commenting terms and conditions

Your use of this blog

• You are solely responsible for the content of any comments, messages, images or links that you post at this blog.
• Please restrict the content of your comments to the subject matter of the post on which you are commenting. Comments that are irrelevant to the post can be moved, edited or deleted at the discretion of Science Media Centre staff.
• You must not impersonate anyone else (including, but not limited to, any Science Media Centre employee), or falsely state or suggest that you have an affiliation with a person or association.
• We recommend that you avoid posting personal information about yourself beyond your user name and your website URL if you have one.
• You must not post personal information about others.
• Prior to submitting your comments, please ensure that you check your facts.
• Posting of confidential information belonging to third parties is prohibited.
• Advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and requests for money are prohibited and will be deleted.
• You must not upload, post, transmit, link to or make available, any material that contains viruses or any other computer code, applications, programmes or files designed to destroy, interrupt, or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment.
• Your comments will be moderated for approval by Science Media Centre staff. All comments will be approved unless they do not abide by these terms and conditions.

Respect for others

• Please do not attack someone for having an opinion that differs from your own; if you disagree with someone, please express yourself respectfully.
• Comments must not contain any material that is abusive, vulgar, obscene, hateful, fraudulent, unlawful, threatening harassing or defamatory towards any person, whether they are a user of this blog or not.
• Do not post any material which may be discriminatory or cause offence on the grounds of an individual’s sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, working status or political affiliation.
• You may not use this blog to post any material or links to any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening or otherwise in violation of the law.
• You must not post or link to any material that contains any information about any person under the age of 18.
• Remember that this is a public website and your comments may remain online and be discoverable for a long time. Therefore, please try to express your views clearly so that they cannot be misunderstood.

Copyright and Third Party Rights

• You own the copyright to the material you post but you agree to grant us perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive rights to publish and edit your entry (and edited versions of your entry) on any media.
• You agree that you will not use this blog to post any copyright material without the express permission of the copyright holder.
• You agree that you will not use this blog to post any material or data that might infringe the intellectual property rights of any other person without the express permission of the person who owns that intellectual property.
• You may add links to internal or external sites within your post but you remain responsible for any such links. We reserve the right to remove any links we consider inappropriate.

Your data

We require that you enter a valid e-mail address when you comment on the blog. This is first and foremost to contact you in the event of any problems or issues that might arise from your comment.

We reserve the right to contact you regarding the subject matter of the post on which you have commented, but we will not use your address without your permission for any other purpose or add it to any mailing lists.

If you include identifiable information about yourself in your blog post, then you authorise the Science Media Centre to reproduce that identifiable information as part of the blog post.

Restricting access

• Provided you stick to these common sense rules you may continue to access and comment on the posts in this blog.
• We reserve the right to remove any post breaking any of these rules without prior contact with the author.
• If you are responsible for any breach of these terms and conditions it will not be an excuse to say that you did not read the terms and conditions.

Your promise to us

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Science Media Centre and its staff from and against any claim, liability, cost, damage or loss we may suffer or incur (including, without limitation legal costs) as a result of any material you post on our blog or any violation by you of these terms and conditions.

Complaints

This blog is moderated by Science Media Centre staff. If you wish to make a complaint regarding a comment or post (i.e. that it is objectionable or in breach of these terms and conditions) you may contact us by sending an email to smc@sciencemediacentre.org. We monitor this address between 9am and 6pm Monday to Friday, and intermittently over the weekend and UK national holidays.

If a formal complaint is made against you, we reserve the right to archive your comments until the complaint is resolved.

General

We reserve the right to change these Terms and Conditions at any time. If you are uncertain about anything in these Terms and Conditions, please e-mail us at smc@sciencemediacentre.org.

This blog is primarily intended for people based within the United Kingdom. We cannot guarantee that the site or the contents of the site complies with requirements of, or is appropriate for use in, other countries.

This blog is hosted on WordPress.com and we can accept no responsibility if for any reason the website is unavailable for any period.

Disclaimer

Comments posted on this blog, by persons other than the post authors, are those of the individual and in no way represent the views of the Science Media Centre. We reserve the right to delete any message for any reason whatsoever at our sole discretion.