Terms of Service

Terms of Service

PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF SERVICE (“TERMS”) CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WEB SITE, AS THE TERMS AFFECT YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS. THESE TERMS GOVERN YOUR USE OF THIS WEB SITE. You agree to these Terms by accessing this web site, registering for this web site, accepting any information from this web site or submitting any information to this web site. If you do not agree to be bound by all the Terms set forth below, do not use this Web Site.

This site was created to be a spring board for ideas and communication for our neighborhood. The site exists for people to have a place to express opinions, ideas, experiences, thoughts, or to collaborate with others. The Bulldog encourages on-topic, civil discussion on its articles posted online. It is our policy not to screen comments before they are posted or edit them after they are posted. We reserve the right to remove comments as necessary. The Bulldog also reserves the right to turn off all comments on any story it deems necessary.

Here are our promises to you, the reader

1. Let’s use common sense here. If you object to a comment, send it to us for moderation. Explain the issue to us.
2. We will not censor based on political or ideological points of view.
3. We will delete spam and commercial or advertising related posting. Comments are for the purpose of engaging discussion, often of a controversial political nature. That is their highest calling. Posts, even posts that are local, that break that continuity for a commercial purpose will be removed. Repeat offenders will be banned from further comments.
4. We will delete postings that are solicitations or advertisements to visit other sites; that constitutes or contains “affiliate marketing,” “link referral code,” “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes,” or unsolicited commercial advertisements.
5. We will delete postings that are racist, sexist or homophobic in our opinion. We will delete posts that harass, 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. Postings that are slurs, that invade another’s privacy or that are harmful to minors in any way will be deleted. We will delete postings that inappropriately celebrate the death or illness of any person, public figure or otherwise. No calls for violence. (And we aren’t talking about common eulogies celebrating the life of a fallen hero or the passing of a neighbor. You know what is meant. Let’s use common sense here.)
6. We will delete inappropriate or excessively rabid comments, gratuitous insults and “rumors.”
7. With regard to the postings generated on the site or any other service or site that we refer:
   1. We will delete postings that violates the Fair Housing Act by stating, in any notice or ad for the sale or rental of any dwelling, a discriminatory preference based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status or handicap or violates any state or local law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of these or other characteristics.
8. We will delete postings that are 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.
9. We will delete comments that violate thread spanning (posting the same comment in several places) or create e-mail abuse (excessive volumes of, or threatening or intentionally abusive e-mail).
10. We will be transparent and explain our conflicts of interests, if any. Please see the site’s Ethics policy.
11. We will publish easy to locate errors and corrections with an explanation, if necessary.
12. We will give credit to ideas and posts whenever possible. We will correct omissions with an easy to locate correction, with an explanation, if necessary.
13. We will be asking writers to be transparent and to abide by the ethics posted in the site for writers.
14. As with all content on this site, We have the final say on what is profanity, “hate speech”, defamation, or is acceptable, etc. This generally includes, but is certainly not limited to, what is publicly or legally acceptable.
15. We will not sell your e-mail or other contact information to any third party. The hosting company and other third parties collect data such as your IP address. And, cookies are placed on your computer to determine how often you visit the site and what you are using it for. This is used by us to improve the content.
16. This site uses Akismet to assist us in filtering spam.

The requests we have, in return

1. We want you to sign up for a profile and participate. We are counting on you to post content and conduct yourself in a way that abides by the law, intellectual property rights and our Terms of Service.
2. We appreciate your participation and your contributions. You have the right to your own content. The Terms of Service and business needs require some rights as well, but we believe you ultimately should retain the rights to the content you share. And if you delete your content, it’s deleted from the content system (though a cached version might linger in a search engine).
3. Anonymous posters should identify themselves with a unique moniker so readers know their comments are coming from a single individual. If they don’t, they are subject to a banning.

And, we want to make it clear, this is a personal site. It is not the Government. It is not a public institution or a traditional media organization. It is not a neutral site. It is intended to express and disseminate the writers’ point of view. Your usage of this site explicitly confirms your agreement to these terms. We will not be held liable in any way for any content provided by users or source websites.

Suggestions For Being a Good Net Citizen

1. Do not use obscene or offensive language. Do not post or link to any material that could be considered obscene, indecent, lewd, pornographic, violent, abusive, insulting, threatening, harassing or in violation of the law.
2. Tell the truth. Do not post or link to any material that could be considered libelous, defamatory or false. Do not accuse someone with identifying information of a crime. Don’t post “rumors.”
3. Respect the privacy of others. Do not harvest or otherwise collect names, email addresses or other identifying information from other participants. Do not post anyone’s personal information.
4. Do not steal. Post only those materials for which you have copyright. Do not post material that infringes the rights of others including copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, personal or other proprietary rights.
5. Don’t misrepresent yourself as someone else.
6. Do not post an item for sale, rent or for free that you do not own outright or have the legal right to transfer to someone else. Do not solicit funds under false pretenses or misrepresentation.
7. Do not disrupt a forum thread with repetitive, inflammatory posts.

Additional Terms

The information, features and other content included in this Web Site have been compiled from a variety of sources, are for informational and entertainment purposes only and are subject to change at any time without notice. By accessing or linking to this Web Site, you assume the risk that the information on this Web Site may be incomplete, inaccurate, out of date or may not meet your needs and requirements. We may add, change, discontinue, remove or suspend any of the information, features and other content included in this Web Site at any time, without notice and without liability. This Web Site is to be used solely for your noncommercial, non-exclusive and limited personal use.

Except for User Content (defined below), this Web Site and all of the content contained therein, such as articles, opinions, other text, directories, guides, photographs, graphic material, artwork, illustrations, digital still images, digital video and audio clips, databases, compilations and advertising copy, as well as the trademarks, logos, domain names, trade names, service marks and any and all copyrightable material (including source and object code) and/or any other form of intellectual property (collectively, the “Web Site Content”) is, between you and The Bulldog, owned by The Bulldog and is protected from unauthorized use, copying and dissemination by copyright, trademark, publicity and other laws and by international treaties.

Subject to your strict compliance with these Terms and any Additional Terms, The Bulldog grants you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-commercial, revocable, non-assignable and non-transferable license to download, view, use or play a single copy of the Web Site Content (excluding source and object code) as long as it is publicly available on the Web Site, provided that you: (i) retain all trademark, copyright and other proprietary notices contained in the original Web Site Content or any copy you may make of the Web Site Content; (ii) do not yourself and do not allow or aid or abet any third party (whether or not for your benefit) to copy or adapt the object code of the Web Site’s software, HTML, JavaScript or other code; or reverse engineer, decompile, reverse assemble, modify or attempt to discover any source code that this Web Site creates to generate its web pages or any software or other products or processes accessible through this Web Site; and (iii) do not insert any code or product to manipulate the Web Site Content or this Web Site in any way that affects any user’s experience.

The Web Site may provide you and other users with the opportunity to participate in forums, blogs, message boards, social networking, social communities and other communication functionality and may provide you with the opportunity, through such features or otherwise, to submit, post, display, transmit, perform, publish, distribute, or broadcast content and materials to The Bulldog or the Web Site, including, without limitation, photographs, writings, music, video, audio recordings and/or computer graphics (collectively, “User Content”). You grant to The Bulldog the unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual and royalty-free right and license to host, cache, store, use, copy, distribute, sell, re-sell, display, perform, publish, broadcast, transmit, modify, reformat, translate or otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content for any purpose whatsoever in all formats, on or through any media or medium now known or hereafter developed and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed. You further agree that The Bulldog is free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques contained in any User Content you send to the Web Site or The Bulldog, for any purpose whatsoever, including, without limitation, developing, manufacturing and marketing products using such User Content. You also grant to The Bulldog the right to sub-license and authorize others to exercise any of the rights granted to The Bulldog under these Terms and any Additional Terms; and each such third party will be entitled to benefit from the rights and licenses granted to The Bulldog under these Terms and any Additional Terms. You further authorize The Bulldog to publish your User Content in a searchable format that may be accessed by users of the Web Site and the Internet. You represent and warrant that you own the content submitted, displayed, published or posted by you on the Web Site and otherwise have the right to grant the license set forth herein, and the displaying, publishing or posting of any content you submit, and our use thereof does not and will not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, trademark rights, patents, contract rights or any other intellectual property rights or other rights of any person or entity.

Copyrights

We respect the intellectual property of others and we ask that our users to do the same. In accordance with the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512, we have designated a copyright agent to receive notice of claims of copyright infringement on this Web Site. Our copyright agent is Patrick Boylan, Publisher, who may be reached by email at . Please put ‘Copyright’ or ‘Plagiarism’ in the email subject line.

If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide our copyright agent with the following information required by the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512: (a) a physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed; (b) identification of the copyright work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single Web Site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that Web Site; (c) identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material; (d) information reasonably sufficient to permit us to contact the complaining party such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted; (e) a statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law; and (f) a statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Disclaimers

THE WEB SITE, THE WEB SITE CONTENT AND THE USER CONTENT ARE MADE AVAILABLE ON AN “AS IS,” “AS AVAILABLE” AND “WITH ALL FAULTS” BASIS. THE BULLDOG SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, QUALITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, WITH RESPECT TO THE WEB SITE, THE WEB SITE CONTENT AND THE USER CONTENT.

THE WEB SITE CONTAINS FACTS, OPINIONS, VIEWS, STATEMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIRD PARTY INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS. THE BULLDOG DOES NOT REPRESENT OR ENDORSE THE ACCURACY, TIMELINESS OR RELIABILITY OF ANY FACTS, OPINIONS, VIEWS, STATEMENTS OR RECOMMENDATIONS OR OTHER INFORMATION DISPLAYED, UPLOADED OR DISTRIBUTED THROUGH THE WEB SITE. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT ANY RELIANCE UPON ANY SUCH FACTS, OPINIONS, VIEWS, STATEMENTS OR RECOMMENDATIONS IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK AND THE BULLDOG DOES NOT GIVE TAX, LEGAL OR INVESTMENT ADVICE OR ADVOCATE THE PURCHASE OR SALE OF ANY SECURITY OR INVESTMENT. IN NO EVENT WILL THE BULLDOG BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANYONE ELSE FOR LOSS OR INJURY, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER PROVISION IN THESE TERMS, IN NO EVENT AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL THE BULLDOG BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY REASON OR ANY CAUSE OF ACTION WHATSOEVER IN AN AMOUNT GREATER THAN FIFTY DOLLARS ($50). SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, OR THE DISCLAIMER OF SOME TYPES OF DAMAGES, SO SOME OF THE ABOVE MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

Third party advertisers may offer goods, services and other materials to you on the Web Site. Your correspondence and business dealings with advertisers found on or through the Web Site including, but not limited to, the payment and delivery of goods and services, and any terms, conditions, warranties and representations associated with such dealings, are solely between you and the advertiser. You agree that we will not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any such dealings or the offering of such goods, services and other materials on the Web Site. Descriptions of, or references to, products or publications within the Web Site do not imply endorsement of that product or publication.

Linking/Framing Policy

If you link to this Web Site, we require that you follow these guidelines. The link to this Web Site must not damage, dilute or tarnish the goodwill associated with The Bulldog, nor may the link create the false appearance that your web site or organization is sponsored by, endorsed by, affiliated or associated with The Bulldog. You agree that you will not link to this Web Site from any source that is unlawful, abusive, indecent or obscene; that promotes violence or illegal acts; that contains expressions of racism; that is libelous, defamatory, scandalous or inflammatory; or is otherwise inappropriate. Under no circumstances may you “frame” the Web Site, the Web Site Content or the User Content in any way. The Bulldog reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to terminate a link with any web site that it deems inappropriate or inconsistent with this Web Site, these Terms or any Additional Terms.

Changes to Terms

We reserve the right in our sole discretion to change these Terms. We will post changes here, so check back periodically. Your continued use of this Web Site after the posting of any change in the Terms shall constitute your renewed agreement to be bound by any such changes. If at any time you do not accept these changes, you must immediately discontinue use of the Web Site.

We have developed a Privacy Policy in order to inform you of our practices with respect to the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information. You can find this Privacy Policy here.

Effective Date: This Terms Of Service is effective and was last updated on September 7, 2011.

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