Lincoln Financial Media Company Terms of Use —Effective Date: 08/08/2010
WELCOME TO OUR WEBSITES! CERTAIN SITES ALLOW YOU TO ENGAGE IN VARIOUS ACTIVITIES,
SUCH AS TO INTERACT AND CHAT WITH OTHER USERS THROUGH THE DISCUSSION FORUMS,
TO POST MESSAGES AND OTHER CONTENT THROUGH BLOGS, DISCUSSION FORUMS AND OTHER
ONLINE PLACES, AND TO PARTICIPATE IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES. WE HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR
TIME SPENT ON OUR WEBSITES.
REMEMBER THAT IF YOU USE AND/OR VISIT ANY OF OUR WEBSITES, YOU AGREE TO ALL OF
THE TERMS OF USE NOTED BELOW, AS WELL AS TO: (1) OUR PRIVACY
POLICY; (2) ANY ADDITIONAL TERMS THAT GOVERN CERTAIN PRODUCTS AND SERVICES,
WHICH WILL BE PRESENTED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THOSE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES (“ADDITIONAL
TERMS”); AND (3) ANY RULES OF PARTICIPATION (“RULES”) PROVIDED ON THE WEBSITES
FOR CERTAIN ACTIVITIES AND SERVICES, SUCH AS CONTESTS, SWEEPSTAKES, USER CLUBS,
AND AWARDS PROGRAMS, THE PRIVACY POLICY, THE COPYRIGHT POLICY, THE TEXTING POLICY
(WHERE APPLICABLE), AS WELL AS ANY ADDITIONAL TERMS OR RULES MAY BE LISTED ELSEWHERE
BUT THEY ARE INCORPORATED INTO THESE TERMS OF USE BY REFERENCE (AS IF WE REPEATED
ALL THAT OTHER LANGUAGE HERE).
IN CASE THERE IS A CONFLICT BETWEEN THESE TERMS OF USE AND ANY ADDITIONAL TERMS
FOR ACTIVITIES ON OUR WEBSITES IN WHICH YOU CHOOSE TO PARTICIPATE, THE ADDITIONAL
TERMS WILL GOVERN. AND JUST IN CASE THERE IS A CONFLICT BETWEEN THESE TERMS OF
USE AND ANY SPECIFIC RULES FOR ACTIVITIES ON OUR WEBSITES IN WHICH YOU CHOOSE
TO PARTICIPATE, THESE TERMS OF USE WILL CONTROL.
PLEASE DO NOT USE THE WEBSITES IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ANY OF THESE TERMS OF USE
BECAUSE ONCE YOU ARE ON OUR WEBSITES THESE TERMS OF USE APPLY.
LINCOLN FINANCIAL MEDIA COMPANY AND ITS AFFILIATES, SUBSIDIARIES, DIVISIONS,
OR AGENTS (COLLECTIVELY, “LFMC,” “OUR,” “WE” or “US”) RESERVE THE RIGHT IN THEIR
SOLE DISCRETION TO DENY ACCESS TO ALL OR PART OF OUR WEBSITES
WE ALSO RESERVE THE RIGHT TO CHANGE ANY FEATURES ON OUR WEBSITES AND TO CHANGE
THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS AT ANY TIME, SO WE RECOMMEND VISITING OUR SITES FREQUENTLY
TO SEE OUR NEW AND EXCITING CHANGES AND TO VISIT THIS PAGE TO MAKE SURE THAT
THE RULES HAVE NOT CHANGED SINCE YOUR LAST VISIT.
HERE ARE THE SPECIFIC TERMS OF USE WHICH WE EXPECT YOU TO FOLLOW:
- Ability to Accept Terms of Use. The Terms of Use form a
legally binding contract between you and us. By using any of the Websites,
you affirm that you are either more than 18 years of age, or an emancipated
minor, or possess legal parental or guardian consent, and are fully able and
competent to enter into the terms, conditions, obligations, representations
and responsibilities set forth in this Agreement, and to abide by and comply
with these Terms of Use.
- Accounts. To use some features of our Websites, you may
need to create an account. To do so, you must provide correct and complete
information. This means you cannot use a false or misleading name or a name
that you are not authorized to use. Impersonating another person on our Websites
is prohibited. You become entirely responsible for the activity that occurs
on your account (including any and all charges incurred while your account
is being used and liability for harm caused by statements made or materials
posted under your account), so be sure to keep your account password secure
and tell us immediately if you think there has been unauthorized use of your
account.
- Our Use of Your Information. We respect your information
and privacy. Our Privacy
Policy tells you how we approach the collection, use or sharing of Personal
Information (as defined in the Privacy Policy). Also, by using
our Websites, you agree that we are not responsible for any of your Personal
Information that you post publicly using our various services such as discussion
forums, blogs, or message boards. You can read more about all of this in our
PRIVACY POLICY.
- Copyright. Everything on or used in connection with our
Websites, including but not limited to text, images, graphics, logos,
audio and video content, software (collectively, "Content") – with the exception
of User Generated Content as defined below – is owned by us and/or
our affiliates, subsidiaries, licensors or suppliers. This means that you cannot
use the Content without our permission. Here’s what permission we do give you
to use the Content. You may only use the Content online for purposes of visiting
and using our websites, and only for your personal, non-commercial use. This
means that, unless we specify otherwise, you may not download any of our Content,
give copies to your friends, display the Content publicly, or charge anything
for it (these are only meant to be examples and are not an exhaustive list
of things you can’t do with our Content). Also, you may not use the Content
to construct any kind of database or your own website.
- Discussion Forum Rules: If the Website you are visiting has a discussion
forum, bulletin board, chat room, blog, message board, or other online
community location (collectively “Discussion Forum”), the following rules apply:
- Your Profile information. When you create an account to use our Discussion
Forums, you do not have to disclose any of the “suggested”
information like your gender, birth date and real name. You will, however,
be able to build a public profile which allows other members to see information
that you submit to us. You can privatize some of the information on your
public profile, such as your e-mail address. To protect your safety, please
use your best judgment. We discourage divulging personal phone numbers and
addresses or other information that can be used to identify or locate you.
Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, we do not knowingly collect
Personal Information from children under the age of 13. Although you do not
have to disclose your birth date, if any information is disclosed in your
profile or submissions that can identify you as a child under the age of
13, we reserve the right to delete, edit, or reject such information, your
entire profile or your submission.
- Be courteous. In a community full of opinions and preferences, people
always disagree. We encourage active discussions and welcome
debate in our Discussion Forums. However, we do not tolerate personal attacks,
threats, verbal abuse, defamatory, obscene, hateful or slanderous language,
or deliberate disruption of discussions with repetitive messages, meaningless
messages, or "spam." You also are prohibited from using the Websites to engage
in any illegal conduct. Please contact our site/privacy administrators at stumpyjoe@lincolnfinancialmedia.com if
you have concerns about the conduct of other users on our
Websites. We reserve the right in our sole discretion
to temporarily suspend or permanently block access by anyone to all or part
of our Websites at any time.
No Thread Hijacking. Thread hijacking – or taking a Discussion Forum
thread unreasonably off topic by discussing something entirely unrelated
to the discussion at hand, or submitting an unreasonable number of off-topic
posts to a thread that does not contribute to the value of a discussion -
is disrespectful to other discussion forum members and discourages members
from participating in discussions. So please don’t hijack threads.
We encourage
you to tell us if you believe a member is hijacking a thread. We will attempt
to remind users perceived as engaging in thread hijacking to start a new
thread for their discussion or, in our sole discretion, may temporarily suspend
or permanently block access by such user to one or more of our forums.
- Login Technology: Our forum system offers two login methods: cookies and
session identification (SID). If you use cookies to login,
the forum will save your username, encrypted password, and board passwords
to your computer in the form of a "Cookie," which is a small text file that
is saved to your browser.
Session identification stores your current session
(visit) on our server using your IP address, username, encrypted password,
and any board passwords you may use during your session. If you use session
identification, you will be logged out after three (3) hours of inactivity.
- User Content Representations and Warranties: Our Websites may allow you
to upload or share content on the Websites so that other users can
enjoy it. It’s great that you can upload or share content on some of our Websites;
however, there are definitely some things we do not permit you to upload or
share on our Websites. Do not upload or share anything on the Websites such
as messages, posts, text, film, video, audio, photographic, other recordings
or images, or any other content (collectively, “User Generated Content”) that
you do not have a right to use and share on the Internet. By uploading or sharing
any User Generated Content on our websites, you represent and warrant that:
(a) you are the original author or creator of the User Generated Content and/or
have full copyright, title and interest in and to any User Generated
Content, (b) you have the full power and authority to upload and/or share the
User Generated Content on the Websites, (c) the use of any element of the User
Generated Content will not violate or infringe upon the trademarks, trade names,
copyrights, patents, rights or privacy or publicity or any other personal or
proprietary rights of any person or entity, and will not defame or libel any
person or entity, (d) you will not publish falsehoods or misrepresentations
that could damage LFMC or any third party; (e) you will not submit material
that is, obscene, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially or
ethnically offensive, or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal
offense, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or is otherwise inappropriate,
(f) you will not post or disseminate advertisements or solicitations of business,
or otherwise engage in commercial activity on our Websites, (g) you will not
impersonate another person, (h) you will not solicit any user for material
gain, and (i) you will not produce spam throughout the Website publicizing
a product or event.
- User Generated Content License. Please note that if you post, upload or
otherwise make available any User Generated Content on our Websites,
you will still own the User Generated Content (assuming you have rights to
own it) but you are giving us the right to use your User Generated Content.
That means that if you send in, post, upload, make available, or disclose to
us in any way any User Generated Content, you grant us, our affiliates and
related entities, the right use it any way we want in any medium without getting
your permission or having to pay you for it.
In legal terms, by providing us
with any User Generated Content, you grant us and our affiliates and related
entities, a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive
right and fully sub-licensable license to use, copy, reproduce, distribute,
publish, publicly perform, publicly display, modify, adapt, translate, archive,
store, and create derivative works from such User Generated Content, in any
form, format, or medium, of any kind now known or later developed. Without
limiting the generality of the previous sentence, you authorize us to share
the User Generated Content across all websites and online media platforms,
newspapers, television and radio broadcast stations, and any other media now
or hereafter known affiliated with us and to use your name, likeness and any
other information in connection with our use of the material you provide. You
waive any moral rights you might have with respect to any User Generated Content
you provide to us. You also grant us the right to use any material, information,
ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques contained in any communication you
provide or otherwise submit to us for any purpose whatsoever, including but
not limited to, commercial purposes, and developing, manufacturing and marketing
commercial products using such information. All rights in this paragraph are
granted without the need for additional compensation of any sort to you.
- Screening and Removal of User Generated Content. You acknowledge that we
and/or our designees may or may not pre-screen User Generated Content,
and have the right (but not the obligation), in our sole discretion, to move,
remove, block, edit, or refuse any User Generated Content for any reason, including
without limitation that such User Generated Content violates these
Terms of Use or is otherwise objectionable.
- Risk from User Generated Content. We try to create an environment in which
users are posting and discussing content that you will find useful,
interesting and appropriate; however we cannot and do not monitor or manage
all User Generated Content. Thus, we do not promise the accuracy, integrity,
or quality of the User Generated Content and do not endorse it in any manner.
In other words, enjoy what other members post or share, but do it at your own
risk.
Also, all User Generated Content provided on the Websites is the sole
responsibility of the person who provided it. This means that you are entirely
responsible for all User Generated Content that you provide.
- Third Party Sites: Our Websites may allow you to link to third-party websites.
Those third-party websites do not belong to us, and we have no control
over, and assume no responsibility for, the content, accuracy, usefulness,
safety, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party websites. By using
our Websites, you expressly relieve us and our affiliates and agents of any
and all liability arising from your use of any third-party websites linked
to our Websites. Enjoy the links, but at your own risk.
- Warranty Disclaimer. We really hope you enjoy the Websites and we also hope
the Websites will function properly. However, you agree that your use
of the Websites shall be at your sole risk. To the fullest extent permitted
by law, LFMC, its officers, directors, shareholders, employees, Operational
Service Providers (as defined in the Privacy Policy), representatives, affiliates
and agents disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including, but not
limited to the implied warranties and conditions of merchantability, fitness
for a particular purpose and non-infringement, in connection with the Websites
and your use thereof. LFMC makes no warranties or representations about the
accuracy or completeness of the Websites, and assumes to the maximum extent
permitted by law no liability or responsibility for any (a) errors, mistakes,
or inaccuracies on the Websites, (b) personal injury or property damage, of
any nature whatsoever, resulting from your access to and use of the Websites,
(c) unauthorized access to or use of our secure servers and/or any and all
Personal Information that is not submitted using a secured transmission, (d)
interruption or the cessation of transmission to or from our Websites, (e)
bugs, viruses, trojan horses, or the like, which may be transmitted to or through
our Websites by any third-party, and/or (f) errors or omissions on our Websites
or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of your use of any
content posted, emailed, transmitted, or otherwise made available via the Websites.
LFMC does not warrant, endorse, guarantee, or assume responsibility for any
product or service advertised or offered by a third-party through the Websites
or any hyperlinked website or feature in any banner or other advertising, and
LFMC will not be a party to or in any way be responsible for monitoring any
transaction between you and third-party providers of products or services.
As with the purchase of a product or service through any medium or in any environment,
you should use your best judgment and exercise caution where appropriate.
- Limitation of Liability. Here’s more legal language which we need to protect
us so that we can provide you the benefits of the Websites. In no event
shall LFMC, its officers, directors, employees, shareholders, representatives,
Operational Service Providers, affiliates or agents be liable to you for any
direct, indirect, incidental, special, punitive, or consequential damages whatsoever
resulting from any (a) mistakes, or inaccuracies of content on the Websites,
(b) personal injury or property damage, of any nature whatsoever, resulting
from your access to and use of the Websites, (c) any unauthorized access to
or use of our secure servers and/or any and all non-secured Personal Information
(d) any interruption or the cessation of transmission to or from the Websites,
(e) any bugs, viruses, trojan horses, or the like, which may be transmitted
to or through the Websites by any third party, and/or (f) any errors or omissions
in any content or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of
your use of any content posted, emailed, transmitted, or otherwise made available
via the Websites, whether based on warranty, contract, tort or any other legal
theory, and whether or not the company is advised of the possibility of such
damages. The foregoing limitation of liability shall apply to the fullest extent
permitted by law in the applicable jurisdiction.
- Indemnity. You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless LFMC, its affiliates,
subsidiaries, officers and directors, shareholders, agents, employees
and partners, Operational Service Providers and any other parties with whom
LFMC may contract to provide its services, from and against any and all claims,
actions, suits, costs, liabilities, judgments, obligations, losses, penalties,
fines or forfeitures, expenses or damages (including without limitation, reasonable
legal fees and expenses) of whatsoever kind and nature imposed on, incurred
by or asserted against LFMC arising out of any breach or alleged breach by
you of any representation, warranty, covenant or obligation pursuant to these
Terms of Use or the failure to fulfill any obligations relating to your account
incurred by you or any other person using your account. We reserve the right
to take over the exclusive defense of any claim for which we are entitled to
indemnification under this Section. In such event, you shall provide us with
such cooperation as is reasonably requested by us.
- Your Copyrighted Work. Just as LFMC requires users to respect our copyrights,
and those of our affiliates and partners, we respect the copyrights
of others. If you believe in good faith that your copyrighted work has been
reproduced on our Websites without authorization in a way that constitutes
copyright infringement, you may notify us by sending mail to our designated
agent:
The notice must have the following information as provided by federal
law (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 512 (c)(3)):
- A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf
of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed;
- Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed,
or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site
are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works
at that site;
- Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to
be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed
or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient
to permit the service provider to locate the material;
- Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact
the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number,
and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party
may be contacted;
- A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use
of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized
by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
- A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and
under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized
to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
- Independent Contractors. You and LFMC are independent contractors and nothing
herein shall be deemed to constitute a partnership between, or joint
venture of, you and LFMC or constitute either party the agent of the other.
You shall not hold yourself out contrary to the terms of this paragraph, and
LFMC shall not become liable for any representation, act or omission by you
contrary to the provisions of these Terms of Use.
- Termination. LFMC has the right to terminate your access to use the Websites
for any reason, including for violation of these Terms of Use. If we
ever terminate your access to any the Websites, sections 1, 3-4, 6-13, 15-18
of these Terms of Use shall still survive and be binding upon you.
- Statute of Limitations. You agree that regardless of any statute or law
to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related
to use of our Websites or these Terms of Use must be filed within one (1) year
after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred.
- Governing Law and Jurisdiction. These Terms of Use and all questions relating
to the performance, interpretation, breach or enforcement of these
Terms of Use, or the rights, obligations and liabilities of the parties hereto,
shall be governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, without regard to any
conflict of laws provisions. You agree that any and all disputes, claims or
litigation arising from or related in any way to these Terms of Use and our
relationship with you hereunder shall be litigated only in a court of competent
jurisdiction located in Georgia, and you agree to be subject to personal jurisdiction
and venue in that location.
WE KNOW THERE WAS A LOT OF LEGAL LANGUAGE TO GET THROUGH ABOVE, BUT THANKS FOR
READING AND NOW GO ENJOY THE WEBSITES!
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