

We may from time to time provide interactive services on our site, including, without limitation:

• Comment features.
• Bulletin boards.
• Question and answer features.

We will do our best to assess any possible risks for users from third parties when they use any interactive service provided on our site, and we will decide in each case whether it is appropriate to use moderation of the relevant service (including what kind of moderation to use) in the light of those risks. However, we are under no obligation to oversee, monitor or moderate any interactive service we provide on our site, and we expressly exclude our liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of any interactive service by a user in contravention of our content standards, whether the service is moderated or not.

Where we do moderate an interactive service, we will normally provide you with a means of contacting the moderator, should a concern or difficulty arise.

All interactive services are subject to fair usage and we reserve the right to suspend or delete any user account which is using any of the interactive services excessively or otherwise in breach of these terms of use.

c. Content standards

These content standards apply to any and all Content which you contribute to our site and to any interactive services associated with it.

You must comply with the spirit and the letter of the following standards.

Contributions must:

• be accurate (where they state facts).
• be genuinely held (where they state opinions).
• comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country from which they are posted.

Contributions must not:

• Contain any material which is defamatory of any person;
• Contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory;
• Promote sexually explicit material;
• Promote violence;
• Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
• Infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person.
• Be likely to deceive any person;
• Be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence;
• Promote any illegal activity;
• Be threatening, abuse or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;
• Be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person;
• Be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person;
• Give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case;
• Advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.

d. Private messaging

Our site may enable you to send private messages to other users. If it does do so, you agree that our acceptable use & content standard apply to any such private messages. For the avoidance of doubt, We have the power and right to access and review all private messages transmitted via our site and may do so in our sole discretion if we think it is necessary or if we receive a report of abuse from another user.

e. Suspension and termination

We will determine, in our discretion, whether there has been a breach of our acceptable use & content standard through your use of our site. When a breach has occurred, we may take such action as we deem appropriate.

Failure to comply with our acceptable use & content standards constitutes a material breach of the terms of use, and may result in our taking all or any of the following actions:

• immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our site;
• immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any posting or material uploaded by you to our site;
• issue of a warning to you;
• legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach;
• further legal action against you;
• disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary.

We exclude liability for actions taken in response to breaches of our terms of use, including our acceptable use & content standards. The responses described above are not limited, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.