The following are the Terms and Conditions of Cosmic Blogs, as last revised September 2010. The same terms here can be applied to all sections of our website, unless they have their own governing Terms of Use. If you ever have any questions, contact one of our staff at tos@cosmicthings.com.
Important Information
You should carefully read the following Terms and Conditions. Your use of our products implies that you have read and accepted these Terms and Conditions.
Introduction
Our service is free. Our service is designed to give your group or club as much control and ownership over what goes on your site as possible and encourage your members to express themselves freely. However, each club or group must be responsible for the content of their site. In particular, make sure that none of the prohibited items listed below appear on your site or get linked to from your site (things like spam, viruses, or hate content).
The following terms and conditions govern all use of the Cosmic Blogs website and all content, services and products available at or through the website. 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, the Cosmic Blogs Privacy Policy.
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 Cosmic Blogs, acceptance is expressly limited to these terms.
Ownership
You do not claim intellectual property right or exclusive ownership to any of our products, modified or unmodified. All products are property of Cosmic Blogs. Our products are provided \'as is\' without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. In no event shall our company be liable for any damages including, but not limited to, direct, indirect, special, punitive, incidental or consequential, or other losses arising out of the use of or inability to use our products.
Your Cosmic Blogs Account and Site.
The creation of a Cosmic Blog without prior authorization from Nancy Raskausakas or Jamie Welch will result in the termination of the blog site and the termination of access to your account. The Cosmic Networks will not be held liable for any Grade Point Average drops that may or may not result from the termination of access to your account. You are solely responsible for your conduct on the Cosmic Networks.
If you create a site with Cosmic Blogs, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and site, and you are fully responsible for all activities that occur under the account and any other actions taken in connection with the site. You must not describe or put keywords on your site in a misleading or unlawful manner, including in a manner intended to trade on the name or reputation of others, and Cosmic Blogs may change or remove any description or keyword that it considers inappropriate or unlawful, or otherwise likely to cause Cosmic Blogs liability. You must immediately notify Cosmic Blogs of any unauthorized uses of your site, your account or any other breaches of security. Cosmic Blogs 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.
Responsibility of Contributors.
If you operate a website, comment on a website, 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:
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;
if your school has rights to intellectual property you create, you have either (i) received permission from your school to post or make available the Content, including but not limited to any software, or (ii) secured from your school a waiver as to all rights in or to the Content;
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;
the Content does not contain or install any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content;
the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, 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);
the Content is not obscene, libelous or defamatory, hateful or racially or ethnically objectionable, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party;
your site is not named in a manner that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company. For example, your site\'s URL or name is not the name of a person other than yourself or company other than your own; and
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 Cosmic Blogs or otherwise.
By submitting Content to Cosmic Blogs for inclusion on your Website, you grant Cosmic Blogs 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 site. If you delete Content, Cosmic Blogs 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.
Without limiting any of those representations or warranties, Cosmic Blogs has the right (though not the obligation) to, in Cosmic Blogs\'s sole discretion (i) refuse or remove any content that, in Cosmic Blogs\'s reasonable opinion, violates any Cosmic Blogs 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 Cosmic Blogs\'s sole discretion.
Responsibility of Website Visitors.
Cosmic Blogs 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, Cosmic Blogs 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. Cosmic Blogs 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.
Content Posted on Other Websites.
We have not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, made available through the websites and WebPages to which Cosmic Blogs links, and that link to Cosmic Blogs. Cosmic Blogs does not have any control over those non- Cosmic Blogs websites and WebPages, and is not responsible for their contents or their use. By linking to a non- Cosmic Blogs website or webpage, Cosmic Blogs 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. Cosmic Blogs disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from your use of non- Cosmic Blogs websites and WebPages.
Copyright Infringement and DMCA Policy.
As Cosmic Blogs 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 Cosmic Blogs violates your copyright, you are encouraged to notify Cosmic Blogs. Cosmic Blogs 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 Cosmic Blogs or others, Cosmic Blogs may, in its discretion, terminate or deny access to and use of the Website.
In other words, if you don\'t have permission to upload content, don\'t do it. This includes music, movies, images, or other files that are copyrighted. The uploading of copyrighted files will result in your account being terminated after only one warning. We take other people\'s copyright very seriously, and so should you.
Intellectual Property.
This Agreement does not transfer from Cosmic Blogs to you any Cosmic Blogs or third party intellectual property, and all right, title and interest in and to such property will remain (as between the parties) solely with Cosmic Blogs. Cosmic Blogs, blogs.cosmicthings.com, the Cosmic Blogs logo, and all other trademarks, service marks, graphics and logos used in connection with Cosmic Blogs, or the Website are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cosmic Blogs or Cosmic Blogs\'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 Cosmic Blogs or third-party trademarks.
Changes.
Cosmic Blogs 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. Cosmic Blogs 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.
Termination.
Cosmic Blogs 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 Cosmic Blogs account (if you have one), you may simply discontinue using the Website. Cosmic Blogs can terminate the Website immediately as part of a general shut down of our service. 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. We will deactivate any blog that is inactive for more than 1 month (30 Days) at a time. Once deactivated, it will be archived for an additional month, during which time the blog owner may request restoration. After those two months, the blog will be deleted, and no data will be recoverable.
Disclaimer of Warranties.
The materials on Cosmic Blogs\'s web site are provided \'as is\'. Cosmic Blogs makes no warranties, expressed or implied, and hereby disclaims and negates all other warranties, including without limitation, implied warranties or conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement of intellectual property or other violation of rights. Further, Cosmic Blogs does not warrant or make any representations concerning the accuracy, likely results, or reliability of the use of the materials on its Internet web site or otherwise relating to such materials or on any sites linked to this site.
Limitation of Liability.
In no event will Cosmic Blogs, 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 interuption of use or loss or corruption of data; or (iv) for any amounts that exceed the fees paid by you to Cosmic Blogs under this agreement during the twelve (12) month period prior to the cause of action. Cosmic Blogs 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.
Use of The Service by Minors
Cosmic Blogs allows for the signup to its service by users under the age of consent (herein referred to as "minors") provided they are students at Worcester Preparatory School. Although by nature minors are not able to agree to this agreement, this service is also governed by the Worcester Preparatory School Honor Code, which was signed by both you and your parents at the beginning of the school year. The use of this service by you reaffirms acceptance of the terms of the Worcester Preparatory School honor code, which includes, but is not limited to clauses against hacking and inappropriate conduct on the internet. Inappropriate conduct on our network is considered a violation of Worcester Preparatory School's honor code and is eligible for referral to Worcester Preparatory School administrators, at Cosmic Networks staff's sole discretion. Use of this service also indicates your acceptance of these terms of use, as they are considered a more verbose version of the WPS honor code as it would be interpreted for use in an online environment.
General Representation and Warranty.
You represent and warrant that (i) your use of the Website will be in strict accordance with the Cosmic Blogs 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 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.
Indemnification.
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Cosmic Blogs, 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.
Site Terms of Use Modifications
Cosmic Blogs may revise these terms of use for its web site at any time without notice. By using this web site you are agreeing to be bound by the then current version of these Terms and Conditions of Use. If these terms are updated, you will be notified via email.
(Revised: September 2010)
Jamie Welch, Chief Operating Officer