These terms govern use of the Internet forum at http://lternet.discourse.group. By using the forum, you agree to these terms with The LTER Network.

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Your Permission to Use the Forum

Subject to these terms, The LTER Network gives you permission to use the forum. Everyone needs to agree to these terms to use the forum.

Acceptable Use

  1. You may not break the law using the forum.

  2. You may not use or try to use another’s account on the forum without their specific permission.

  3. You may not buy, sell, or otherwise trade in user names or other unique identifiers on the forum.

  4. You may not send advertisements, chain letters, or other solicitations through the forum, or use the forum to gather addresses or other personal data for commercial mailing lists or databases.

  5. You may not automate access to the forum, or monitor the forum, such as with a web crawler, browser plug-in or add-on, or other computer program that is not a web browser. You may crawl the forum to index it for a publicly available search engine, if you run one.

  6. You may not falsely imply that you’re affiliated with or endorsed by the LTER Network.

  7. You may not remove any marks showing proprietary ownership from materials you download from the forum.

  8. You may not disable, avoid, or circumvent any security or access restrictions of the forum.

  9. You may not strain infrastructure of the forum with an unreasonable volume of requests, or requests designed to impose an unreasonable load on information systems underlying the forum.

  10. You may not impersonate others through the forum.

Content Standards

  1. You may not submit content to the forum that is illegal, offensive, or otherwise harmful to others. This includes content that is harassing, inappropriate, abusive, or hateful.

  2. You may not submit content to the forum that violates the law, infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights, violates anyone’s privacy, or breaches agreements you have with others.

  3. You may not submit content to the forum containing malicious computer code, such as computer viruses or spyware.

  4. You may not submit content to the forum as a mere placeholder, to hold a particular address, user name, or other unique identifier.

  5. You may not use the forum to disclose information that you don’t have the right to disclose, such as others’ confidential or personal information.

Enforcement

The LTER Network Office may investigate and prosecute violations of these terms. The organization may notify and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting violations of the law and these terms.

The LTER Network Office reserves the right to change, redact, and delete content on the forum for any reason. If you believe someone has submitted content to the forum in violation of these terms, contact us immediately.

Your Account

You must create and log into an account to use some features of the forum.

To create an account, you must provide some information about yourself. If you create an account, you agree to provide, at a minimum, a valid e-mail address, and to keep that address up-to-date. You may close your account at any time by deleting your account under your profile settings or by e-mailing <lno@lternet.edu>.

You agree to select a secure password for your account, and keep it secret. You agree to notify the LTER Network Office immediately if you suspect your account has been compromised.

The LTER Network Office may restrict, suspend, or close your account on the forum if we reasonably believe that you’ve broken any rule in these terms.

Your Content

Nothing in these terms gives the LTER Network any ownership rights in intellectual property that you share with the forum, such as your account information, posts, or other content you submit to the forum. Nothing in these terms gives you any ownership rights to content presented on the forum either.

You remain solely responsible for content you submit to the forum. Content you submit to the forum belongs to you, and you decide what permission to give others for it. But at a minimum, you license the LTER Network to provide content that you submit to the forum to other users of the forum. That special license allows the organization to copy, publish, and analyze content you submit to the forum.

Others who receive content you submit to the forum may violate the terms on which you license your content. You agree that the LTER Network will not be liable to you for those violations or their consequences.

Disclaimers

You accept all risk of using the forum and content on the forum. As far as the law allows, the LTER Network and its suppliers provide the forum as is, without any warranty whatsoever.

The forum may hyperlink to and integrate forums and services run by others. The LTER Network does not make any warranty about services run by others, or content they may provide. Use of services run by others may be governed by other terms between you and the one running the service.

Feedback

The LTER Network Office welcomes your feedback and suggestions for the forum. See the Contact section below for ways to get in touch with us.

Termination

Either you or the LTER Network may end the agreement written out in these terms at any time. When our agreement ends, your permission to use the forum also ends.

The following provisions survive the end of our agreement: Your Content, Feedback, Disclaimers, and General Terms.

General Terms

If a provision of these terms is unenforceable as written, but could be changed to make it enforceable, that provision should be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. Otherwise, that provision should be removed.

You may not assign your agreement with the LTER Network. The LTER Network may assign your agreement to any affiliate of the organization, any other organization that becomes responsible for operation of the network. Any attempted assignment against these terms has no legal effect.

Neither the exercise of any right under this Agreement, nor waiver of any breach of this Agreement, waives any other breach of this Agreement.

These terms embody all the terms of agreement between you and the LTER Network about use of the forum. These terms entirely replace any other agreements about your use of the forum, written or not.

Contact

You may notify the LTER Network Office under these terms, and send questions to the organization, at <lno@lternet.edu>.

The LTER Network Office may notify you under these terms using the e-mail address you provide for your account on the forum, or by posting a message to the homepage of the forum or your account page.

Changes

The organization last updated these terms on June 21, 2023, and may update these terms again. The LTER Network Office will post all updates to the forum. The LTER Network Office may also announce updates with special messages or alerts on the forum.

Once you get notice of an update to these terms, you must agree to the new terms in order to keep using the forum.