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Terms and Conditions

Louder guidelines

Our guidelines for www.louder.org.uk (Louder) are here to support and remind Louder members of the acceptable and appropriate ways to engage with each other and the site. Louder is distinguished by a few guiding principles, which set out your rights and responsibilities.

You are encouraged to use your real name so everyone knows who you are. If you are using the name of an organisation, who must have permission to use that organisation’s name in a public context, or pages may be removed.

You own your own Louder campaign page. This means that you can add or remove your personal details at any time and control who sees which details.

You should be able to verify the truthfulness of what you write and are responsible and liable for everything you choose to discuss within Louder.

We do not check your content before it is published (except when you first create a campaign page). This means we do not check posts, comments or other materials before they are published, and therefore we are not liable for the content of those materials. But if we do spot racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive or discriminatory materials (as outlined in the ‘acceptable use’ document below), we will remove them as soon as practically possible. You can also report such issues via the ‘flag as inappropriate’ links found on every Louder campaign page, to the Louder site manager. For more detailed information, read the full Terms & Conditions below

Louder is available to all campaigning groups and organisations, within the following criteria:

You are not a registered political party;
You are not directly affilliated with a political party or explicitly endorsing a particular political party (i.e. – as a local branch);
You do not violate any of the ‘Prohibited uses’ outlined in this document;
You have permission to use any individual and organisational names associated with your campaigns.

Some of Louder’s externally-sourced functionality will only be available to registered charities, though we aim to open as many of the tools as possible to all campaigns that do not violate any of the above conditions.

How we see Louder

The campaigns and discussions on Louder belong to the community. Louder facilitates and provides a platform to enable campaigns to flourish. We operate under Creative Commons licensing, so any content you upload can be freely used and adapted by others, as long as it is appropriately credited and does not generate profit.

Promotion/ Advertising

Please don’t post anything that could be interpreted as self-publicity, blatant advertising, selling or soliciting, or obviously commercial or spam-like. We will remove such material.CopyrightPlease do not upload anything without obtaining the copyright owner’s permission. Material that breaches copyright laws will be removed. Take care onlinePlease take care when disclosing personal or sensitive information about yourself. For example, please don’t publish your personal email address in discussions.If you wish to report any problems

if you see a post which you feel uses offensive language (or includes any other offensive content) you can report this to Louder’s site manager using the ’flag as inappropriate’ links in each campaign page. If you intentionally ignore Louder’s guidelines or terms and conditions, the Louder site manager has the right to withdraw your posting. Violations may also result in a suspension or termination of membership from the site, with an accompanying explanation for the decision and the right to appeal (though all final decisions rest with NCVO and the Louder site management).

Terms and conditions

Where we do not moderate an interactive service (described below), we will not be liable for viruses, hacking and other offences.

Use of this site is provided by the NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organsiations) and SiteWriters, subject to the following Terms and Conditions:

Website terms of use (includes Copyright)
Acceptable use policy
Privacy policy

Acceptable use policy

www.louder.org.uk is a site operated by The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (“we”, “us” or “our”). We are registered in England and Wales under company number 00198344 and we have our registered office at Regent’s Wharf, 8 All Saints Street, London N1 9RL. Our VAT number is GB 740305766.
We are a registered charity under charity number 225922.

We are a private company limited by guarantee with no share capital.

This acceptable use policy sets out the terms between you (the member) and us (NCVO) under which you may access our website www.louder.org.uk (the site). This acceptable use policy applies to all users of, and visitors to, our site.

Your use of our site means that you accept, and agree to abide by, all the policies in this acceptable use policy, which supplement our terms of website use.

Prohibited uses

You may use our site only for lawful purposes. You may not use our site:

If you are a registered political party;
To post content that is patently offensive and promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or harm of any kind against any group or individual;
To post content that promotes violence, or offensive subject matter or contains a link to an adult website;
To create a false identity on the web site, impersonate any person or entity or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your name, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity;
In any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation;
In any way that is unlawful or fraudulent, or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect;
For the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way.
To post or promote information that you know is false or misleading or promotes illegal activities or conduct that is abusive, threatening, obscene, defamatory or libellous;
To post content or initiate communications which are unlawful, libellous, abusive, obscene, discriminatory or otherwise objectionable;
post content that furthers or promotes any criminal activity or enterprise or provides instructional information about illegal activities including, but not limited to, making or buying illegal weapons, violating someone's privacy or providing or creating computer viruses;To send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material which does not comply with our content standards.
To transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam).
To knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed, or with the possibility to, adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware.

You also agree:

Not to reproduce, duplicate or copy site’ content, outside of the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported agreement;
Not to re-sell any part of our site, in contravention of the provisions of our terms of website use;
Not to access without authority, interfere with, damage or disrupt:

any equipment or network on which our site is stored;
any software used in the provision of our site; or
any equipment or network or software owned or used by any third party.

Interactive services

We may from time to time provide interactive services on our site, including, without limitation:

Bulletin boards.
Blogs, wikis, comments and ratings.

Where we do provide any interactive service, we will provide clear information to you about the kind of service offered, if it is moderated and what form of moderation is used (including whether it is human or automated).
We will do our best to assess any possible risks for users (and in particular, for children) from third parties when they use any interactive service provided on our site, and we will decide in each case whether it is appropriate to use moderation of the relevant service (including what kind of moderation to use) in the light of those risks. However, we are under no obligation to oversee, monitor or moderate any interactive service we provide on our site, and we expressly exclude our liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of any interactive service by a user in contravention of our content standards, whether the service is moderated or not.

The use of any of our interactive services by a minor is subject to the consent of their parent or guardian. We advise parents who permit their children to use an interactive service to communicate with their children about their safety online, as moderation is not foolproof. Minors who are using any interactive service should be made aware of the potential risks involved in doing so.

Where we do moderate an interactive service, we will normally provide you with a means of contacting the moderator, should a concern or difficulty arise.

Content standards

These content standards apply to any and all material which you contribute to our site (contributions), and to any interactive services associated with it.

You must comply with the spirit of the following standards as well as the letter. The standards apply to each part of any contribution as well as to its whole.

Contributions must:

Be accurate (where they state facts).
Be genuinely held (where they state opinions).
Comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country from which they are posted.

Contributions must not:

Contain any material which is defamatory of any person or organisation.
Contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory.
Promote sexually explicit material.
Promote violence.
Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.
Infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person.
Be likely to deceive any person.
Be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence.
Promote any illegal activity.
Be threatening, abusive or invasive to another’s privacy, or cause needless anxiety.
Be likely to harass or upset any other person.
Be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person.
Give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case.

Suspension and termination

We will determine, in our discretion, whether there has been a breach of this acceptable use policy through your use of our site. When a breach of this policy has occurred, we may take such action as we deem appropriate, including, but not limited to removal of content, or banning members from the site.

Failure to comply with this acceptable use policy constitutes a material breach of the terms of website use upon which you are permitted to use our site, and may result in our taking all or any of the following actions:

Immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our site.
Immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any posting or material uploaded by you to our site.
Issue of a warning to you.
Legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach.
Further legal action against you.
Disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary.

We exclude liability for actions taken in response to breaches of this acceptable use policy. The responses described in this policy are not limited, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.

Changes to the acceptable use policy

We may revise this acceptable use policy at any time by amending this page. You are expected to check this page from time to time and take notice of any changes we make, as they are legally binding on your use of the site. Some of the provisions contained in this acceptable use policy may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on our site.

October 2009