BAY AREA DESI TERMS OF USE
1. ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS
Bay Area Desi provides a collection of online resources, including forums, blogs and various email services, (referred to hereafter as "the Service") subject to the following Terms of Use ("TOU"). By using the Service in any way, you are agreeing to comply with the TOU. In addition, when using particular Bay Area Desi services, you agree to abide by any applicable posted guidelines for all Bay Area Desi services, which may change from time to time. Should you object to any term or condition of the TOU, any guidelines, or any subsequent modifications thereto or become dissatisfied with Bay Area Desi in any way, your only recourse is to immediately discontinue use of Bay Area Desi.
2. MODIFICATIONS TO THIS AGREEMENT
We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify or otherwise alter these terms and conditions at any time. Such modifications shall become effective immediately upon the posting thereof. You must review this agreement on a regular basis to keep yourself apprised of any changes. You can find the most recent version of the TOU at:
http://www.bayareadesi.com/legal
3. CONTENT
You understand that all postings, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, or other materials ("Content") posted on, transmitted through, or linked from the Service, are the sole responsibility of the person from whom such Content originated. More specifically, you are entirely responsible for each individual item ("Item") of Content that you post, email or otherwise make available via the Service. Any material which is Copyright, TradeMark or Intellectual Proprietary should only be regenerated with permission and clear indication, Bay Area Desi takes no responsibility of such content. You understand that Bay Area Desi does not control, and is not responsible for Content made available through the Service, and that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise objectionable. Furthermore, the Bay Area Desi site and Content available through the Service may contain links to other websites, which are completely independent of Bay Area Desi. Bay Area Desi makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or authenticity of the information contained in any such site. Your linking to any other websites is at your own risk. You agree that you must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with, the use of any Content, that you may not rely on said Content, and that under no circumstances will Bay Area Desi be liable in any way for any Content or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Content posted, emailed or otherwise made available via the Service. You acknowledge that Bay Area Desi does not pre-screen or approve Content, but that Bay Area Desi shall have the right (but not the obligation) in its sole discretion to refuse, delete or move any Content that is available via the Service, for violating the letter or spirit of the TOU or for any other reason.
4. THIRD PARTY CONTENT, SITES, AND SERVICES
The Bay Area Desi site and Content available through the Service may contain features and functionalities that may link you or provide you with access to third party content which is completely independent of Bay Area Desi, including web sites, directories, servers, networks, systems, information and databases, applications, software, programs, products or services, and the Internet as a whole.
Your interactions with organizations and/or individuals found on or through the Service, including payment and delivery of goods or services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties or representations associated with such dealings, are solely between you and such organizations and/or individuals. You should make whatever investigation you feel necessary or appropriate before proceeding with any online or offline transaction with any of these third parties.
You agree that Bay Area Desi shall not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any such dealings. If there is a dispute between participants on this site, or between users and any third party, you understand and agree that Bay Area Desi is under no obligation to become involved. In the event that you have a dispute with one or more other users, you hereby release Bay Area Desi, its officers, agents and successors in rights from claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind or nature, known or unknown, suspected and unsuspected, disclosed and undisclosed, arising out of or in any way related to such disputes and / or our service. If you are a California resident, you waive California Civil Code Section 1542, which says: "A general release does not extend to claims which the creditor does not know or suspect to exist in his favor at the time of executing the release, which, if known by him must have materially affected his settlement with the debtor."
5. NOTIFICATION OF CLAIMS OF INFRINGEMENT
If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or your intellectual property rights have been otherwise violated, please notify Bay Area Desi's agent at
[email protected]
Bay Area Desi will remove the infringing posting(s), subject to the the procedures outlined in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
6. PRIVACY AND INFORMATION DISCLOSURE
Bay Area Desi has established a Privacy Policy to explain to users how their information is collected and used, which is located at the following web address:
http://www.bayareadesi.com/privacy
Your use of the Bay Area Desi website or the Service signifies acknowledgement of and agreement to our Privacy Policy. You further acknowledge and agree that Bay Area Desi may, in its sole discretion, preserve or disclose your Content, as well as your information, such as email addresses, IP addresses, timestamps, and other user information, if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: comply with legal process; enforce the TOU; respond to claims that any Content violates the rights of third-parties; respond to claims that contact information (e.g. phone number, street address) of a third-party has been posted or transmitted without their consent or as a form of harassment; protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Bay Area Desi, its users or the general public.
7. CONDUCT
You agree not to post, email, or otherwise make available Content:
a) that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, or is harmful to minors in any way;
b) that is pornographic or depicts a human being engaged in actual sexual conduct including but not limited to (i) sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex, or (ii) bestiality, or (iii) masturbation, or (iv) sadistic or masochistic abuse, or (v) lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person;
c) that harasses, degrades, intimidates or is hateful toward an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or disability;
d) that violates federal, state, or local equal employment opportunity laws, including but not limited to, stating in any advertisement for employment a preference or requirement based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability.
e) with respect to employers that employ four or more employees, that violates the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, including requiring U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent residency (green card status) as a condition for employment, unless otherwise required in order to comply with law, regulation, executive order, or federal, state, or local government contract.
f) that impersonates any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a Bay Area Desi employee, or falsely states or otherwise misrepresents your affiliation with a person or entity (this provision does not apply to Content that constitutes lawful non-deceptive parody of public figures.);
g) that includes personal or identifying information about another person without that person's explicit consent;
h) that is false, deceptive, misleading, deceitful, misinformative, or constitutes "bait and switch";
i) that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any party, or Content that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships;
j) that constitutes or contains "affiliate marketing," "link referral code," "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or unsolicited commercial advertisement;
k) that constitutes or contains any form of advertising or solicitation if: posted in areas of the Bay Area Desi site which are not designated for such purposes;
l) that includes links to commercial services or web sites, except as allowed in "services";
m) that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment;
n) that disrupts the normal flow of dialogue with an excessive amount of Content (flooding attack) to the Service, or that otherwise negatively affects other users' ability to use the Service; or
o) that employs misleading email addresses, or forged headers or otherwise manipulated identifiers in order to disguise the origin of Content
transmitted through the Service.
Additionally, you agree not to:
p) "stalk" or otherwise harass anyone;
q) collect personal data about other users for commercial or unlawful purposes;
r) use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from the Service - unless expressly permitted by Bay Area Desi;
s) post irrelevant Content, repeatedly post the same or similar Content or otherwise impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure;
t) attempt to gain unauthorized access to Bay Area Desi’s computer systems or engage in any activity that disrupts, diminishes the quality of, interferes with the performance of, or impairs the functionality of, the Service or the Bay Area Desi website; or
u) use any form of automated device or computer program that enables the submission of postings on Bay Area Desi without each posting being manually entered by the author thereof (an "automated posting device"), including without limitation, the use of any such automated posting device to submit postings in bulk, or for automatic submission of postings at regular intervals.
8. NO SPAM POLICY
You understand and agree that sending unsolicited email advertisements to Bay Area Desi email addresses or through Bay Area Desi computer systems, which is expressly prohibited by these TOU. Any unauthorized use of Bay Area Desi computer systems is a violation of the TOU and certain federal and state laws, including without limitation the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030 et seq.), Section 502 of the California Penal Code and Section 17538.45 of the California Business and Professions Code. Such violations may subject the sender and his or her agents to civil and criminal penalties.
9. PAID POSTINGS
We may charge a fee to post Content in some areas of the Service. The fee is an access fee permitting Content to be posted in a designated area. Each party posting Content to the Service is responsible for said Content and compliance with the TOU. All fees paid will be non-refundable in the event that Content is removed from the Service for violating the TOU.
10. LIMITATIONS ON SERVICE
You acknowledge that Bay Area Desi may establish limits concerning use of the Service, including the maximum number of days that Content will be retained by the Service, the maximum number and size of postings, email messages, or other Content that may be transmitted or stored by the Service, and the frequency with which you may access the Service. You agree that Bay Area Desi has no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any
Content maintained or transmitted by the Service. You acknowledge that Bay Area Desi reserves the right at any time to modify or discontinue the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice, and that Bay Area Desi shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Service.
11. ACCESS TO THE SERVICE
Bay Area Desi grants you a limited, revocable, nonexclusive license to access the Service for your own personal use. This license does not include:
(a) any collection, aggregation, copying, duplication, display or derivative use of the Service nor any use of data mining, robots, spiders, or similar data gathering and extraction tools for any purpose.
A limited exception to (b) is provided to general purpose internet search engines and non-commercial public archives that use such tools to gather information for the sole purpose of displaying hyperlinks to the Service, provided they each do so from a stable IP address or range of IP addresses using an easily identifiable agent and comply with our file.
Bay Area Desi may offers various parts of the Service in RSS format so that users can embed individual feeds into a personal website or blog, or view postings through third party software news aggregators. Bay Area Desi may permit you to display, excerpt from, and link to the RSS feeds on your personal website or personal web blog, provided that (a) your use of the RSS feed is for personal, non-commercial purposes only, (b) each title is correctly linked back to the original post on the Service and redirects the user to the post when the user clicks on it, (c) you provide, adjacent to the RSS feed, proper attribution to 'Bay Area Desi' as the source, (d) your use or display does not suggest that Bay Area Desi promotes or endorses any third party causes, ideas, web sites, products or services, (e) you do not redistribute the RSS feed, and (f) your use does not overburden Bay Area Desi's systems. Bay Area Desi reserves all rights in the content of the RSS feeds and may terminate any RSS feed at any time.
Use of the Service beyond the scope of authorized access granted to you by Bay Area Desi immediately terminates said permission or license. In order to collect, aggregate, copy, duplicate, display or make derivative use of the the Service or any Content made available via the Service for other purposes (including commercial purposes) not stated herein, you must first obtain a license from Bay Area Desi.
12. TERMINATION OF SERVICE
You agree that Bay Area Desi, in its sole discretion, has the right (but not the obligation) to delete or deactivate your account, block your email or IP address, or otherwise terminate your access to or use of the Service (or any part thereof), immediately and without notice, and remove and discard any Content within the Service, for any reason, including, without limitation, if Bay Area Desi believes that you have acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the TOU. Further, you agree that Bay Area Desi shall not be liable to you or any third-party for any termination of your access to the Service. Further, you agree not to attempt to use the Service after said termination.
13. PROPRIETARY RIGHTS
Any reproduction, modification, creation of derivative works from or redistribution of the site or the collective work, and/or copying or reproducing the sites or any portion thereof to any other server or location for further reproduction or redistribution is prohibited without the express written consent of Bay Area Desi. You further agree not to reproduce, duplicate or copy Content from the Service without the express written consent of Bay Area Desi, and agree to abide by any and all copyright notices displayed on the Service. You may not decompile or disassemble, reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to discover any source code contained in the Service. Without limiting the foregoing, you agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes, any
aspect of the Service.
All the data that on Service will be owned by Bay Area Desi and you grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Bay Area Desi an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute said Content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, said Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses (through multiple tiers) of the foregoing. Furthermore, by posting Content to any public area of the Service, you automatically grant Bay Area Desi all rights necessary to prohibit any subsequent aggregation, display, copying, duplication, reproduction, or exploitation of the Content on the Service by any party for any purpose.
14. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES
You agree that use of the Bay Area Desi site and the service is entirely at your own risk. The Bay Area Desi site and the service are provided on an "as is" or "as available" basis, without any warranties of any kind. All express and implied warranties, including, without limitation, the Warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and Non-infringement of proprietary rights are expressly disclaimed to the Fullest extent permitted by law. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Bay Area Desi disclaims any warranties for the security, reliability, Timeliness, accuracy, and performance of the Bay Area Desi site and the Service. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Bay Area Desi disclaims any warranties for other services or goods received through or advertised on the Bay Area Desi site or the sites or service, or accessed through any links on the Bay Area Desi site. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Bay Area Desi disclaims any warranties for viruses or other harmful components in connection with the Bay Area Desi site or the service. Some jurisdictions do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties. In such jurisdictions, some of the foregoing disclaimers may not apply to you insofar as they relate to implied warranties.
15. LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY
Under no circumstances shall Bay Area Desi be liable for direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages (even if Bay Area Desi has been advised of the possibility of such damages), resulting from any aspect of your use of the Bay Area Desi site or the service, whether the damages arise from use or misuse of the Bay Area Desi site or the service, from inability to use the Bay Area Desi site or the service, or the interruption, suspension, modification, alteration, or termination of the Bay Area Desi site or the service. Such limitation shall also apply with respect to damages incurred by reason of other services or products received through or advertised in connection with the Bay Area Desi site or the service or any links on the Bay Area Desi site, as well as by reason of any information or advice received through or advertised in connection with the Bay Area Desi site or the service or any links on the Bay Area Desi site. These limitations shall apply to the fullest extent permitted by law. In some jurisdictions, limitations of liability are not permitted. In such jurisdictions, some of the foregoing limitation may not apply to you.
16. INDEMNITY
You agree to indemnify and hold Bay Area Desi, its officers, subsidiaries, affiliates, successors, agents, and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorney fees and court costs, made by any third party due to or arising out of Content you submit, post or make available through the Service, your use of the Service, your violation of the TOU, your breach of any of the representations and warranties herein, or your violation of any rights of another.
17. VIOLATION OF TERMS AND LIQUIDATED DAMAGES
You understand and agree that, because damages are often difficult to quantify, if it becomes necessary for Bay Area Desi to pursue legal action to enforce the TOU, you will be liable to pay Bay Area Desi the following amounts as liquidated damages, which you accept as reasonable estimates of Bay Area Desi's damages for the specified breaches of the TOU:
a. If you post a message that (1) impersonates any person or entity; (2) falsely states or otherwise misrepresents your affiliation with a person or entity; or (3) that includes personal or identifying information about another person without that person's explicit consent, you agree to pay Bay Area Desi one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each such message.
This provision does not apply to messages that are lawful non-deceptive parodies of public figures.
b. If Bay Area Desi establishes limits on the frequency with which you may access the Service, or terminates your access to or use of the Service, you agree to pay Bay Area Desi one hundred dollars ($100) for each message posted in excess of such limits or for each day on which you access Bay Area Desi in excess of such limits, whichever is higher.
c. If you send unsolicited email advertisements to Bay Area Desi list email addresses or through Bay Area Desi computer systems, you agree to pay Bay Area Desi twenty five dollars ($25) for each such email (for each email address in the list).
d. If you post Content in violation of the TOU, other than as described above, you agree to pay Bay Area Desi one hundred dollars ($100) for each Item of Content posted. In its sole discretion, Bay Area Desi may elect to issue a warning before assessing damages.
e. If you aggregate, display, copy, duplicate, reproduce, or otherwise exploit for any purpose any Content (except for your own Content) in violation of the TOU without Bay Area Desi's express written permission, you agree to pay Bay Area Desi three thousand dollars ($3,000) for each day on which you engage in such conduct.
Otherwise, you agree to pay Bay Area Desi's actual damages, to the extent such actual damages can be reasonably calculated. Notwithstanding any other provision of the TOU, Bay Area Desi retains the right to seek the remedy of specific performance of any term contained in the TOU, or a preliminary or permanent injunction against the breach of any such term or in aid of the exercise of any power granted in the TOU, or any combination thereof.
18. FEEDBACK
We welcome your questions and comments on this document; please contact us through Bay Area Desi feedback.
