FreeLists / dokuwiki / [dokuwiki] Re: TOS

["Christian Barmala" <christian.barmala@xxxxxxx>]

"litwiki.de" <w@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Christian Barmala wrote:
> > Did someone come up with a template for "Terms of Service"
> for which country? TOS also depend on what will happen in your wiki. I
> suggest some surfs to similar sites...

The answer "it depends" is always correct, maybe even more for legal than
for technical stuff, but it's not very helpful. Of course every case is
different, and the template I ask for cannot substitute individual legal
advice, but there are also some properties common to every similar forum and
common to many national legal systems. After all, a forum with an
international audience may have legal implications beyond your country of
residence or the country in which the server is hosted.

You may argue that this mailing list is not the right place to discuss such
legal issues, since it's a technical forum, but technical features
determine, what can or can't be done with the software, which in turn
implies what you should agree on with your users. Especially some questions
of the P3P questionnaire for privacy can best be answered by a programmer,
who knows which data is collected and how it is used.

Of course I searched the web for similar forums and their TOS. Many private
pages had terms, which focused on style guides or demanded the adherence to
a certain version of the "Netiquette". While this may be desirable from the
Webmaster's perspective, it's certainly not the most important legal
requirement. Inspired by some better sites and based on my own practical
experiences as a webmaster I came up with the following topics which should
cover the most important notification, privacy and due diligence
requirements:

Applicability
The imprint applies to the Internet Site http://www.mysite.org/ .
Subsections of this site may have additional TOS which complement or
override these general ones.

Responsibility
This Internet Site is part of the WWW and thus linked with foreign pages,
which may be subjected to permanent change and thus are outside the area of
responsibility as defined in this document. The linked pages were checked
for compliance with applicable laws only once before they were added to this
Site. Every article on this Web Site represents the opinion of its author.
The admins of this site are only responsible for their own articles. The
admins strive to check or delete articles with questionable content as soon
as possible. If you notice content which has been overlooked and violates
your rights, pleas contact the admins (see below).

Responsible contact person
John Webmaster (email or link to Feedback form, and maybe even physical mail 
address or excerpts from the domain registration
data.)

Advertizing
This site contains advertisement from: amazon.com, Google AdSense and
others.

Purpose of this Web Site
Exchange knowledge and opinions about foo and bar.

Fees
There are no fees involved in the use of this forum.

Power of Admins
It's at the discretion of the admin of this site, to delete individual
articles or revoke the membership of individual users.

Legal content
You may not submit illegal, immoral or insulting content.

Copyright 1
You confirm that you have the copyright for all articles you submit to this
site. You will be held responsible for illegal publication of copyright
protected material.

Copyright 2
By submitting an article you irrevocably agree to it's publication. Unless
stated otherwise your articles are considered to be free for redistribution
and reuse under FDL (or Creative Commons license)

Privacy
The data you entered during registration will be stored during your
membership and will be removed when you terminate your membership. This data
can be changed on request. The articles you submitted may contain references
to you, which will stay there unmodified until the article is deleted or
overwritten. System wide backups may contain the data mentioned above.
Deletion or correction of your data in these backups is not possible since
they are intermixed with other data. The system tracks IP addresses and
events on the site for fraud detection. (Optional: Your data may be shared
with partner/mirror sites)

Disclaimer 1
If your data or your articles should be used beyond the agreed use. The
webmaster will only be responsible in case of gross negligence or intent.
Contents of this Web project were carefully examined and provided after best
knowledge. However no claim on completeness, timeliness, quality and
correctness for the information presented here can be made. No
responsibility for damage can be taken, which results from the confidence on
contents of this Web Site or its use.

Disclaimer 2
This template for the TOS has been created based on practical experience and
does not replace individual legal advice. The authors of this document will
not be responsible if it shouldn't fit your intended purpose. You may use,
modify and redistribute it under FDL (or Creative Commons License).

Any ideas to refine complete or correct this draft? Does it make sense to
put it in an appropriate place on http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki%3Amanual ?

Christian Barmala

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