Legal Boilerplate

[hoak]

As a forum moderator for on several commercial forms I had to concoct and get various legal departments approval, suggestions, and additions to forum Terms Of Use agreements; just to cover your wagons here is the generic version of what I put together that has passed many of acid tests for good legal boilerplate internationally — and you’re welcome to use it if you like:

Welcome to the XYZ community, your registration and posting to the XYZ forums constitutes your acceptance of this forum policy, any abrogation of these terms or abuse in spirit will result in remedial action that may include thread locking, post removal, ban and even legal redress without notice. As well the forum terms of use may be changed and enforced without notice.

The XYZ Forums are intended as a fun and informational venue where you may promote, share, and discuss subject matter pertinent to XYZ. This is not a ‘Free Speech Forum or Venue’; these are privately owned and operated forums that are intended to serve the interests of XYZ and the XYZ internals, development and research; it is not a pulpit for individual expression of destructive wont, rage and abuse at the expense of others.

You are personally responsible and liable for your posts, all their content and all content linked through them and must honor all legal rights including (but not limited to): individual rights, copyrights, patents, trademarks, privacy etc.; you are subject to and liable under all local, national and international laws.

Generally, unacceptable posts may include (but are not limited to) posts that are off-topic, obscene, hostile, threatening to person or property, in violation of libel, copyright, and/or trademark law, or otherwise illegal or unacceptable. As a guideline any post that contains (but is not limited to) any of the following will be subject to remedial action by the moderators:

· swearing, especially in the subject line
· pornography
· “warez” & crack posts, discussion or requests
· any material that is knowingly false, misleading, or inaccurate
· promoting one mod in another mods forum
· harassing posts
· threatening posts
· posts that contain racism, sexism or ageism
· posts containing strident nationalism
· off topic posts
· posts not germane to the thread in which they were posted
· advertisement or commercial promotion of any kind
· any slanderous post
· posting any private information about another person
· posts impersonating another person or member
· multiple accounts

Any person who feels that a particular post is objectionable is encouraged to contact a fourm Moderator or report the post by clicking the appropriate “report post” button. We have the ability to remove objectionable messages and will make every effort to do so within reason and within a reasonable time frame if we determine that removal is appropriate. This is a manual process, so please realize that we may not be able to effect results immediately.

The XYZ Team, its Agents and forum Moderators will not be liable for any damages of any kind incurred as a result of any message posted to the XYZ forums. Once you post content in these forums, you expressly grant XYZ the right to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, etc. the content in any form, anywhere. XYZ, forum Moderators and its agents will cooperate with any 3rd party litigation, investigation, or police action (public, private or government) against any member with full disclosure of any information we have gathered through these forums when we deem it appropriate.

TOU Copyright © 2005-2018 by Hoak & XYZ

[Anonymous]

And what is wrong with the current rules…? 😕

[Anonymous]

Wrong? Depending on the legal jurisdiction nothing or potentially some holes for litigation if you want to be judgement proof; also a bit overly long… Many have found the best way to avoid any problem is to have something people actually read and abide on the account of it being easy to understand, going from generalities to specifics. Just trying to be helpful, the direction you go is obviously completely up to you…

[Author]

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