Penpal-Friends.com Terms Of use
Welcome to Penpal-Friends the social networking service that allows Members to find and communicate with old and new friends. The Services offered by Penpal-Friends include the Penpal-Friends.com Website (the " Website " ), the penpalfriends.net, Penpal-Friends.com, Penpal-Friends.org, penpal-friends.com, penpalfriend.com, penpalfriend.net Websites, and any other features, content, or applications offered from time to time by Penpal-Friends in connection with the Website (collectively, the " Services " ). By using the Penpal-Friends Service you accept and agree to be bound by the following terms and conditions (the 'Terms of Service'). Where applicable under law, these Terms constitute a 'writing signed by you. Penpal-Friends.com is a division of IO1 Limited, incorporated in the UK, hereafter referred to as Penpal-Friends or Penpal-Friends.com. This Terms of Service ( " Agreement " ) sets forth the legally binding terms for your use of the Services. By using the Services, you agree to be bound by this Agreement, whether you are a " Visitor " (which means that you simply browse the Website) or you are a " Member " (which means that you have registered with Mailfirends.com). The term " User " refers to a Visitor or a Member. You are only authorized to use the Services (regardless of whether your access or use is intended) if you agree to abide by all applicable laws and to this Agreement. Please read this Agreement carefully and save it. If you do not agree with it, you should leave the Website and discontinue use of the Services immediately. If you wish to become a Member, communicate with other Members and make use of the Services, you must read this Agreement and indicate your acceptance at the end of this document before proceeding to the Registration process.
1 Changes to Penpal-Friends.com and the Terms of Service
We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or delete portions of these Terms of Service at any time without further notice. If we do this, we will post the changes to these Terms of Service on this page and will indicate at the top of this page the Terms of Service's effective date. Your continued use of the Web site after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms of Service. You are responsible for regularly reviewing these Terms of Service so that you will be aware of any changes.
2 Eligibility and Registration
You must be 12 years or older to use the Penpal-Friends Service. By registering for the Penpal-Friends Service, you represent and warrant that you are 12 or older and that you have the capacity to understand, agree to and comply with these Terms of Service. You should provide true, accurate and complete registration information to be a Penpal-Friends.com user ('user'). As part of the registration process, you will be asked to select a username and password and you will be responsible for all activities occurring under your username and for keeping your password secure. We may refuse to grant you a username that impersonates someone else, is or may be protected by trademark or proprietary rights law, or is vulgar, offensive or otherwise inappropriate, as determined by us in our sole discretions.
3 Member Conduct and Appropriate Content
The Penpal-Friends Service is made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Penpal-Friends Service for any illegal or unauthorized purpose. International users agree to comply with all local rules regarding on-line conduct and acceptable content, including laws regulating the export of data from the United States or your country of residence. You are solely responsible for your conduct and any data, text, information, graphics, photos, profiles, audio and video clips, links and other content ('Materials') that you submit, post, and display on the Penpal-Friends Service. We may, but shall have no obligation to, remove Materials that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, fraudulent, threatening, libellous, defamatory, obscene or otherwise objectionable, or infringes or violates any party's intellectual property or other proprietary rights or these Terms of Service. Further, under no circumstances does Penpal-Friends have any obligation to check the accuracy or truthfulness of the any Materials, nor to monitor any User's use of the Penpal-Friends Service. If you become aware of misuse of the Services by any person, please contact Penpal-Friends. Penpal-Friends reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to reject, refuse to post or remove any posting by you, or to restrict, suspend, or terminate your access to all or any part of the Services at any time, for any or no reason, with or without prior notice, and without liability. Some examples of unacceptable postings might include the following. However this should not be seen as an extensive list. The final decision on what is deemed as an inappropriate posting rests with the operators of Penpal-Friends
You should not
Defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others.
Publish, distribute and/ or disseminate any harmful, obscene, indecent, unlawful, libellous, profane, defamatory, infringing, inappropriate, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable material or information.
Use other Members' personal data for purposes other than establishing contact that is reasonably expected to be welcomed by such other Members
Submit Materials that are unlawful or promote or encourage illegal activity or that would violate the property rights of others.
Submit Materials of any third party without such third party's prior written consent, or Materials that falsely express or imply that such Materials are sponsored or endorsed by Penpal-Friends
Create a false or misleading identity of, including, but not limited to, a Penpal-Friends employee, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity, for the purpose of misleading others as to the identity of the sender or the origin of a message or to harvest or otherwise collect information about others.
Transmit, email or post any material that contains in any form software viruses or such programs as including but not limited to, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancel-bots, computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment.
Use the Penpal-Friends Service in any unlawful manner or in any other manner that could damage, disable, overburden or impair the website.
Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Penpal-Friends Service, other accounts, computer systems or networks connected to the Penpal-Friends Service, through password mining or any other means.
Modify, adapt, translate, or reverse engineer any portion of the Penpal-Friends Service, or use any robot, spider, site search/retrieval application, or other device to retrieve or index any portion or the Penpal-Friends Service.
Reformat or frame any portion of the web pages that are part of the Penpal-Friends Service.
Disseminate content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, rights of privacy or publicity, or other proprietary right of any party or infringes any intellectual property law or any other applicable law.
Remove any copyright, trademark or other proprietary rights notices contained in or on the Penpal-Friends Service.
Disseminate any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, 'junk mail', 'spam', 'chain letters', 'pyramid schemes', or any other form of such solicitation.
Interfere with another Member's use and enjoyment of the Penpal-Friends service.
Harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of Members, including usernames, from the Penpal-Friends website by electronic or other means.
4 Proprietary Rights in Content on Penpal-Friends
By displaying or publishing ( " posting " ) any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, " Content " ) on or through the Services, you hereby grant to Penpal-Friends, a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services. This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services. You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Content posted by you on or through the Services or otherwise have the right to grant the license set forth in this section, and (ii) the posting of your Content on or through the Services does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person. You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person by reason of any Content posted by you to or through the Services. Penpal-Friends and its affiliates and licensors own and retain all rights in the Penpal-Friends Web site and Penpal-Friends Service, which contain proprietary and confidential information that is protected by applicable intellectual property and other laws, including without limitation all (1) text, (2) software, (3) photographs, (4) graphics, (5) page layout, and (6) design presented through and as part of the Penpal-Friends Service. Except as expressly authorized by Penpal-Friends, you may not copy, modify, publish, transmit, distribute, perform, display or sell any of Penpal-Friends proprietary information
5 Copyright Policy
Penpal-Friends respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement or are aware of any infringing material on the Web site, please contact us and provide us with the following information: an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest; a description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed; a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the Web site (including a URL and/or screen shot); your address, telephone number, and email address; a written statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.
6 Termination of Service
Penpal-Friends may, in its sole discretion and at any time, discontinue temporarily or permanently providing the Penpal-Friends Service, or any part thereof, with or without notice. You agree that any termination of access to the Penpal-Friends Service under any provision of the Terms of Service may be effected without notice, and acknowledge and agree that Penpal-Friends may immediately deactivate or delete your account and all related information and files in your account and/or bar any further access to such files or the Penpal-Friends Service. Where possible, Penpal-Friends will use reasonable efforts to give Members fair notice of termination or suspension of their access to the Penpal-Friends Service. Further you agree that Penpal-Friends shall not be liable to you or any third party for any termination or suspension of access to the Penpal-Friends Service or modification of the Penpal-Friends Service.
7 Member Disputes.
You are solely responsible for your interactions with other Penpal-Friends Users. Penpal-Friends reserves the right, but has no obligation, to monitor disputes between you and other Users.
8 Privacy.
Use of the Services is also governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into this Agreement by this reference.
9 Disclaimers. Penpal-Friends is not responsible for any incorrect or inaccurate Content posted on the Website or in connection with the Services provided, whether caused by Users of the Services or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the Services. Profiles created and posted by users on Penpal-Friends may contain links to other websites. Penpal-Friends is not responsible for the Content, accuracy or opinions expressed on such websites, and such websites are in no way investigated, monitored or checked for accuracy or completeness by Penpal-Friends. Inclusion of any linked website on Penpal-Friends does not imply approval or endorsement of the linked website by Penpal-Friends. When you access these third-party sites, you do so at your own risk. Penpal-Friends takes no responsibility for third party advertisements which are posted on this Website or through the Services, nor does it take any responsibility for the goods or services provided by its advertisers. Penpal-Friends is not responsible for the conduct, whether on-line or off-line, of any User of the Services. Penpal-Friends assumes no responsibility for any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to, or alteration of, any User or Member communication. Penpal-Friends is not responsible for any problems or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer online systems, servers or providers, computer equipment, software, failure of any email or players due to technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or on any of the Services or combination thereof, including any injury or damage to Users or to any person's computer related to or resulting from participation or downloading materials in connection with the Services. Under no circumstances shall Penpal-Friends be responsible for any loss or damage, including personal injury or death, resulting from use of the Services, attendance at a Penpal-Friends event, from any Content posted on or through the Services, or from the conduct of any Users of the Services, whether online or offline. The Services are provided " AS-IS " and as available and Penpal-Friends expressly disclaims any warranty of fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. Penpal-Friends cannot guarantee and does not promise any specific results from use of the Services.
YOU AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE Penpal-Friends SERVICE IS ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK.
10 Hold Harmless and Indemnity
You agree to hold harmless and indemnify, and at Mailfriend's request defend, Penpal-Friends, its parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates, and their respective owners, officers, managers, members, agents, and employees, from and against any third party claim arising from or in any way related to your use of or conduct on the Penpal-Friends Service, including any liability or expense arising from all claims, liabilities, losses, damages (actual and consequential), suits, judgments, litigation costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees, of every kind and nature. In such a case, Penpal-Friends will provide you with written notice of such claim, suit or action Such limitation of liability shall apply (i) whether the damages arise from use or misuse of and reliance on the Penpal-Friends service, from inability to use the Penpal-Friends service, or from the interruption, suspension, or termination of the Penpal-Friends service (including such damages incurred by third parties), and (ii) notwithstanding any failure of essential purpose of any limited remedy and to the fullest extent permitted by law. If you are dissatisfied with the Penpal-Friends service or any part of the Penpal-Friends service your sole and exclusive remedy is to discontinue using the Penpal-Friends service and its related website. Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation and exclusions may not apply to you. Under no circumstances shall Penpal-Friends be liable to you for any amount exceeding one hundred dollars ($100).
11 Notices
Penpal-Friends may provide you with notices regarding the Penpal-Friends.com Service or these Terms of Penpal-Friends Service by regular mail, email, or postings to this Web site.
12 Legal Compliance
You shall comply with all applicable domestic and international laws, statutes, ordinances, regulations, contracts and applicable licenses regarding your use of the Penpal-Friends Services.
13 Other.
This Agreement is accepted upon your use of the Website or any of the Services and is further affirmed by you becoming a User. This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between you and Penpal-Friends regarding the use of the Services. The failure of Penpal-Friends to exercise or enforce any right or provision of this Agreement shall not operate as a waiver of such right or provision. The section titles in this Agreement are for convenience only and have no legal or contractual effect. Penpal-Friends is a trademark of Penpal-Friends. This Agreement operates to the fullest extent permissible by law. If any provision of this Agreement is unlawful, void or unenforceable, that provision is deemed severable from this Agreement and does not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
14 Miscellaneous
These Terms of Service will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom, without giving effect to its conflict of laws provisions or your actual state or country of residence. You shall not assign these Terms of Service or assign any rights or delegate any obligations hereunder, in whole or in part, whether voluntarily or by operation of law, without our prior written consent. Any such purported assignment or delegation will be null and void and of no force or effect. Without limiting the foregoing, under no circumstances shall Penpal-Friends be held liable for any delay or failure in performance resulting directly or indirectly from acts of nature, forces, or causes beyond its reasonable control, including, without limitation, Internet failures, computer equipment failures, telecommunication equipment failures, other equipment failures, electrical power failures, strikes, labour disputes, riots, insurrections, civil disturbances, shortages of labour or materials, fires, floods, storms, explosions, acts of God, war, governmental actions, orders of domestic or foreign courts or tribunals, non-performance of third parties, or loss of or fluctuations in heat, light, or air conditioning.
I HAVE READ THIS AGREEMENT AND AGREE TO ALL OF THE PROVISIONS CONTAINED ABOVE. ©1998-2007 Penpal-Friends
All rights reserved.