Suite101 Terms & Policies

Terms of Membership

By reading, responding, and relating on suite101.com (the "Website"), Suite101 Brasil, Suite101 China, Suite101 Deutschland, Suite 101 España, Suite101 France, Suite101 Italia, Suite101 Japan, and Suite101 UK, you're agreeing to abide by these Terms of Use, which protect everyone on the Website and remind you you are responsible for both word and action. You are welcome to browse the Website without providing any personal information.

Suite101.com Media Inc. ("Suite101") encourages members to engage one another in debates, but does not condone personal attacks in comments on the site. You may not use the Website to send or post messages or material that are unlawful, harassing, libelous, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene, profane, sexually-oriented, threatening, racially offensive, inaccurate, or otherwise objectionable or that encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or regulation.

Use of a member's information, personal or otherwise, for any commercial purpose or to obtain direct financial gain (e.g. mass marketing) is prohibited. Do not use Suite101 services for chain letters, junk mail, "spamming", solicitations (commercial or non-commercial) or bulk communications of any kind including but not limited to distribution lists to any person who has not given specific permission to be included in such a list.

In the event that Suite101 determines that you have breached any portion of these Terms of Use, or have otherwise demonstrated conduct inappropriate for the community of Suite101, Suite101 reserves the right to: (i) warn you via email that you have violated these Terms of Use; (ii) delete any content provided by you or your agent(s); (iii) delete all content provided by you to Suite101; (iv) revoke your membership to Suite101; (v) take any other action which Suite101 deems necessary and appropriate.

Copyright

All copy, artwork, layout and other content of this Website, including information in all forms, text, logos, graphics, images, software, icons and other materials are protected by copyright laws of Canada and other countries and owned by Suite101 or owned by their creator and used under license. No portion of any such materials may be reproduced without the prior written permission of Suite101 or the writer directly. All rights are reserved.

The information on this Website shall only be copied for personal, non-commercial use (and only provided you do not modify it or alter or remove any marks, disclaimers or copyright or trademark notices) and may not be copied, reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means whether electronic, mechanical, printed, photocopied, recorded or otherwise, for any other purpose in whole or in part without the prior written permission of Suite101. Any infringement of Suite101's rights will result in appropriate legal action.

Claims of Copyright Infringement

Suite101 respects the intellectual property of others. If you believe that your copyrighted work has been copied and is accessible on this site in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, you may notify us by providing management with the following information, which is consistent with the form suggested by the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):

Notice of claims of copyright infringement on the Website must be sent to:

Suite101.com Media Inc.
350–1122 Mainland Street,
Vancouver, British Columbia
V6B 5L1, Canada

By phone: +1-604.682.1400
By fax: +1-604.682.3277, Attn. Suite101 Legal
By email: designatedagent@suite101.com

Trademarks

Suite101's trademarks are valuable assets and Suite101 takes infringement of them seriously. All names, marks, brands, titles, slogans, logos, icons, graphics, trade dress or trade names, designs and other designations within this Website, including but not limited to SUITE101, SUITE101.COM and the SUITE101 logo are registered and unregistered trademarks of either Suite101 or other parties ("Trademarks") in Canada, the United States, the European Union and other countries.

Nothing contained on this Website should be construed as granting by implication any license or right to use any Trademark displayed on this Website without the written permission of Suite101 or such party that may own the Trademark.

Disclaimer

The material in this site is provided for personal, non-commercial, educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation or endorsement with respect to any company or product. Suite101 does not provide any endorsement or recommendation of any third party's facility, business or event and makes no representations and specifically disclaims all warranties, express, implied or statutory, regarding the accuracy, timeliness, completeness, durability, title, non infringement of intellectual property rights, interoperability of products and services, merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose of any material contained in this Website.

You should seek the advice of a professional regarding any particular situation. While Suite101 makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information presented on this Website, content is provided "as is". Your use of this Website is at your own risk.

Neither Suite101 nor any of its partners, suppliers or affiliates or any other party involved in creating, producing, or delivering the Website is liable for any errors or omissions in the context of the Website nor for any direct, special, incidental, consequential, indirect, or punitive damages arising out of your use of the Website or the information contained herein including, but not limited to, business interruption and loss of use, data, information or profits.

Links to Other Sites

This Website facilitates access by hypertext links to other worldwide websites not maintained by or related to Suite101. These hypertext-linked sites are entirely independent of this Website and shall not in any manner be construed as implying any affiliation with or endorsement, representation or warranty by Suite101 of such site or entity or its respective products, services, information, materials, opinions or links to other sites.

Suite101 does not review or monitor such websites and is not responsible or liable for the content or accuracy thereof. The reproduction and use of any content linked to is subject to the conditions that the respective website owners may impose, and is at your own risk. You are encouraged and advised to review the posted terms and conditions of all websites you visit.

Personal Liability

You are legally and ethically responsible for words, files, pictures, or any other work you post or transmit using Suite101's services and are responsible for honoring the rights of others, including intellectual-property rights (copyright, patent, and trademark), the right to privacy, and the right not to be libeled or slandered. If you wish to post any work on the Website in which a third party owns the copyright, you are responsible for obtaining the copyright holder's permission first.

In posting a work via any service offered by Suite101, you authorize others to respond to and link to your work. That said, readers may not otherwise reproduce or disseminate this work unless permission has been granted by the original author.

By submitting content to any "public area" of Suite101 you grant Suite101 the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and non-exclusive right (including any moral rights) and license to publish, excerpt, and display the content (in whole or in part) worldwide.

All questions, comments, suggestions and other communications you may submit regarding the content of this Website or any Suite101 document shall be deemed to be non-confidential and Suite101 shall have no obligation of any kind with respect to any such communication, and shall be free to reproduce, use, disclose and distribute such communication or otherwise without limitation.

Please be aware that if you voluntarily disclose personal information online, this information may be collected and used by others. This may result in unsolicited emails and Suite101 will have no ability to control or restrict this.

Suite101 is not responsible for any material and/or data obtained through downloading or other means, which may be responsible for any damage to your computer system, data, or any personal objects or for viruses that may infect your computer equipment or other property as a result of your use of the Website or your downloading of any data, text, images, files or other materials from this Website.

Privacy Policy

Suite101 is committed to protecting your privacy and providing a safe online experience for all our users. This Privacy Policy applies to information collected online through Suite101's Website. We collect names, email addresses and demographic information such as age, gender and zip code. We also may collect your IP address, browser type, domain name, access times and referring Web site address.

This information is collected both during registration on a site or in response to specific requests, for example when becoming a member. This Privacy Policy does not apply to information users consent to give to third parties not affiliated with Suite101. Any information users give to another party is governed by the rules of that party's privacy policy, which may differ from this Privacy Policy. Suite101 is not responsible for information given to other parties. Please review their privacy policies prior to providing any information to third parties.

We use personal information to send newsletters, emails, promotional material, surveys and other updates to our users. We also use collected information to evaluate and administer our service, respond to any problems that may arise and to gauge user trends to determine what part of our services are most popular.

We may, at times, produce reports for advertisers containing aggregate information about our users such as demographic, age and online usage information. We will never include any personal information of our users in these reports.

We allow users of our Web site to send articles or links by email to other parties who may be interested in them. We do not retain any email addresses (unless you are a member who already has voluntarily provided your email address) of either the sender or recipient of such articles or links after they are sent.

We reserve the right to use or disclose any information without notice or consent as needed to satisfy any law, regulation or legal request; to conduct investigations of consumer complaints or possible breaches of law; to protect the integrity of our site and our property; to protect the safety of our visitors or others; to fulfill your requests; or to cooperate in any legal investigation.

You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose information online (whether through Suite101's services or any other service available online), personal or otherwise, that information can be collected and used by others. For example, if you post personal information online, you may receive unsolicited messages from others. We have no control over this use of your personal information.

Your browser offers "cookies" which, if you allow their use, store small amounts of data on your computer when you visit a Web site. Cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information about you and therefore cannot be used to identify you personally. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying your browser and our Web sites are viewable even if you disable the cookie function on your browser. However, if you disable cookies, some advanced and customized features of our site, as well as other Web sites, will not be available to you.

We may also place a cookie on your browser so that we will recognize you as a unique, anonymous user. This will enable us to measure more accurately the number of unique visitors.

Some of the banner ads displayed in our Web sites are provided by outside companies. These ads contain cookies. While we use cookies in other parts of our Web sites, cookies received with banner ads are collected by our advertisers and we do not have access to this information. We use a reputable third parties to serve some or all of the advertisements that are placed within our sites and they may use information (not including personally identifiable information) about your visits to our sites and other sites to assist in serving advertisements to you.

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your search queries and visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.

A user may, at any time, change, correct, and modify personal information they may have provided to Suite101 by visiting the "my suite" page. Suite101's administrative staff are aware of its privacy practices through periodic communications and training. We limit access to private and confidential data only to these employees with a specific need to retrieve this information and we store data on multiple service systems, in controlled, secure environments.

In developing our business, we might sell certain assets or the company, or parts of it, may be sold, merged or otherwise transferred. In such transactions, user information, whether personally identifiable or otherwise, may be one of the transferred assets.

Our Web site and the servers that make this site available worldwide are located in Canada. All matters relating to these sites are governed by the laws of British Columbia in Canada. Any information you provide will be transferred to Canada. By visiting our sites and submitting information, you authorize this transfer.

We will occasionally update this Privacy Policy as necessary to maintain the highest protection for our users and to comply with a changing environment. We recommend that you check the policy when you visit our site to be sure you are aware of and understand our current policy. We will not make changes in how we handle previously collected personal information that have retroactive effect unless legally required to do so.

Change of Terms

Suite101 reserves the right to change these terms and policies at any time. These changes will appear on this screen. By using our services and this site you agree in advance to accept these changes.