The legal stuff - BT Business Community Terms of Use

[AnitaM]

BT Business Community Forums Terms of Use

The BT Business Community Forums site  (“The Site”) is provided by British Telecommunications plc (BT) whose registered address is at 81 Newgate Street, London EC1A 7AJ, registration number 1800000.

1. Applicability and Acceptance

The following Terms of Use (the “Terms”) apply to anyone accessing and using the BT Business Community Forums (the “Site”), or any part of it. Please note that if you choose other services from BT once you have registered with us then you may be asked to accept other applicable terms and conditions.

2. Acceptance of Terms of Use

By using the Site you agree to be bound by these Terms. BT may modify these Terms from time to time and you are therefore advised to keep up to date with any changes by regularly reviewing these Terms.

3. Eligibility

 3.1 The Site is available to you for your personal use which may include posting your views or responding to the views of other users of the forum. We do not permit use of the Site for your direct commercial gain.

3.2 You must be sixteen years of age or over in order to use the Site. By accepting our terms of use you confirm you are aged sixteen or over.

4. Access, Account Security and Registration

4.1 When you use the Site you may set up a personal profile where you can create threads/posts, contact other users using private messaging facility, perform searches and comment on other members’ threads/posts. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have an appropriate web browser or any other technical requirements in place in order to access and make use of the Site.

4.2 In using this Site, you agree to:

1. a)            provide us with and maintain accurate, current and complete information about you on                registration to the Site;
2. b)            maintain and promptly update any information you provide to us including registration                information, where it may have changed, keeping it accurate, current and complete; and
3. c)            be fully responsible for all use of your account and for any actions that take place using your       account.
4. e)            you confirm that you comply with all applicable laws, regulations and codes            of practise,              including but not limited to the Data Protection Act 1998, General Data                Protection           Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and the Computer Misuse Act 1990

5. Ownership of Content that we provide

5.1 Content provided by BT on the Site is protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights as applicable.

5.2 Content provided by BT on the Site is owned by BT or licensed to BT by third parties, including information, text, designs, graphics, pictures, video, photographs, applications, software, audio and other files, and their selection and presentation (”Our Content”).

5.3 You must not, without BT’s prior written consent, copy, publish, download, de-compile or modify Our Content or use any or part Our Content, unless otherwise agreed in writing by BT.

5.4 You may download or print a copy of any part of Our Content to which you have properly gained access solely for your personal, non-commercial use, provided that you keep all copyright, trademarks, logos or other proprietary notices intact. BT reserves the right to withdraw its consent at any time.

6. Content you post on the Site

6.1 You are responsible for all content (including information, text, pictures, photographs, messages, reviews, notes, videos software, your name or company name and other files or material) that you upload or post on the Site or communicate to other users through the Site. If you did not create content that you post or otherwise make available to the Site, it is your responsibility to ensure that you have the necessary consent from the owner of the content to use it on the Site. You are responsible at your own risk and  cost for creating backup copies and replacing any content that you upload or post on the Site or provide to us.

6.2 In order to ensure that the full benefits of the Site are realised by all users BT would encourage you to upload your content as you see fit. So that others (including potential customers) may access and benefit from your content, BT needs to ensure that it has your permission to make your content available. By using the Site you therefore agree to give BT (as providers of the Site), a non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, worldwide licence to use any content that you upload, post or otherwise make available on the Site.

6.3 You must not upload, post, or otherwise transmit any content (including but not limited to text, links, communications, software, images, sounds, data, or other information) that includes any of the following inappropriate content:

1. a)       any personal information belonging either to the poster or another person, such as full name, address, phone number, personal email address, and BT reference numbers;
2. b)       Spam, such as advertisements for other web sites and services, or other commercial solicitation; chain letters, or pyramid schemes, polls or petitions;
3. c)       Flooding the forum boards with excessive posting or padding posts;
4. d)       Profanity; material that is libellous, fraudulent, unlawful, defamatory, pornographic, obscene, profane, racist, sexist, abusive, offensive, threatening, hateful, or otherwise objectionable;
5. e)       Discussion of illegal activities or providing links to other websites containing such information;
6. f)        Discussions that veer off topic, are unrelated to resolving the issue at hand, are repetitive or campaigning, that promote products or services from other providers, or abuse any company or product;
7. g)       Repetitive or continuous complaints about BT policy including allegations of abuse of privacy, use of third party suppliers or any other policy for any purpose;
8. h)       Discussions of moderator actions on the boards. If you need to comment on a moderator action, please private message any administrator/moderator;
9. i)         Posting or transmitting any information or software containing a virus, worm, Trojan horse, or other damaging or destructive component;
10. j)        Posting a link directing users to any information or content that, if posted on the Site would constitute a violation of the Guidelines or Terms of Use.
11. k)       "Bombing" the Site or individual threads with repetitive or meaningless postings, postings unrelated to the purpose of the BT Business Community Forums; excessive cross-posting;
12. l)         Attacks, including "Flaming" another user or entity in such a way as to incite or perpetuate an argument or conflict; creating usernames to attack other users' identities; impersonating other individuals or falsely representing one's identity or qualifications; posts made under secondary user names or other aliases for the purpose of either endorsing or denigrating others; posts that breach any participant's privacy by including name, address, phone, email address, or any other identifying information.
13. m)     Evading bans or suspensions or otherwise disregarding directions from Moderators or Administrators.

BT will take action under paragraph 7.2. below if you carry out any of the activities described above.

6.4 You agree to indemnify BT against all claims and proceedings arising from infringement of any third party’s intellectual property rights as a result of content that you have posted on or made available on the Site. This indemnity does not apply to claims or proceedings arising from BT’s use of your content other than in accordance with these Terms. BT can withdraw your content at anytime without notice.

7. User Conduct

7.1 You agree not to use the Site (or any part of it) to:

1. a) act in any way that is unlawful or defamatory, in contravention of any licence, third party rights, or in contravention of any guidance that BT may give to you , and you agree to comply with BT’s Terms of Use Policy and which may be amended by us from time to time;
2. b)    damage, disable, overload or affect the operation of the Site;
3. c)    collect email addresses or other contact information of other users from the Site by any means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications;
4. d)    solicit personal information, passwords or other personally identifying information for commercial or unlawful purposes;
5. e)    solicit participation in public discussion, debate, comment or activity outside this Site;
6. f)     register yourself for more than one account, or register on behalf of another individual or group without our written consent;
7. g)    provide false or misleading information about yourself or your business, or create a false identity; or
8. h)    use or attempt to use another’s account, service or system without BT’s prior written authorisation. 

7.2 BT takes any misuse of the Site very seriously, and therefore you agree to take all necessary steps to make sure that you do not misuse the Site. If BT reasonably believes that you have misused the Site (or any part of it) in any way, then BT may terminate your registration, remove your content, and/or suspend or terminate your access to the Site without notice. BT will be under no obligation whatsoever to reinstate your registration.

7.3 You agree to indemnify BT and any affected third party against all legal fees, damages and other expenses that we may reasonably incur as a result of any misuse of the Site (or any part of it).

7.4 If you believe that any content displayed or made available on the Site includes any of the above offences, then please let BT know through our contact page which is displayed on the Site.

7.5 BT reserves the right to manage the postings on the Site  to provide an orderly presentation of this information. To effectively manage the site, BT may designate employees or others to act as moderators and administrators for the site ("Moderators"). These Moderators are the only representatives of BT authorised to manage the BT Business Community. Any BT employees who are not designated as Moderators or Employees are not authorised to represent themselves on the site as BT employees. Authorised BT Employees are distinguished by the Rank of "Employee" and/or an official BT logo as an Avatar.  BT is not responsible for content provided by any BT employee who is not designated as a Moderator or an Employee.

8. Security

8.1 You are responsible for the security and proper use of any user IDs, PIN numbers and passwords required for registration on the Site, and must take all necessary steps to ensure that they are kept confidential, secure, used properly and not disclosed to unauthorised people.

8.2 Although we provide security measures to prevent access by unauthorised users to the Site, we do not guarantee that such security measures are fault free. You acknowledge that the site could be accessed by unauthorised users should they be able to break through or bypass our security measures.

9. Liability

9.1 BT accepts liability as set out in these Terms. BT does not guarantee that the Site will be fault-free.

9.2 BT does not exclude or restrict it’s liability for death or personal injury caused by BT’s negligence or for fraudulent misrepresentation or to any extent not permitted by law.

9.3 BT shall not be liable to you in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise for any direct loss of profit, revenue, time, anticipated savings or profit or revenue, opportunity, data, use, business, wasted expenditure, business interruption or for any other direct loss.

9.4 BT shall not be liable to you in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise for any indirect or consequential loss of profit, revenue, time, anticipated savings or profit or revenue, opportunity, data, use, business, wasted expenditure, loss of or damage to physical property, business interruption or for any other indirect or consequential loss or punitive damages.

9.5 BT accepts liability in contract, tort (including negligence) breach of statutory duty or otherwise for direct loss limited to £1,000 for all events in any 12 consecutive month period.

9.6 BT excludes all liability of any kind (including negligence) in respect of any third party product, services, content, or other material made available on, or which can be accessed using, the Site or the validity of the provider of such product, services, content or other materials.

9.7 Each part of this clause operates separately. If any part of a clause is held by a Court to be unreasonable or inapplicable the rest of the clause shall continue to apply.

10. Disclaimer of warranties and representations

10.1 BT excludes any and all warranties or representations whether express or implied, including without limitation any warranties or representations for merchantability, suitability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement of proprietary rights or the accuracy or completeness of third party products, services, content or any other material made available on, or which can be accessed using, the Site, to the fullest extent permitted by law.

11. Suspension, withdrawal and termination

11.1 BT reserves the right to suspend or withdraw the Site at any time without notice.

11.2 BT reserves the right to suspend or terminate any member’s registration and use of the Site.

12. Personal Data

In addition to our commitments under our Privacy Policy BT collects information from visitors to the Site to help us to make improvements to the forums and to the services we make available. We may keep any personal data that you disclose to compile statistics on community forums usage.  We know, for instance, how many visitors there are to the forums, when they visited, for how long and to which areas of the forums they went. This information is used for trend analysis purposes and we do not use this information to identify individuals visiting the community forums. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have the necessary consents if you pass on a third party’s email address to BT. We are not responsible for the security of any personal data that you chose to post on the site.

In respect of any personal information which you may upload, post or transfer to any third party on the Site, whether your own or that of any third party in contravention of clause 6.3 a) above, you agree that you are acting as the data controller and that BT and any third party supplier to BT are acting as data processors. You agree to indemnify BT and any relevant third party supplier against all claims and proceedings arising as a result of personal data you have posted or made available on the Site.

You accept that by using this Site that the storage of personal information including Customer Data will be carried out using facilities in the United States of America. The storage of Customer Data by BT will be in accordance with the EU-US Privacy Shield program.

YOU CONSENT TO THE TRANSMISSION OF CUSTOMER DATA AND TO THE STORAGE OF CUSTOMER DATA ON SERVERS LOCATED IN THE UNITED STATES.

13. Changes to the Site

 BT reserves the right to modify, edit, delete, suspend or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, without notice, the Site (or any part of it) and/or the information, content, videos, materials, products and/or services (or any part of them) available through the Site at any time.

14. Disputes

You are solely responsible for your interactions with other Site users. BT reserves the right to (but has no obligation to) monitor disputes between you and other users.

15. Applicable Law

These Terms are governed by and will be interpreted in accordance with English Law and any disputes relating to these Terms will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts.

BT Business Community Manager