This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") applies to your use of the restricted areas of this website and is incorporated into the terms of use for our site, which by continuing to use the site demonstrates that you have read, understood and accepted. If there is any conflict between this AUP and the terms of use, the terms of this AUP shall prevail. The Acceptable Use policy applies to both the restricted areas of the website and the forums on the website.
Although we may from time to time monitor or review the content of the restricted areas of our site and the forums, we are under no obligation to do so and assume no responsibility or liability arising from any material or content posted by you or any third party.
The list of behaviours below is not exhaustive. What we generally require of our users is considerate behaviour, which does not abuse the facilities we have made available to you. We will not permit behaviour that damages our reputation or that of any of our partners, or behaviour that has a negative impact on our (or our suppliers’) equipment or network, or on other users.
1. Legality
You will be responsible for your own use of the restricted areas of our site and with all applicable laws and regulations, codes, policies and Internet etiquette, and must not use our site for any illegal purpose. Here are some examples of what we require.
• You must be over 18 years of age.
• When you register with us to use a restricted area, you must not use a false identity or pseudonym, to give the impression that the message or posting originated from someone other than you.
• You must not post content or use the restricted areas in a way that infringes others’ intellectual property rights. You must have relevant permissions to use others’ intellectual property, for example, a report written by a third party where the third party has not given permission for its reproduction.
• Any content you post on our site must be accurate and, where necessary, up-to-date.
• You must not post content or other materials in breach of contract.
• You must not post confidential information or trade secrets.
• You must not use our site to advertise your goods or services or promote your organisation’s aims and ideals.
• Any content you post on the restricted areas of our site (including without limitation, text, images, sound, video or other electronic files or material) must be legal, decent and honest. You must not use content which is illegal or indecent, for example of a pornographic, obscene, indecent, defamatory, racist, abusive, offensive, menacing or extremist political nature or which may incite violence, sadism, cruelty or racial hatred, or which may facilitate prostitution or paedophilia.
• You must not post defamatory materials in the discussion forums. You agree that we may, without liability to you, disclose your identity to any third party with a legitimate interest in knowing that information, such as law enforcement agencies, or a third party which is the subject of your comments.
• You must not collect or store personal information of other users of the restricted area.
• You must not use our site (whether intentionally or otherwise) to send or forward spam (unsolicited email), chain letters, pyramid schemes, mail bombs, to launch denial of service attacks, to plant or send viruses or other disruptive programs or devices, or to engage or enable others to engage in unauthorised decryption of protected material.
• You must not interfere with or disrupt the site or servers or networks connected to it.
• You must not pirate or illegally copy software or other proprietary material or enabling such copying through a peer-to-peer service. Any file exchange service we may provide from time to time is provided on the clear understanding that it is not used for any illegal purpose.
• You must not harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of users of the website;
• You must not act in any manner offensive in the sole opinion of One North East;
• You must not infringe the rights (including the Intellectual Property rights) of any other person;
• You must not register for more than one user account, register for a user account on behalf of an individual other than yourself, or register for a user account on behalf of any group or entity;
• You must not impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity;
• You must not upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make publicly available on the Website any private information of any third party, including, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security numbers and credit card numbers;
• You must not solicit personal information from anyone under 18 or solicit passwords or personally identifying information for commercial or unlawful purposes;
• You must not upload, post, transmit, share or otherwise make available any material 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;
• You must not intimidate or harass another;
• You must not upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offence, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law;
• You must not use or attempt to use another's account, service or system without authorisation from the Agency, or create a false identity on the Website; and
• You must not create a link to any Website featuring content we regard to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.
By submitting information to the forums, you grant One North East a non-exclusive worldwide royalty-free perpetual non-revocable licence to use, distribute, adapt, modify, display, reproduce and transmit such information in any and all media in any manner in whole or in part without any duty to account to you. You also grant One North East the right to grant licences to users of the Website to view and copy such information for personal use.
One North East reserves the right to edit or delete any messages left on the forums, including without limitation any message which contravenes the rules above.
2. Security
You will be responsible for any losses of data, breaches of security, viruses and disabling or harmful devices that you download or which infect our site as a result of your error or omission or other precaution you fail to take in relation to your use of our site and for the avoidance of doubt, we shall have no responsibility or liability to you or any third party in respect of the same.
3. Contacts
If we need to contact you we will use the email address you give us when you register. You must ensure the email address is live. We will assume you have read all email addressed to that email address. We may take action (including legal action) on the basis of this assumption.
4. Breach of this AUP
If we suspect or discover a breach of our AUP, or if you breach, or we have grounds to suspect you have breached, any applicable law, code, policy or regulation, One North East reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to take whatever action that we consider appropriate and proportionate in the circumstances. This may mean we send you a formal notice requiring you to desist from such behaviour. It may be suspension or termination of your access to our site without notice to you. It may mean tracing your IP address and contacting your service provider with a view to blocking your access to the website. It may mean we inspect or permit a police or other relevant authority to inspect any content and material posted by you or on our website and remove any content or material which we, in our absolute discretion, consider to be unacceptable or undesirable.
We will be entitled to co-operate fully with a police or other relevant authority or any court order requesting or directing us to disclose your identity where you have posted such content or material on our site.
Because it is impossible to create an exhaustive list of unacceptable behaviour, we may conclude that some behaviour is unacceptable, and therefore suspend or terminate your access, even if it does not match exactly the examples set out in this AUP.