eShare Terms and Conditions

The Agreement

The following agreement ('this Agreement') describes the terms and conditions on which eShare offers you access and use of material found on this website http://www.eshare.edgehill.ac.uk. This offer is conditional on your agreement to all the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement, including your compliance with policies, guidelines and terms linked by way of URLs in this Agreement ('Terms & Conditions').

By using eShare or by exercising any rights provided to use parts of it, you accept and agree to be bound by the 'Terms and Conditions'.

eShare only grants you the rights contained in this Agreement in consideration of your acceptance of the Terms and Conditions.

If you do not agree to the Terms and Conditions you should not use eShare and therefore decline this Agreement, in which case you are prohibited from accessing and/or using eShare. eShare may amend this Agreement at any time at its sole discretion, effective upon posting the amended agreement on the repository's relevant page (http://www.eshare.edgehill.ac.uk). No variation or counter offer of this Agreement will be accepted by eShare.

1. eShare

  1. eShare is an online space for managing, storing and sharing teaching and learning resources. It is part of a wider Open Educational Resources initiative funded by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and the HEA (Higher Education Academy), to showcase UK Higher Education by encouraging teachers within HE institutions to publish excellent teaching and learning resources openly on the web.
  2. As part of the nature of the service, eShare does not always or will not always be able to regulate the content created and made available by users of the service or otherwise. As a result eShare has limited control, if any, over the quality, morality, legality, truthfulness or accuracy of various aspects of the Service.
  3. You acknowledge that:
    1. by using eShare you may have access to graphics, sound effects, music, video, audio, computer programmes, animations, text and other creative output ('Content'); and
    2. Content may be provided by eShare or by others such as the Users of the eShare teaching and learning repository ('Content Providers').
  4. You acknowledge that eShare and other Content Providers have rights in their respective Content under copyright and other applicable laws, and that except as described in this Agreement that such rights are not transferred by mere use of the Service. You accept full responsibility and liability for your use of any Content in violation of any such rights. You agree that your creation of Content is not in any way based upon any expectation of compensation from eShare. You acknowledge that this Agreement does not assign or transfer ownership, title or interest of the Intellectual Property rights in eShare to you.

2. Licences and IPR

  1. Subject to the terms of this Agreement, eShare hereby grants you a non-exclusive, royalty free and revocable licence to access and use eShare and use the Content in eShare in accordance with the Terms and Conditions of eShare for as long as you are in compliance with such Terms and Conditions of eShare.
  2. Content owned or licensed to eShare as part of the eShare teaching and learning repository can be used by any User of the Service for any such purposes that are conducive to education, teaching, learning, private study and/or research.
  3. Users of the Service can create Content in eShare in various forms. eShare acknowledges and agrees that, subject to the Terms and Conditions of eShare, you will retain any and all applicable copyright and any other intellectual property rights with respect to any Content you create using eShare, to the extent that you have such rights under applicable law.
  4. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of eShare, you automatically grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) to eShare: (1) a non-exclusive, royalty free, perpetual licence to:
    1. use, reproduce and communicate your Content within eShare and a right to sub-licence such use to Users of eShare as long as the Content is used by such User within eShare; and
    2. to use and reproduce (and to authorise third parties to use and reproduce) any of your Content in any or all media for marketing and/or promotional purposes in connection with eShare.
  5. You agree that by submitting your Content to any area of eShare you automatically allow all Users of eShare to use your Content or parts of it (where permitted) outside eShare on the terms of Creative Commons Licences Attribution-Non Commecial-Share Alike and Attribution-Non Commecial-Non Derivatives as detailed on the relevant websites http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. You will allow eShare and all Users of eShare to use your resources under the term of the relevant licence.
  6. By depositing any material for publication in eShare you confirm that it is:
    1. not defamatory or obscene;
    2. not in any way illegal or infringing any law or any persons rights;
    3. either your own work or work clear of third-party copyright, that is, you have obtained permission form the copyright holder(s) to publish their material in eShare;
    4. not as far as you are aware the subject of any dispute or court proceedings
    These terms imply no transfer of copyright and this permission is not exclusive. The copyright holders may continue to distribute or license their Content in any way.

    You understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of eShare you automatically grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted) to eShare and to all other Users of eShare a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual licence under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect of your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within eShare.
  7. You agree to use all best efforts to ensure that your Content does not infringe any Intellectual Property rights of a third party.
  8. You agree that even though you may retain certain copyright or other intellectual property rights with respect of the Content you create while using eShare, you do not own the account you use to access eShare, nor do you own any data eShare stores on eShare servers submitted by others. Your intellectual property rights do not confer ownership of others' data stored by or on behalf of eShare.
  9. eShare may contain links that make it easy to visit External Sites. eShare does not have any control over these sites and your use of these external sites is entirely at your own risk. eShare does not necessarily endorse the information, links or the external sites from which the information and links originate.

3. Community Guidelines and Policies

  1. You agree to read and comply with the Policies as posted on http://www.eshare.edgehill.ac.uk/policies.html.
  2. In addition to abiding at all times to the Policies, you agree that you shall not:
    1. take any action to upload post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that infringes or violates any third party rights;
    2. impersonate any person or entity without their consent, including but not limited to a eShare employee, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or an entity;
    3. upload, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that violates any United Kingdom law or regulation;
    4. upload, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content determined by eShare in its reasonable opinion to be libellous. You agree that eShare may take whatever steps it deems necessary to abridge, or delete material on eShare in its sole discretion, without notice to you (see Take-Down policy http://www.eshare.edgehill.ac.uk/policies.html).

4. Releases, Disclaimers of Warranties, Limitation of Liability and Indemnification

  1. As a condition of access to eShare, you release eShare from claims, demands, damages of every kind and nature, known and unknown, suspected or unsuspected, disclosed or undisclosed, arising out of or in any way connected with any dispute you have or claim to have with one or more Users of eShare. You further understand and agree that eShare will have the rights but not the obligation to resolve disputes between Users relating to eShare.
  2. Any Content or other data residing on the eShare server may be deleted, altered, moved or transferred at any time for any reason at eShare’s sole discretion without notice and without liability to you or any third party.
  3. eShare provides the eShare teaching and learning repository and Content strictly on an .as is. basis and use of eShare and/or Content is at your own risk. eShare hereby expressly disclaims all warranties or conditions of any kind to the extent permitted by law, including without limitation any merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. To the extent permitted by law, eShare accepts no liability for loss suffered or incurred by the User or any third party as a result of their reliance on eShare and/or Content.
  4. To the extent permitted by law, in no circumstances will eShare be liable to you or you liable to eShare for any loss resulting from a cause over which eShare or you do not have direct control, including but not limited to failure of electronic or mechanical equipment or communication lines, telephone or other interconnect problems.
  5. In no event shall eShare be liable to you or to any third party for any special, incidental, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, including without limitation any damages for loss of profits arising (whether in contract, tort or otherwise) out or in connection with eShare and or Content. In addition, in no event will eShare’s cumulative liability to you for direct damages of any kind or nature exceed £50.00.
  6. You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless eShare and Users of eShare and Content from all damages, liabilities, claims and expenses, including without limitation reasonable legal fees and costs, arising from any breach of this Agreement by you, or from your use of eShare. You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless eShare from all damages, liabilities, claims and expenses, including without limitation reasonable legal fees and costs, arising from any claims by third parties that your activity or Content in eShare infringes upon or violates any of their intellectual property or proprietary rights.

5. Rules of Use and Behaviour

  1. As a range of Users will be accessing eShare, resources submitted must be:
    1. not rude;
    2. constructive, i. e. not intended to disrupt, offend or abuse anybody including but not limited to other Users;
    3. lawful and not deliberately provocative, i. e. they should not be racist, sexist, homophobic, defamatory, profane, obscene, harassing and they should not contain any Content that infringes the rights of another person;
    4. relevant and useful, i. e. Users should not use the facility to post spam or Content that is unrelated to the discussion or Content to which it is attached;
    5. non-commercial and non-promotional, i. e. the site should not be used to post advertisements or promotional materials;
    6. authentic, that is, no User should impersonate another person; The Server Provider reserves the right to close a Registered User account without notice if use of that account appears to breach these Terms and Conditions or if attempted communications by the Service Provider remain unanswered. Where an account is closed, the Service Provider may at his discretion inform the User of the reason by email.

6. Accuracy of Content and Information

  1. Some of the information and Content used in eShare is provided by other Users, members of the public and other third party organisations. Although eShare reserves the right to monitor information and Content submitted and may take some steps to check that the same complies with the conditions and rules of use set out in paragraph 3 and 5 above it cannot confirm that any Resources or Contributions are accurate or up to date. By using Resources or Contributions in eShare, any User acknowledges that information and services offered via eShare may include inaccuracies and/or typographical errors.
  2. If any links to other websites appear in eShare or in Resources or Contributions in eShare, eShare accepts no responsibility or liability for the Content of that website (whether under the control of eShare or otherwise). Any link is not intended to be, nor should be construed as, an endorsement of any kind by us.

7. eShare and Proprietary Materials

eShare contains some proprietary materials which are owned by or licensed for use in eShare and which are not subject to CC Licences. These materials include our logos and trading names (eShare etc.), certain photographic and video images and sound recording. These proprietary materials are protected by intellectual property rights. Unauthorised use of these materials may constitute copyright infringement.

All logos, including institutional logos, contained on our resources are subject to UK and international copyright law and must not be re-used or adapted in any way that might possibly be construed as offensive or harmful to the function or reputation of their rightful owner. If a logo's owner objects to the inclusion of their logo on a resource contained within eShare, that resource will immediately be taken down, and not reinstated unless or until the logo in question has been removed.

8. Privacy

  1. You acknowledge and agree that eShare, in its sole discretion, may track, record, observe or follow any and all of your interactions within eShare. eShare may share general, demographic or aggregated information with third parties about eShare’s User base and Service Usage, but that information will not include or be linked to any personal information without consent. eShare agrees that when exercising these rights, it shall abide by the Data Protection Act, 1998 at all times.

9. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

  1. This Agreement and the relationship between you and eShare shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law. You and eShare agree that any dispute arising out of or in connection with this Agreement will be subject to and within the jurisdiction of the English courts.
  2. You and eShare agree to use best efforts to resolve disputes in an informal manner. Where you and eShare agree that a dispute arising out of or in connection with this Agreement would best be resolved by the decision of an expert, you and eShare will agree upon the nature of the expert required and together appoint a suitable expert by agreement.
  3. Any person to whom a reference is made under Clause 6.2 shall act as expert and not as an arbitrator and his decision (which shall be given by him in writing and shall state the reasons for his decision) shall be final and binding on the parties except in the case of manifest error or fraud.
  4. You and eShare shall provide the expert with such information and documentation as he may reasonably require for the purposes of his decision.
  5. The costs of the expert shall be borne by you and eShare in such proportions as the expert may determine to be fair and reasonable in all circumstances or, if no determination is made by the expert, by you and eShare in equal proportions.

10. General Provisions

  1. This Agreement constitute the entire understanding and agreement between you and eShare with respect of the subject matter hereof.
  2. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this Agreement shall not affect the continuation in force of the remainder of this Agreement.
  3. The rights granted to you or eShare arising under this Agreement shall not be waived except in writing. Any waiver of any of your or eShare’s rights under this Agreement or of any breach of this Agreement by you or eShare shall not be construed as a waiver of any other rights or of any other or further breach. Failure by you or eShare to exercise or enforce any rights conferred upon it by this Agreement shall not be deemed to be a waiver of any such rights or operate so as to bar the exercise or enforcement thereof at any subsequent time or times.
  4. The section headings contained in this Agreement are for convenient purposes only and shall not affect the interpretation of this Agreement.
  5. Where the context so implies, words importing the singular number shall include the plural and vice versa and words importing the masculine shall include the feminine and vice versa.
  6. All or any of eShare’s rights and obligations under this Agreement may be assigned to a subsequent owner or operator of the Service in a merger, acquisition or sale of all or substantially all of eShare’s assets.

I UNDERSTAND THAT THE CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE:

  1. AND ANY RELATED RESTRICTIONS GOVERNS MY USE OF MATERIALS AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE; AND
  2. GOVERNS USE OF MATERIALS I SUBMIT TO eSHARE
I UNDERSTAND AND ACCEPT THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE

Acknowledgement

This document is largely based on the Terms and Conditions of Service template made available through www.Web2Rights.org.uk Parts of this policy are based on the Terms and Conditions compiled for OpenLearn-Open University http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/ and for JorumOpen-Terms of Service http://www.jorum.ac.uk/termsofservice.html, both available on the terms of a CC license: Attribution-Non commercial-Share Alike.