shastacommons TERMS OF USE

1. ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS

shastacommons provides a collection of online resources, including classified ads, forums, and various email services, (referred to hereafter as "the Service") subject to the following Terms of Use ("TOU"). By using the Service in any way, you are agreeing to comply with the TOU. In addition, when using particular shastacommons services, you agree to abide by any applicable posted guidelines for all shastacommons services, which may change from time to time. Should you object to any term or condition of the TOU, any guidelines, or any subsequent modifications thereto or become dissatisfied with shastacommons in any way, your only recourse is to immediately discontinue use of shastacommons. shastacommons has the right, but is not obligated, to strictly enforce the TOU through self-help, community moderation, active investigation, litigation and prosecution.

2. MODIFICATIONS TO THIS AGREEMENT

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify or otherwise alter these terms and conditions at any time.  Such modifications shall become effective immediately upon the posting thereof. You must review this agreement on a regular basis to keep yourself apprised of any changes. You can find the most recent version of the TOU at:

3. CONTENT

You understand that all postings, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, or other materials ("Content") posted on, transmitted through, or linked from the Service, are the sole responsibility of the person from whom such Content originated. More specifically, you are entirely responsible for each individual item ("Item") of Content that you post, email or otherwise make available via the Service. You understand that shastacommons does not control, and is not responsible for Content made available through the Service, and that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise objectionable. Furthermore, the shastacommons site and Content available through the Service may contain links to other websites, which are completely independent of shastacommons.  shastacommons makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or authenticity of the information contained in any such site.  Your linking to any other webites is at your own risk. You agree that you must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with, the use of any Content, that you may not rely on said Content, and that under no circumstances will shastacommons be liable in any way for any Content or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Content posted, emailed or otherwise made available via the Service. You acknowledge that shastacommons does not pre-screen or approve Content, but that shastacommons shall have the right (but not the obligation) in its sole discretion to refuse, delete or move any Content that is available via the Service, for violating the letter or spirit of the TOU or for any other reason.

4. THIRD PARTY CONTENT, SITES, AND SERVICES

The shastacommons site and Content available through the Service may contain features and functionalities that may link you or provide you with access to third party content which is completely independent of shastacommons, including web sites, directories, servers, networks, systems, information and databases, applications, software, programs, products or services, and the Internet as a whole.

Your interactions with organizations and/or individuals found on or through the Service, including payment and delivery of goods or services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties or representations associated with such dealings, are solely between you and such organizations and/or individuals. You should make whatever investigation you feel necessary or appropriate before proceeding with any online or offline transaction with any of these third parties.

You agree that shastacommons shall not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any such dealings. If there is a dispute between participants on this site, or between users and any third party, you understand and agree that shastacommons is under no obligation to become involved. In the event that you have a dispute with one or more other users, you hereby release shastacommons, its officers, employees, agents and successors in rights from claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind or nature, known or unknown, suspected and unsuspected, disclosed and undisclosed, arising out of or in any way related to such disputes and / or our service. If you are a California resident, you waive California Civil Code Section 1542, which says: "A general release does not extend to claims which the creditor does not know or suspect to exist in his favor at the time of executing the release, which, if known by him must have materially affected his settlement with the debtor."

5. CONDUCT

You agree not to post, email, or otherwise make available Content:

a) that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, or is harmful to minors in any way;

b) that is 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;

c) that harasses, 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;

d) 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);

e) that violates federal, state, or local equal employment opportunity laws, including but not limited to, stating in any advertisement for employment a preference or requirement based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability.

f) with respect to employers that employ four or more employees, that violates the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, including requiring U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent residency (green card status) as a condition for employment, unless otherwise required in order to comply with law, regulation, executive order, or federal, state, or local government contract.

g) that impersonates any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a shastacommons employee, or falsely states or otherwise misrepresents your affiliation with a person or entity (this provision does not apply to Content that constitutes lawful non-deceptive parody of public figures.);

h) that includes personal or identifying information about another person without that person's explicit consent;

i) that is false, deceptive, misleading, deceitful, misinformative, or constitutes "bait and switch";

j) that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any party, or Content that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships;

k) that constitutes or contains  "affiliate marketing," "link referral code," "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or unsolicited commercial advertisement;

l) that advertises any illegal service or the sale of any items the sale of which is prohibited or restricted by any applicable law, including without limitation items the sale of which is prohibited or regulated by California law. A partial list of prohibited items for sale and prohibited services offered is provided at the following web address for your convenience:

m) that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment;

n) that disrupts the normal flow of dialogue with an excessive amount of Content (flooding attack) to the Service, or that otherwise negatively affects other users' ability to use the Service; or

o) that employs misleading email addresses, or forged headers or otherwise manipulated identifiers in order to disguise the origin of Content transmitted through the Service.

Additionally, you agree not to:

p) contact anyone who has asked not to be contacted, or make unsolicited contact with anyone for any commercial purpose;

q) "stalk" or otherwise harass anyone;

r) collect personal data about other users for commercial or unlawful purposes;

s) use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from the Service - unless expressly permitted by shastacommons;

t) post non-local or otherwise irrelevant Content, repeatedly post the same or similar Content or otherwise impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure;

u) attempt to gain unauthorized access to shastacommons' computer systems or engage in any activity that disrupts, diminishes the quality of, interferes with the performance of, or impairs the functionality of, the Service or the shastacommons website; or

v) use any form of automated device or computer program that enables the submission of postings on shastacommons without each posting being manually entered by the author thereof (an "automated posting device"), including without limitation, the use of any such automated posting device to submit postings in bulk, or for automatic submission of postings at regular intervals.

8. NO SPAM POLICY

You understand and agree that sending unsolicited email advertisements to shastacommons email addresses or through shastacommons computer systems, which is expressly prohibited by these Terms, will use or cause to be used servers located in California.  Any unauthorized use of shastacommons computer systems is a violation of these Terms and certain federal and state laws, including without limitation the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030 et seq.), Section 502 of the California Penal Code and Section 17538.45 of the California Business and Professions Code.  Such violations may subject the sender and his or her agents to civil and criminal penalties.

11. LIMITATIONS ON SERVICE

You acknowledge that shastacommons may establish limits concerning use of the Service, including the maximum number of days that Content will be retained by the Service, the maximum number and size of postings, email messages, or other Content that may be transmitted or stored by the Service, and the frequency with which you may access the Service. You agree that shastacommons has no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any Content maintained or transmitted by the Service. You acknowledge that shastacommons reserves the right at any time to modify or discontinue the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice, and that shastacommons shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Service.

12. ACCESS TO THE SERVICE

shastacommons grants you a limited, revocable, nonexclusive license to access the Service for your own personal use.  This license does not include: (a) access to the Service by Posting Agents; or (b) any collection, aggregation, copying, duplication, display or derivative use of the Service nor any use of data mining, robots, spiders, or similar data gathering and extraction tools for any purpose unless expressly permitted by shastacommons. A limited exception to (b) is provided to general purpose internet search engines and non-commercial public archives that use such tools to gather information for the sole purpose of displaying hyperlinks to the Service, provided they each do so from a stable IP address or range of IP addresses using an easily identifiable agent and comply with our robots.txt file. "General purpose internet search engine" does not include a website or search engine or other service that specializes in classified listings or in any subset of classifieds listings such as jobs, housing, for sale, services, or personals, or which is in the business of providing classified ad listing services.

shastacommons permits you to display on your website, or create a hyperlink on your website to, individual postings on the Service.

shastacommons offers various parts of the Service in RSS format so that users can embed individual feeds into a personal website or blog, or view postings through third party software news aggregators.  shastacommons permits you to display, excerpt from, and link to the RSS feeds on your personal website or personal web blog, provided that (a) your use or display does not suggest that shastacommons promotes or endorses any third party causes, ideas, web sites, products or services, (e) you do not redistribute the RSS feed, and (f) your use does not overburden shastacommons' systems.  shastacommons reserves all rights in the content of the RSS feeds and may terminate any RSS feed at any time.

13. TERMINATION OF SERVICE

You agree that shastacommons, in its sole discretion, has the right (but not the obligation) to delete or deactivate your account, block your email or IP address, or otherwise terminate your access to or use of the Service (or any part thereof), immediately and without notice, and remove and discard any Content within the Service, for any reason, including, without limitation, if shastacommons believes that you have acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the TOU. Further, you agree that shastacommons shall not be liable to you or any third-party for any termination of your access to the Service. Further, you agree not to attempt to use the Service after said termination. Sections 2, 4, 6 and 10-16 shall survive termination of the TOU.

15. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

YOU AGREE THAT USE OF THE shastacommons SITE AND THE SERVICE IS ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE shastacommons SITE AND THE SERVICE ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" OR "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS, WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND.  ALL EXPRESS AND IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT OF PROPRIETARY RIGHTS ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.  TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, SHASTACOMMONS DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES FOR THE SECURITY, RELIABILITY, TIMELINESS, ACCURACY, AND PERFORMANCE OF THE SHASTACOMMONS SITE AND THE SERVICE.  TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, shastacommons DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES FOR OTHER SERVICES OR GOODS RECEIVED THROUGH OR ADVERTISED ON THE shastacommons SITE OR THE SITES OR SERVICE, OR ACCESSED THROUGH ANY LINKS ON THE shastacommons SITE.  TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, shastacommons DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES FOR VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS IN CONNECTION WITH THE shastacommons SITE OR THE SERVICE.  Some jurisdictions do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties.  In such jurisdictions, some of the foregoing disclaimers may not apply to you insofar as they relate to implied warranties.

16. LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL shastacommons BE LIABLE FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES (EVEN IF shastacommons HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES), RESULTING FROM ANY ASPECT OF YOUR USE OF THE shastacommons SITE OR THE SERVICE, WHETHER THE DAMAGES ARISE FROM USE OR MISUSE OF THE shastacommons SITE OR THE SERVICE, FROM INABILITY TO USE THE shastacommons SITE OR THE SERVICE, OR THE INTERRUPTION, SUSPENSION, MODIFICATION, ALTERATION, OR TERMINATION OF THE shastacommons SITE OR THE SERVICE.  SUCH LIMITATION SHALL ALSO APPLY WITH RESPECT TO DAMAGES INCURRED BY REASON OF OTHER SERVICES OR PRODUCTS RECEIVED THROUGH OR ADVERTISED IN CONNECTION WITH THE shastacommons SITE OR THE SERVICE OR ANY LINKS ON THE shastacommons SITE, AS WELL AS BY REASON OF ANY INFORMATION OR ADVICE RECEIVED THROUGH OR ADVERTISED IN CONNECTION WITH THE shastacommons SITE OR THE SERVICE OR ANY LINKS ON THE shastacommons SITE.  THESE LIMITATIONS SHALL APPLY TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. In some jurisdictions, limitations of liability are not permitted.  In such jurisdictions, some of the foregoing limitation may not apply to you.

17. INDEMNITY

You agree to indemnify and hold shastacommons, its officers, subsidiaries, affiliates, successors, assigns, directors, officers, agents, service providers, suppliers and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorney fees and court costs, made by any third party due to or arising out of Content you submit, post or make available through the Service, your use of the Service, your violation of the TOU, your breach of any of the representations and warranties herein, or your violation of any rights of another.

18. GENERAL INFORMATION

The TOU constitute the entire agreement between you and shastacommons and govern your use of the Service, superceding any prior agreements between you and shastacommons. The TOU and the relationship between you and shastacommons shall be governed by the laws of the State of California without regard to its conflict of law provisions. You and shastacommonst agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located within the county of Siskiyou, California. The failure of shastacommons to exercise or enforce any right or provision of the TOU shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any provision of the TOU is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the TOU remain in full force and effect. You agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of the Service or the TOU must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred.

19. FEEDBACK

We welcome your questions and comments on this document in the shastacommons feedback forum:

Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 March 2009 21:29