Civil Beat Terms of Service

By visiting Honolulu Civil Beat and using the Civil Beat service, you agree to the terms in this terms of service agreement. We also have a privacy policy which explains how we collect and use information about you. Please make sure you read our privacy policy because when you use the Civil Beat service, you’re also agreeing to our privacy policy.

Basic Terms

General
  1. You are of legal age to agree to these terms and use our service.
  2. Honolulu Civil Beat Inc. is not responsible for the content that is posted on the Civil Beat service by its users.
  3. When we talk about the Civil Beat service, we are referring to the Civil Beat site, any Civil Beat mobile sites, and even printed versions of our service. We know, printed might be a bit retro but you never know what the future holds.
  4. We tried to write this so that you can easily understand it. We tried to take out the legal jargon. But if something in this agreement is deemed to be invalid, void or unenforceable, only that part shall be deemed void and it shall not affect the validity or enforceability of the rest of this agreement.
  5. We don’t like disputes. But we’re also realistic enough to know that sometimes disputes happen. If there is a dispute between Honolulu Civil Beat Inc. and you, the laws of the State of Hawaii will govern this agreement (without regard to principles of conflicts of laws).
Behavior
  1. You are responsible for your own behavior. This means you are responsible for all the content you post using the Civil Beat service.
  2. You will be civil. You will be respectful and polite. This doesn’t mean you have to be fake — we don’t expect people to agree on everything. We just expect people to be civil. Threatening, harassing, intimidating or abusing others is not what we would call “civil.” So don’t do it.
  3. Before posting any content on the Civil Beat service, you agree that you have the right to post that content (text, images, video, links, ideas, or otherwise) and that the content you post does not violate any applicable laws. Violating the law or another person’s ownership rights is not cool.
  4. You will not use the Civil Beat service for any illegal or unauthorized purposes and you won’t use the Civil Beat service in a way that violates any laws in any jurisdiction(s) that you or Honolulu Civil Beat Inc. are subject to.
  5. You will neither spam other Civil Beat users nor harvest information about people who use the Civil Beat service. Nobody likes being spammed.
  6. You will not use the Civil Beat service to advertise goods or services or as a means to solicit funds.
  7. You will not use the Civil Beat service to transmit viruses, worms or other yet-to-be-named malicious software that do bad things to computers, software, or the like. That’s not cool.
  8. You will not try to hack into the Civil Beat service or unduly burden our servers or technology. That is also not cool.
  9. You will not circumvent, disable, or otherwise interfere with whatever security-related features of the Civil Beat service we may implement. We implement these security-related features for a reason, not because we have nothing better to do. If you try to get around our security features or disable them, it defeats the original purpose of these security-related features. So please just don’t do it.
  10. You will not scrape (whether in an automated or manual fashion) the Civil Beat site or the content on the site without our express written permission. However, we do grant public search engine operators permission to use automatic devices to copy the Civil Beat content that does not require payment from the Civil Beat site for the sole purpose of creating (and only to the extent necessary to create) a searchable index of Civil Beat content that is available to the public. We do reserve the right to revoke this permission at any time.
  11. Basically, you won’t do anything that is against the law, restricts someone else from using or enjoying the Civil Beat service, or prevents us from providing the Civil Beat service. Just be cool.
Donations
  1. Membership revenue in the form of tax-deductible donations to Civil Beat helps fund a professional staff of journalists who focus on investigative and explanatory reporting to help inform the community about issues of importance.
  2. Civil Beat accepts gifts and grants from individuals, organizations and foundations to help with our general operations, coverage of specific topics and special projects. Our news judgments are made independently – not based on or influenced by donors. We do not give supporters the right to assign, review or edit content. Further, accepting financial support does not mean we endorse donors or their products, services or opinions. You can read our policies relating to fundraising, donations and conflicts of interests in more detail by clicking here.
  3. If you wish to terminate your monthly recurring donation, please contact us at membership@civilbeat.org.
  4. Donations do have processing fees. You have the option to pay the fee at the time of your donation.  If you do pay the fee, we thank you!  That allows more of your direct donation to be used toward our mission.
  5. When you donate, our system will send a receipt to the email address you provide. You will receive another statement at the beginning of next year acknowledging your donation to Civil Beat. You can use either for tax purposes.
  6. PayPal Accounts. For anyone that is still on a PayPal account please know that PayPal does not give us your password or any of your financial information. Your PayPal “billing agreement” lets us bill your PayPal account to keep your membership donation going without requiring you to go to PayPal. You can always cancel your PayPal billing agreement from your PayPal account. When you cancel your membership, you cancel your PayPal billing agreement and we will no longer have authorization to bill your PayPal account.
  7. Separate Accounts. Your Civil Beat and PayPal accounts are separate accounts and you are responsible for maintaining the security of each of these accounts. If there is a security breach or any unauthorized use of your account, you agree to immediately notify us at membership@civilbeat.org.
  8. PayPal email. You understand and agree that Honolulu Civil Beat Inc. can use your PayPal account email to provide the Civil Beat service. For example, we may use it to contact you about your Civil Beat membership, to communicate with you about the Civil Beat service, or even send you marketing, business, or product-related emails.

Digital Goods

Overview
  1. The Civil Beat service is completely free and enables you to access and view a variety of digitized electronic content (e.g., articles, topic pages, beat updates, discussions, etc.) on various devices. This is what we refer to as “Digital Content.”
Honolulu Civil Beat Inc. Rights (some additional rights we have as owners of the Civil Beat service)
  1. We reserve the right to change, modify, or suspend any part of the Civil Beat service at any time, and we may even completely shut down the Civil Beat service, without notice. If we do add new content, features, tools, or functionality to Civil Beat, they will be subject to these terms of service. You agree that Honolulu Civil Beat Inc. is not liable for any changes it makes to the service.
  2. We can change these terms of service at any time without notice.
  3. Just because you submit content to us does not mean we are obligated to accept and/or display it on the website.
Who Owns What (what is sometimes known as “copyright”)
  1. We own the website and all the content (except for the content that is provided by our members in [#5] below).
  2. In addition, we own all the trademarks, service marks, trade names and trade dress that may appear on Civil Beat.
  3. Because you do not have a right, title or interest in the Civil Beat website, Civil Beat service, or the Civil Beat content, you may not reproduce, distribute, create derivative works based upon, publicly display, publicly publish, transmit or otherwise exploit the Civil Beat content for any purpose without obtaining our prior written consent (or in the case of content provided by a third party, obtaining the consent of the respective content owner).
  4. We claim no intellectual property rights over the content you post using the Civil Beat service. Your profile and all the content you post/upload to Civil Beat are yours. But because Civil Beat is a service that is used by other people, you understand and agree that other people (including people you may not know or may not have explicitly given permission to) may view your content. You also understand and agree that content you upload and/or submit may be subject to discussion or rated by other people. These discussions or ratings may be viewable by the public. If you don’t want this to happen, just don’t upload or submit content — then people will have nothing to discuss or rate.
  5. As we said above, whatever you post/upload is yours. But when you submit content to us, you give us a fully paid, worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully sublicensable, and transferable right and license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works based upon, publicly display, and publish your content in connection with our business or to provide the Civil Beat service.

Sometimes, the Civil Beat service will have content that was posted by a third-party or will contain links to a third-party website or source. You understand that it is your responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, timeliness, completeness, or usefulness of the content on the Civil Beat service. Don’t blindly believe something just because someone says so — use judgment and most importantly, use your brain.

We tried to strip out as much of the legal jargon as possible. We like agreements that are easy to understand and not filled with definitions and words we can’t understand. But we also take liability seriously, so we do need to be a bit more formal when it comes to liability. And for some mysterious reason it has to be in capital letters. Here it goes:

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL HONOLULU CIVIL BEAT INC. OR ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, PARENTS, PARTNERS, SUCCESSORS, AGENTS, DISTRIBUTION PARTNERS, AFFILIATES, SUBSIDIARIES, OR THEIR RELATED ENTITIES BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES (EVEN IF HONOLULU CIVIL BEAT INC. HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES), ARISING OUT OF, RELATING TO, OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH THE WEBSITE OR THESE TERMS OF USE. YOUR SOLE REMEDY FOR DISSATISFACTION WITH THE WEBSITE INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE WEBSITE CONTENT IS TO STOP USING THE WEBSITE. SUCH LIMITATION SHALL ALSO APPLY WITH RESPECT TO DAMAGES INCURRED BY REASON OF SERVICES OR PRODUCTS RECEIVED THROUGH OR ADVERTISED IN CONNECTION WITH ANY OF THE WEBSITE OR ANY LINKS ON THE WEBSITE, AS WELL AS BY REASON OF ANY INFORMATION OR ADVICE RECEIVED THROUGH OR ADVERTISED IN CONNECTION WITH ANY OF THE WEBSITE OR ANY LINKS ON THE WEBSITE. SUCH LIMITATION SHALL ALSO APPLY WITH RESPECT TO DAMAGES INCURRED BY REASON OF ANY CONTENT POSTED BY A THIRD-PARTY OR CONDUCT OF A THIRD-PARTY ON THE WEBSITE.

YOU AGREE THAT ANY CAUSE OF ACTION ARISING OUT OF, RELATING TO, OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH ANY OF THE WEBSITE OR THESE TERMS OF USE MUST COMMENCE WITHIN ONE (1) YEAR AFTER THE CAUSE OF ACTION ACCRUES; OTHERWISE, SUCH CAUSE OF ACTION SHALL BE PERMANENTLY BARRED.