Terms of Service

Submitted by Webmaster on Sat, 2004-05-22 10:34
These are the Terms of Service under which we provide this free web site for your use. By using this site, you agree to these terms.
  1. SCAtoday.net is provided free of charge to members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and to others interested in the history of the Middle Ages. As a free service, we reserve the right to limit access, to change or withdraw features or services, or to discontinue the entire site at any time, with or without advance notice to you.
  2. SCAtoday.net is committed to full compliance with applicable copyright law and treaty currently in effect in the U.S. As such, we will not knowingly publish copyrighted material without express permission from the copyright owner. Please refrain from posting copyrighted material to our forums or including copyrighted text as part of a contributed article or story.
  3. Small excerpted quotes from copyrighted material, or URL links to such material, are welcome at SCAtoday.net as long as they are permitted under the "fair use doctrine" of copyright law. SCAtoday.net's normal editorial policy is to link to articles on other web sites, with a short lead or abstract written by our own staff. A brief quote of the original article is usually considered "fair use" in this context. We do not republish entire stories, or substantial portions thereof, from other sources unless we obtain explicit permission from the owner of the material.
  4. By posting messages to our forums, or contributing a story or article to SCAtoday.net, or uploading a file, you agree that:
    • You are the original author of the material you have provided to us, or you have appropriately cited the source within the text of your contribution so that we may establish permission from the owner.
    • SCAtoday.net and its publisher have a non-exclusive, perpetual right to publish the material on the Internet or in any other media, without compensation or fee to you. You may also publish your material elsewhere, as you wish, so long as you do so non-exclusively. Once you contribute material to SCAtoday.net, you may not withdraw the granted permission to publish.
    • You remain the copyright owner of your material, but SCAtoday.net is the copyright owner of the overall web page (or other medium) in which your material is published.
    • Publication on SCAtoday.net does not constitute endorsement of the material or viewpoints expressed therein by SCAtoday.net or its staff. You may freely disclose to anyone that your article or forum message has been published on SCAtoday.net, but you may not state or imply that SCAtoday.net endorses what you have said.
    • The material you are contributing is not, to the best of your knowledge, untrue, illegal, or libelous. (The prohibition on "untrue" material does not apply to material that is clearly and obviously a work of fiction, parody, or satire.)
    • The editors of SCAtoday.net are permitted to edit the material for length, to correct grammatical or spelling errors, to reformat the material to fit the web site's layout, or to remove portions which violate our Terms of Service. If you are unhappy with the edited version, you may appeal to our Editor-In-Chief to ask that your original text be restored or the article withdrawn from our site. The decision on this appeal is solely at the discretion of the Editor-In-Chief.
    • You may offer material with no editing permitted, by explicitly stating this constraint at the time of the contribution. If you elect to do this, SCAtoday will either accept the material without alteration or will reject it, at our discretion. (In this context, "alteration" does not include reformatting to fit the layout of our site or correcting minor typographical errors.)
    • If you wish to allow others to freely republish your material, or to place your material in the public domain, you may indicate this within the text. SCAtoday.net will include such notice with your article if it is practical for us to do so within the constraints of our site's design.
  5. The following specific types of material are considered unacceptable on the SCAtoday.net site, and will be removed without notice if found in a forum:
    1. Chain letters, virus warnings, or other flagrantly off-topic messages
    2. Material which in the sole judgment of our editorial staff is patently profane, pornographic, or offensive
    3. Material which we believe violates copyright or libel laws
    4. Racial, national, religious, or ethnic slurs or hate speech, threats, or advocacy of any illegal activity
    5. Material which is defamatory or unduly derogatory of a specific individual or group
    6. Overtly commercial messages, including multilevel marketing schemes
    7. Religious or political solicitations or advocacy, except for political advocacy within the specific topic context of the area of our site for which the material is contributed.
  6. Our intent is to maintain roughly a "PG" content rating on our site, with material that is appropriate to most adults and teenagers, and to maintain a civil tone of discussion even when there are strong disagreements about the issue at hand.
  7. This does not mean that you may not speak your mind frankly, bluntly, and openly on political issues. It does mean, however, that the discussion is constrained to civil discourse and that it focuses on issues and not on personalities. The U.S. Bill of Rights gives you the right to free speech, but does not require SCAtoday.net to provide an unrestricted soapbox. If you want to be free from our constraints, you are free to build your own web page.
  8. "Commercial messages" in this context refers to material of a marketing or advertising nature, where such material is not germane to the topic of discussion. It is permissible to mention a specific commercial entity, such as a merchant, in the broader context of a discussion or article about a related commodity. For instance, within a discussion of period tweedle glomping on a forum, you are permitted to mention that you happen to be a merchant specializing in selling tweedles. The guideline is that such messages must be on-topic and that the commercial portion must be brief (a mention, not a lengthy advertisement).
  9. Discussion of religion in the context of historical research is welcome. Advocacy or dis-advocacy of modern religious or spiritual doctrine is not. Historical discussion of politics, or debate of current SCA political issues (such as a proposed change in policy) is welcome. Advocacy or debate of modern-world political parties, issues, or candidates is not.
  10. Some forums may be marked as being for children, and our editorial staff will maintain a stricter standard of content in these forums.
  11. Everyone who posts content to the forums on SCAtoday.net is expected to behave honourably, as a Lord or Lady of the Current Middle Ages. If, in the judgment of our editorial staff, you have failed to do so, we may act to prevent you from further such conduct on our site. This may include a warning by e-mail, banning from forum posts, or termination of your login account. If we terminate your account, our editorial staff may post a notice in the relevant forum(s) stating that your account has been terminated for violation of our Terms of Service, so that other posters are aware of why you are no longer participating in the forum.
  12. Commercial entities whose web sites or e-mail addresses are linked from SCAtoday.net, or which are listed in our directories, are not necessarily endorsed or recommended by SCAtoday.net or its staff. Any business transactions between SCAtoday.net visitors and such merchants are a private affair between the two parties and do not involve SCAtoday.net.
DISCLAIMER SCAtoday.net is provided as a public service to the members of the SCA and to interested others, but it is not affiliated in any official or legal way with the Society for Creative Anachronism, Incorporated. This web site does not delineate the policy of the SCA, Inc., its organizational units, nor any officers thereof.