Open*CUNY

Terms of Participation

OpenCUNY.org is a digital medium established by the Doctoral Students’ Council of the CUNY Graduate Center (“DSC”), established under DSC bylaw 4.3. Any individual with a current Graduate Center email account is permitted to start an OpenCUNY.org account and become a “Participant.” Individuals or organizations without a current Graduate Center email address will only be granted accounts by the OpenCUNY Coordinators on a case-by-case basis. Registered CUNY Graduate Center Students with an active OpenCUNY.org account may vote on the nomination and election of OpenCUNY.org Board members as well as on the OpenCUNY.org Terms of Participation.

OpenCUNY.org recognizes GC students’ on-going interest in free, open-source digital media. The following terms are meant to protect OpenCUNY.org, the OpenCUNY board, the DSC, and its participants in order to continue to exist and provide a participatory medium through which to express our varied interests.

The following terms and conditions (the “Agreement”) govern all use of OpenCUNY.org (“OpenCUNY”). Use of OpenCUNY is conditioned upon your acceptance without modification of all of the terms and conditions contained herein and all other operating rules, policies and procedures that may be published from time to time on this site.

Please read the following carefully before accessing, participating with, or using OpenCUNY. By accessing, participating with, or using any part of OpenCUNY, you agree to be 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 OpenCUNY, create an account, or use any of its services. A link to the terms can be found in the footer of every page on every site within the OpenCUNY system.

  1. Your OpenCUNY Account.If you create an account or website on OpenCUNY, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and content, and you are fully responsible for all activities that occur under the account and any other actions taken in connection with the content. You agree that you will not describe or assign keywords to your content in a misleading or unlawful manner, including in a manner intended to trade on the name or reputation of others, and recognize that OpenCUNY may change or remove any description or keyword that it considers inappropriate or unlawful, or otherwise likely to cause OpenCUNY liability. You must immediately notify OpenCUNY of any unauthorized uses of your content, your account, or any other breaches of security. OpenCUNY 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.
  2. Responsibility for Content. If you operate a website, comment on a website, post material to a website, post links on a website, or otherwise make (or allow any third party to make) material available via OpenCUNY (any such material will hereinafter be referred to as “Content”), you recognize that you are entirely responsible for such Content and any harm resulting from it. This will be the case regardless of whether the Content in question constitutes text, graphics, audio file, computer software or other material. By making Content available, you represent and warrant that:
  1. The downloading, copying and use of the Content will not infringe upon the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret rights, of any other entity or third party;
  2. 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;
  3. The Content does not contain or install any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content;
  4. 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);
  5. The Content does not contain unlawful threats or incite violence, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party;
  6. Your website is not named in a manner that intentionally misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company;
  7. You do not currently, and will not in the future, use unwanted electronic messages such as spam links on newsgroups, email lists, other blogs and websites, or other, similar unsolicited promotional methods to advertise your website; and
  8. 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 OpenCUNY or otherwise.
  1. Disclaimer as to Content.
  1. OpenCUNY, its Coordinators, the OpenCUNY Board, and the DSC have not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, posted to OpenCUNY, and therefore cannot and will not be responsible for that Content, use or effects.
  2. By operating OpenCUNY.org, OpenCUNY, its Coordinators, the OpenCUNY Board, and the DSC do not represent or imply that they endorse the Content there posted, or that they believe such Content to be accurate, useful or non-harmful. You are solely responsible for taking precautions, as necessary, to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content;
  3. OpenCUNY expressly represents that websites may, unbeknownst to its Coordinators, OpenCUNY board, or the DSC, contain Content that may be understood as offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable, as well as Content containing technical inaccuracies, typographical mistakes, and other errors. Since OpenCUNY is comprised primarily of Content uploaded by its Participants, OpenCUNY makes no representations of safety with regards to its Content.
  4. OpenCUNY may also contain, unbeknownst to its Coordinators, the OpenCUNY board or the DSC, Content that violates the privacy or publicity rights, or infringes the intellectual property and other proprietary rights, of third parties, or Content for which the downloading, copying or use is subject to additional terms and conditions, stated or unstated.
  5. OpenCUNY, its Coordinators, the OpenCUNY Board, and the DSC expressly disclaim any responsibility for any harm, of any kind or quality, resulting from the use of OpenCUNY by visitors or Participants, or from any downloading of content there posted.
  1. Content Posted on Other Websites.
  1. i. We have not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, made available through OpenCUNY and websites to which OpenCUNY links, or that link to OpenCUNY.
  2. OpenCUNY has no control over non-OpenCUNY websites and is not responsible for their contents or use
  3. By linking to a non-OpenCUNY website Participants recognize that OpenCUNY does not endorse such non-OpenCUNY websites.
  4. Participants are solely responsible for taking precautions, as necessary, to protect themselves and their computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content. OpenCUNY expressly disclaims any responsibility for any harm, of any kind or quality, resulting from the use of non-OpenCUNY websites.
  1. Copyright Infringement. As OpenCUNY asks others to respect its intellectual property rights, it respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that Content located on or linked to by OpenCUNY violates your rights or the rights of others, you are strongly encouraged to notify the OpenCUNY Coordinators. OpenCUNY will respond to all such notices including, as required or appropriate, by removing the infringing Content if it is material under the direct control of OpenCUNY, disabling links to the infringing Content, or setting the website on which the infringing Content is located as “private” until the infringing Content is removed.

    If OpenCUNY, its Coordinators, the OpenCUNY board, or the DSC receive or become aware of a Cease and Desist Notice or other legal action with regard to any Content on OpenCUNY, access to the Content will be made limited as soon as possible by the OpenCUNY Coordinators and notice will be given to the OpenCUNY Participant responsible for the Content as soon as practicable. Access will remain limited while the Notice is investigated or until the administrator removes the Content. OpenCUNY will take certain measures to block or restrict a visitor or Participant’s access to and use of OpenCUNY if, under appropriate circumstances, the visitor or Participant is determined to be a repeat infringer of copyrights or other intellectual property rights.
  1. Attribution. OpenCUNY reserves the right to display attribution links in the footer of every page within its domain that designate each Participant’s affiliation with OpenCUNY.org and the DSC as well as links back to these Terms of Participation.
  2. Changes. Any part of this Agreement may be modified at any time through the procedures described in DSC bylaw 4.3. While the OpenCUNY Coordinators will do their best to publish such changes conspicuously and notify OpenCUNY Participants, it is ultimately your responsibility to check this Agreement periodically for changes. Your continued use of, participation with, or access to OpenCUNY following the posting of any changes to this Agreement constitutes acceptance of those changes.
  3. Termination. OpenCUNY may completely or partially terminate your access at any time for a violation of this Agreement, with or without notice, effective immediately. 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.
  4. Disclaimer of Warranties.OpenCUNY is provided “as is.” OpenCUNY hereby disclaims all warranties of any kind, express or implied, and makes no guarantees as to the reliability or preservation of account accessibility, emails sent or received, and files uploaded or created by online editing or compilation. OpenCUNY does not make any warranty that OpenCUNY.org will be error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted. However, actual loss of data should only occur during a catastrophic hardware failure, in which case critical files would be restored as soon as practicable and to the extent possible from regularly scheduled backups.
  5. Limitation of Liability.In no event will OpenCUNY, its Coordinators, the OpenCUNY Board, or the DSC, be liable with respect to any subject matter of this agreement under any contract, negligence, strict liability or other legal or equitable theory.
  6. Privacy. OpenCUNY has various Privacy Settings that allow Participants to enable or limit access to their Content. Participants are advised to see the Privacy Guide for more detail, but should be advised that some of OpenCUNY’s privacy settings will cause Content from Participant websites to be automatically aggregated and rebroadcast by the OpenCUNY Node, which feeds public Content from Participants’ websites to the OpenCUNY Facebook and Twitter accounts.
  7. General Participant Representation and Warranty.You represent and warrant that (i) your use of OpenCUNY will be in strict accordance 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 United States or the country in which you reside) and (ii) your use of OpenCUNY will not infringe upon or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity.
  8. Data Protection and Ownership. The account information of Participants will never be shared with a third party without explicit consent or as required by law. Each Participant is considered the owner of their own Content and account information. At any time, a Participant may export the contents of any site of which they are an administrator. Participants may permanently delete their account and any sites of which they are the sole administrator. To the extent possible, deleted accounts, sites, and Content will not be permanently archived.
  9. Indemnification. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless OpenCUNY.org, and its Coordinators, the OpenCUNY Board, the DSC, and agents from and against any and all claims and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, arising out of your use of OpenCUNY, including but not limited to your violation of this Agreement.
  10. Miscellaneous. This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between OpenCUNY and you concerning the subject matter hereof, and it may only be modified through the procedures promulgated by DSC bylaw 4.3. Except to the extent that applicable law provides otherwise, any access to, participation with, or use of OpenCUNY.org will be governed by the laws of the State of New York without regard to conflicts of laws principles, and the proper venue for any disputes arising out of or relating to any of the same will be the State and Federal courts located in New York County, New York. If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that part will be construed to reflect the parties’ original intent, and if necessary will be severed to permit the remaining portions to remain in full force and effect. A waiver by either party of any term or condition of this Agreement or any breach thereof, in any one instance, will not waive such term or condition or any subsequent breach thereof or any other term or condition of this Agreement.

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