Terms of Use
1. Proprietary Rights
Habitat or its licensors own and retain all proprietary rights in the Website and all material and information posted thereon (collectively, “Content”). You may not alter, modify, publish, distribute, publicly display or sell any Content, or otherwise copy or transmit any Content unless otherwise set forth herein (unless such Content is provided by you). [You may display and print limited copies of the Content for your personal, non-commercial use, provided that (i) the copies must retain any copyright, intellectual property, proprietary or other notices or disclaimers contained in the original materials, (ii) you must give attribution to Habitat and if possible provide a reference to the Website, (iii) the material must be printed in its entirety without modification, reformatting, adaptation or adjustment, and (iv) if you combine the materials with other hard copy materials, you must clearly designate which portion of the complete work is Habitat's material.] Habitat retains all rights not expressly granted, and nothing in this Agreement constitutes a waiver of any rights under copyright laws or any other federal, state or local law, regulation, ordinance or treaty. Nothing in this Agreement should be construed as conferring by implication, estoppel or otherwise, any license or intellectual property right, including without limitation, any patent, trademark, service mark or copyright of Habitat or any third party.
You may post messages, text, photos, testimonials or other Content on the Website. Any materials you post on or submit to the Website will be considered Content and will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary, and you agree to grant, and shall be deemed to have automatically granted to Habitat an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully-paid, worldwide license to: (a) use, copy, perform, display and distribute such Content; (b) modify, alter, prepare derivative works of, and/or incorporate into other works, such Content; and (c) grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You represent and warrant that you have the right, power and authority to grant the foregoing license. You agree to release, discharge and agree to hold harmless Habitat from any and all claims or liability, whether known or unknown, in connection with the publication, production, processing, distribution or exploitation of Content posted by you, including any claims of infringement of any rights of publicity or rights of privacy.
You acknowledge, consent and agree that Habitat may, at its sole discretion and to the extent permitted by law, access, read, preserve and disclose your account information, usage history and submitted Content in order to: (a) comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request; (b) respond to claims that any Content violates the rights of third parties, including intellectual property rights; (c) enforce this Agreement and investigate potential violations thereof; (d) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues; (e) respond to your requests for customer service; or (f) protect the rights, property, or personal safety or interests of Habitat, other users of the Website (“Users”), or the public.
If you believe that any of the content on the Website infringes your copyright or trademark rights or your rights of publicity, please contact Wynne Eden or Lisa Hacker on 1-800-422-4828.
2. Acceptable Use
Habitat may seek appropriate action to terminate any uses of the Website or the Services in the event we determine that your use does not conform to any of the conditions of this Agreement; infringes any intellectual property or other rights of Habitat or a third party; adversely affects Habitat’s image, reputation or our products, services or programs; or violates any applicable law, regulation or ordinance. Without limitation, you may not
- Use the Website or the Services to engage in advertising to, or solicitation of, any User or other person;
- Transmit any “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes” or other deceptive on-line marketing practices or any unsolicited bulk email or unsolicited commercial email;
- Use the Website to collect the name, email address or any other personal or confidential information of any User without such User’s consent, by electronic or other means for any reason, including, without limitation, the purpose of sending unsolicited email;
- Upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make publicly available any private information of any third party, including, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, social security numbers and credit card numbers;
- Interfere with or disrupt any services or equipment with the intent of causing an excessive or disproportionate load on Habitat or its licensors or suppliers' infrastructure;
- Engage or attempt to engage in the unauthorized entry to any equipment accessible via the Services or the Website, or attempt to breach the security of the Website (including without limitation accessing data to which you are not the intended recipient or logging into a server or account for which you are not expressly authorized);
- Knowingly distribute viruses, Trojan horses, worms, or other similar harmful or deleterious programming routines
- Transmit or facilitate distribution of Content that is untrue, threatening, harassing, abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, vulgar, sexually explicit, obscene, defamatory, or objectionable;
- Disrupt the flow of any chat areas with vulgar language, abusiveness, or other conduct that may disrupt normal activities; or
- Pretend to be anyone whom you are not, including impersonating Habitat staff.
In order to enforce the acceptable use policy set forth above, Habitat reserves the right to remove, edit or abridge Content from the Website that violates this policy in Habitat's sole discretion [and restrict the number of emails or messages that a User may send to others through the Website in any 24-hour or other period to a number that Habitat deems appropriate, in Habitat's sole and absolute discretion]. IMPROPER USE OF THE WEBSITE MAY RESULT IN LOSS OF YOUR ACCESS TO THE WEBSITE AND SERVICES AND MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITIES.
3. Services
Generally. Habitat may offer from time to time certain Services on the Website, including without limitation, message boards, blogs, chatrooms, public forums, personal home pages, on-line donations, shopping carts and tutorials. The following terms under this Agreement pertain to your ability to use the Services made available by Habitat on the Website.
Account Set Up. Access to certain Services and features of the Website will require an account to be first established and activated for you. When you register for an account, you will be asked to provide a unique user name, a password and a valid email address for your account. Habitat reserves the right to decline to activate an account for any person for any reason.
Password Protection. You must have a password to access the Services online via your account. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your password and protecting against unauthorized use of your password. You also are responsible for all activities that occur under your account. You will immediately notify Habitat if your password has been compromised or if there is any other breach of security of which you are aware.
Account Requirements. In consideration of your use of the Services, you agree to: (i) provide true, accurate, current and complete information about yourself as prompted by Habitat’s account activation form; and (ii) maintain and promptly update such account information to keep it true, accurate, current and complete. As part of the account activation process, you must certify that you are 18 years of age or older.
Public Forums & Home Pages. As an account holder, you may participate in certain message boards, blogs, chatrooms, instant messaging and other public forums, and you may be provided access to website development tools and the use of a fundraising web space that can be personalized with your own content (a “Home Page”).
Availability of Service. Habitat reserves the right to establish general practices and limits concerning the Services and User accounts at any time (and may modify such practices and limits at its sole discretion), including without limitation the maximum number of days that your or any User’s Content or email will be retained and the maximum amount of disk space that will be allotted on Habitat's servers on your behalf. Habitat shall have no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to deliver or store your Home Page or any other public forum, or any Content or email provided by or stored by you. Habitat reserves the right to log off accounts that are inactive for an extended period of time and reserves the right at any time, and from time to time, to modify or discontinue, either temporarily or permanently, the Services (or any part thereof) with or without notice. Habitat shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any such modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Services.
5. Limitation of Liability
In no event and under no circumstances shall Habitat be liable to you or any third party for any damages, including, without limitation, special, incidental, punitive or consequential damages (including without limitation any loss of profits, lost savings, or loss of data) arising out of your use or inability to use the Website or the Services, or your reliance on or use of Content or Services provided on or through the Website, or that result from mistakes, omissions, interruptions, deletions of files or other data loss, errors, defects, delays in operation, service or transmission or any failure of performance of the Website, even if we, or any of our authorized representatives, have been advised of the possibility of such damage and even if the remedies stated in this Agreement fail of their essential purpose.
6. Disclaimer
THE WEBSITE AND THE SERVICES, INCLUDING ANY CONTENT, ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, QUALITY, COURSE OF DEALINGS, USAGE OF TRADE, ACCURACY OF CONTENT, QUIET ENJOYMENT OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. YOU ASSUME TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY AND RISK FOR YOUR USE OF THIS WEBSITE AND THE SERVICES.
7. Third Party Content; Links to Third Party Websites
Habitat assumes no obligation to monitor or control such posted or transmitted Content. Habitat does not guarantee that Content will not be offensive, defamatory, or objectionable. Although Habitat reserves the right to remove without notice any Content for any reason, Habitat has no obligation to delete Content that you personally may find objectionable or offensive. Habitat does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of any Content.
Habitat may from time to time post articles, links to third party Internet sites, and other Content that might be of interest or benefit to Users. The opinions and recommendations of third parties contained in such third party postings or on such third party sites are not necessarily those of Habitat or endorsed by Habitat. Habitat is not responsible for the content of any third party sites linked to or from the Website.
8. Miscellaneous
Severability. If any provision of this Agreement is held invalid, the remainder of this Agreement shall continue in full force and effect.
Survival. The following provisions of this Agreement shall survive the termination of your access to the Website or the Services: Section 1 (Proprietary Rights), Section 6 (Limitation of Liability), and Section 7 (Disclaimers).
Governing Law. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, without regard to its choice of law or conflict of law provisions.
Dispute Resolution. If any dispute arises between you and Habitat arising from or relating to the Website or the Services, you agree that all such disputes will be determined exclusively by final and binding arbitration, in accordance with the then existing commercial rules of the American Arbitration Association in Atlanta, Georgia. The arbitration shall be heard and adjudicated by one arbitrator to be selected by you and Habitat. Any award will be final, binding and conclusive upon the parties, and a judgment rendered on the arbitration award can be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof.
Waiver of Right to a Jury Trial. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, BY AGREEING TO SUBMIT ALL DISPUTES TO BINDING ARBITRATION, YOU AND HABITAT HEREBY WAIVE YOUR RIGHT TO A JURY OR COURT TRIAL OF ANY CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION ARISING OUT OF OR BASED UPON THIS AGREEMENT OR ANY CONTEMPLATED USE HEREIN, INCLUDING CONTRACT, TORT, BREACH OF DUTY AND ALL OTHER CLAIMS, EXCEPT AS SPECIFICALLY PROVIDED ABOVE.
Privacy. The policy governing the collection, use, retention and disclosure of personal information gathered from the Website and the Services can be viewed here.
Contact Information. Please contact us at questions@wearehabitat.org with any questions regarding this Agreement.