Terms of Use – Language Swap

Welcome to Stirling Language-Swap! In registering on languageswap.stir.ac.uk website, you indicate that you accept the Conditions of Use set out below.

Languageswap.stir.ac.uk is a site operated by the University of Stirling, a university established in Scotland by charter dated 14th December 1967 and registered as a charity in Scotland with registration number SC011159 and having its main administrative offices at Stirling, FK9 4LA.

Stirling Language-Swap reserves the right to amend these Conditions of Use from time to time without prior warning. You are responsible for checking the contents of these Conditions regularly in order to be informed of any change. The presence of a registered user on the website indicates your acceptance of any correction or amendment to these Conditions. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any major changes.

Registration
1. To register and become a member of Stirling Language-Swap, you must be at least 16 years of age, and complete all fields in the registration form. The details must be correct and truthful.
2. A user can only register one profile at a time.
Duration of registration
1. Registration is not time-limited.
2. You must always use an email address which you access regularly. If your email address is rejected, your profile will be suspended or deleted.
3. Stirling Language-Swap reserves the right to suspend or delete your profile if it judges that you have infringed one of the Conditions of this agreement.
Price
1. Registration and use of the services of Stirling Language-Swap is free.
2. Stirling Language-Swap belongs to the University of Stirling and is administered by its staff.
Content standards
1. The services of Stirling Language-Swap are intended solely for personal and non-commercial use, and should not be used for professional or commercial ends. The private messaging function may not be used for mass communications or for reasons not linked to language exchange.
2. You may not insult other users, even if they have insulted you.
3. You may not submit content which may be illegal, non-authorised, contrary to the aims of Stirling Language-Swap, or to current UK law. Whilst Stirling Language-Swap bans this type of material and content, you must understand and accept that it is nevertheless possible that you may be exposed to such material or content and that you use the services of Stirling Language-Swap at your own risk.
4. The public fields of your profile should not contain personal information such as telephone number, email address, or other details which could identify you as an individual.
5. Whilst you may be authorised to include personal information in the messages that you send to other users, you remain fully responsible. If you give personal information or organise a meeting in person, you are responsible for the potential risks. Stirling Language-Swap strongly recommends that you get to know your potential language partner before exchanging personal information or arranging to meet. Stirling Language-Swap recommends that you get to know a potential language partner through the website before arranging to meet, and recommends that any meeting take place in a public place.
6. Stirling Language-Swap reserves the right to withdraw all information or cancel any registration if its contents is judged to be inappropriate or contrary to the spirit of the site, or if it may infringe or contravene intellectual property, other such rights, or these terms and conditions, without prior warning or compensation.
7. The content standards in this Condition 4 apply to any and all material which you contribute to our site, and to any interactive services associated with it.
8. The content standards must be complied with in spirit as well as to the letter. The standards apply to each part of any contribution as well as to its whole.
9. The University of Stirling will determine, in its discretion, whether a contribution breaches the content standards.
10. A contribution must:
  - Be accurate (where it states facts).
  - Be genuinely held (where it states opinions).
  - Comply with the law applicable in Scotland and in any country from which it is posted.
11. A contribution must not:
  - Promote sexually explicit material.
  - Include child sexual abuse 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.
  - Breach any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence.
  - Promote any illegal activity.
  - Be in contempt of court.
  - Be threatening, abuse or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.
  - Be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person.
  - Impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person.
  - Give the impression that the contribution emanates from the University of Stirling, if this is not the case.
  - Advocate, promote, incite any party to commit, or assist any unlawful or criminal act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.
  - Contain a statement which you know or believe, or have reasonable grounds for believing, that members of the public to whom the statement is, or is to be, published are likely to understand as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
  - Contain any advertising or promote any services or web links to other sites.
Moderation
1. You understand and accept that the site may apply a system of moderation. For example, a user may report a message received from another user if he/she believes that these Conditions of Use have been infringed.
2. Policy on the protection of privacy:
  - Stirling Language-Swap pledges to protect the private life of its users. It only asks for personal information if it is necessary to use the site, and personal information is never shared with third parties for purposes other than data processing. Your email address does not appear on the website and may never be passed to a third party or another site user.
  - We will only use your personal information as set out in our privacy policy
3. Information about your profile:
  - All the information which you have entered on the registration page is accessible and can be searched for by other site users, with the exception of your name, email address, and your password.
4. If you no longer wish your profile to appear on the website, you may delete it at any time.
5. We will do our best to assess any possible risks for users 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.
Contents, accessibility and responsibility
1. Stirling Language-Swap is not responsible for the accuracy, integrity or quality of the information which appears on its site, and in particular the information shared by the users of the site.
2. Stirling Language-Swap cannot guarantee the absence of interruption of service during user visits, nor the absence of errors.
3. Stirling Language-Swap reserves the right to moderate the content and the conduct of its users appearing on its website but has no obligation to do so.
4. You accept that you have a responsibility to protect your privacy and ensure that no information which might have negative consequences is communicated via the website.
5. Stirling Language-Swap is only responsible for the online links created by its staff and has no control over the external sites and sources which these links may direct users to. It may not be held responsible for the contents, advertising, products, services or any other features linked to external sites.
6. Stirling Language-Swap may not be held responsible for damage caused by but not limited to errors, omissions, interruptions, faults, delays in operation or transmission, computer viruses, or poor connections. Stirling Language-Swap may not be held responsible for damages including but not limited to the consequences of using, or being unable to use, the material on its site.
7. This website may include information and materials uploaded by other users of the site, including to bulletin boards and chat rooms. This information and these materials have not been verified or approved by us. The views expressed by other users on our site do not represent our views or values.
Intellectual Property
1. We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our site, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.
2. You accept that you, and not Stirling Language-Swap, are responsible for the content that you submit, including its legality, reliability, relevance, originality and copyright.
3. All content submitted to Stirling Language-Swap becomes the property of Stirling Language-Swap. Your personal information will remain strictly confidential.
4. All logos, artwork, photographs and texts shown on the Stirling Language-Swap website are the intellectual property of the University of Stirling and may not be reproduced, used, or represented without the permission of the University of Stirling.
Uploading Content to Our Site
1. You warrant that contribution complies with the standards set out in these Conditions of Use, and you will be liable to us and indemnify us for any breach of that warranty. This means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of warranty.
2. Any content you upload to our site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You retain all of your ownership rights in your content, but you are required to grant us and other users of our site a limited licence to use, store and copy that content and to distribute and make it available to third parties. The rights you license to us are described in Condition 10.
3. We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any content posted or uploaded by you to our site constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.
4. We have the right to remove any posting you make on our site if, in our opinion, your post does not comply with the content standards set out in these Conditions of Use.
5. You are solely responsible for securing and backing up your content.
6. We do not store terrorist content.
Breach of this policy
1. When we consider that a breach of this acceptable use policy has occurred, we may take such action as we deem appropriate.
2. Failure to comply with this acceptable use policy constitutes a material breach of these Conditions of 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 contribution 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 or as required by law.
  - We exclude our liability for all action we may take in response to breaches of this acceptable use policy. The actions we may take are not limited to those described above, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.
Rights you are giving us to use the material you upload
1. You hereby grant to the University of Stirling a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform any user-generated content in connection with the service provided by Stirling Language-Swap and across different media, including promotion of the site.
We are not responsible for viruses and you must not introduce them
1. We do not guarantee that our site will be secure or free from bugs or viruses.
2. You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our site. You should use your own virus protection software.
3. You must not misuse our site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our site will cease immediately.
Rule about linking to our site
1. You may link to our home page, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it.
2. You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists.
3. You must not establish a link to our site in any website that is not owned by you.
4. Our site must not be framed on any other site, nor may you create a link to any part of our site other than the home page.
5. We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.
Governing law
1. Please note that these Conditions of Use, their subject matter and their formation, are governed by Scots law. You and we both agree that the courts of Scotland will have exclusive jurisdiction except that if you are a resident of Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in Northern Ireland, and if you are resident of England or Wales, you may also bring proceedings in the English or Welsh courts.