Terms of Service

Labor Union Networking, Inc. ("we", "us", "our", "LUNI") present the following terms and conditions, which govern your use of the LUNI website ("Website") and The Union Place instance of Mastodon ("Union Place", "UP", "Instance", "Server"), and all content, products, and services available at or through the Website or Instance, including but not limited to https://www.laborunionnetworking.org/ and https://union.place/.

The Website and Instance are offered subject to your acceptance, without modification, of all of the terms and conditions contained within, along with all other operating rules, policies (including, without limitation, Union Place's Privacy Policy and Code of Conduct) and procedures that may be published on either the Website or the Instance by us (collectively, the Agreement).

Please read this Agreement carefully before accessing or using the Website and/or the Instance. By accessing or using any part of the Website and/or the Instance, you agree that you are bound by the terms and conditions of this Agreement. If you do not agree to all of the terms and conditions of this Agreement, then you may not access the Website and/or the Instance or utilise any content, products, and/or services provided therein.

If these terms and conditions are considered an offer by LUNI, acceptance is expressly limited to these terms.

If you operate an account, comment on an account, post material to the Website and/or the Instance, post links on the Website and/or the Instance, or otherwise make (or allow any third party to make) material available by means of the Website and/or the Instance (any such material, also known as "Content"), you are entirely responsible for that Content and any harm that may result from it. That is the case regardless of whether the Content in question constitutes text, graphics, audio, video, or computer software.

The Website and/or the Instance are available only to individuals who are at least 13 years old (for users within the United States and nonspecified jurisdictions) or at least 16 years old (for users within the EU and EEA).

I. Your Account

By creating an account, you agree that you are at least 13 years old (for users within the United States and nonspecified jurisdictions) or at least 16 years old (for users within the EU and EEA).

If you create an account on the Website and/or the Instance, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your account. You are responsible for all activities that occur under the account and any other actions taken in connection with the account. You must take reasonable steps to guard the security of your account. We will not be liable for any acts or omissions resulting from a breach of security, including any damages of any kind incurred as a result of such acts or omissions.

User accounts on the Instance are free to individual users.

We reserve the right to implement further account structure in the future.

Payments to Labor Union Networking, Inc., for account services or for any other purpose, are refundable or transferable solely at LUNI's discretion.

Establishment of a user account on the Website and/or the Instance is not equivalent to any form of membership with Labor Union Networking, Inc., and no part of this Agreement shall be used to construe it as such.

II. Privacy Policy

Your use of the Website and/or the Instance is governed by the Privacy Policy, currently located at https://union.place/privacy-policy.

III. Indemnity

By using the Website and/or the Instance, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Labor Union Networking, Inc. including its directors, officers, employees, volunteers, and agents as well as its contractors, its licensors, and their respective directors, officers, employees, volunteers, and agents from and against any and all claims and expenses, including attorneys' fees, arising out of your use of the Website and/or Instance, including but not limited to out of your violation of this Agreement.

IV. Termination

We may terminate your access to all or any part of the Website and/or Instance at any time at our sole discretion, including if we believe that you have violated this Agreement (including, without limitation, Union Place's Privacy Policy and Code of Conduct). You agree that any termination of your access to the Website and/or Instance may involve removing or discarding any content you have provided. We may, at our sole discretion, discontinue providing the Website and/or Instance at any time, within the terms laid out by the Mastodon covenant, or without notice arising from hardships or unforeseen circumstances not otherwise described therein.

If you wish to terminate this Agreement, you may delete your account and cease using the Website and/or Instance. You agree that, upon deletion of your account, we may, but are not required to (except where otherwise required by law), remove any content you have provided, at any time past the deletion of your account.

All provisions of this Agreement which by their nature should survive termination will survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity declarations, and limitations of liability.

V. License to Reproduce Content

By submitting Content to us for inclusion on the Website and/or Instance, you grant us a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt, and publish the Content, solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing, and promoting the contents of your account, including through downloadable clients and external feeds.

If you delete Content, we will use reasonable efforts to remove it from the Website and/or Instance, but you acknowledge that caching, including on federated instances, or references to the content may not be made immediately unavailable.

VI. Account Content

You agree to the following provisions for posting Content to the Website and/or Instance:

  1. We claim no ownership or control over any Content that you post to the Website and/or Instance. You retain any intellectual property rights to the Content you post, in accordance with applicable law. By posting content, you represent that you have the rights to reproduce that Content (and the right to allow us to serve such Content) without violation of the rights of any third party. You agree that you will bear any liability resulting from the posting of any Content that you do not have the rights to post.

  2. All Content posted to the Website and/or Instance in any way is the responsibility of the owner. Within the confines of international and local law, we will generally not place any further restriction on the type or appropriateness of any Content than is laid out in other operating rules and policies (including, without limitation, Union Place's Privacy Policy and Code of Conduct). If Content is deemed illegal by any law having jurisdiction over you, you agree that we may submit any necessary information to the proper authorities.

  3. We do not pre-screen Content. However, you acknowledge that we have the right (but not the obligation), in our sole discretion, to remove or refuse to remove any Content from the service. You also agree that we may, without limitation, take any steps necessary to remove Content from the Website and/or Instance, at our sole discretion.

  4. If any Content you have submitted is reported to us as violating this Agreement, you agree that we may call upon you to change, modify, or remove that Content, within a reasonable amount of time, as defined by us. If you do not follow this directive, we may remove the Content ourselves and take other actions up to and including suspension or termination of your account.

VII. Content Posted on Other Websites

We have not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, made available through the federated instances, webpages, and websites to which we, any user, or any provider of Content links, or that link to us. We do not have control over those federated instances, webpages, and websites, and are not responsible for their contents or their use.

By linking to an external federated instances, webpage, or website, we do not represent or imply that we endorse such federated instances, webpage or website.

You are responsible for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content. We disclaim any responsibility for any harm resulting from your use of external federated instances, webpages, and websites, whether that link is provided by us or by any provider of Content on the Website and/or Instance.

VIII. Exposure to Content

You agree that by using this service, you may be exposed to Content you find offensive or objectionable. If such Content is reported to us, it will be at our sole discretion as to what action, if any, should be taken.

IX. No Resale of Services

You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell, or exploit any portion of the Website and/or Instance, use of the Website and/or Instance, or access to the Website and/or Instance.

X. User Conduct

In addition to the Code of Conduct, located at https://union.place/about, you agree that you will not use the Website and/or Instance to:

  1. Upload, post, or otherwise transmit any Content that is harmful, threatening, abusive, hateful, invasive to the privacy and publicity rights of any person, or that violates any applicable local, state, national, or international law, including any regulation having the force of law;

  2. Upload, post, or otherwise transmit any Content that is spam, or contains unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);

  3. Maliciously impersonate any real person or entity, including but not limited to a Labor Union Networking, Inc. or Union Place staff member or volunteer, or to otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity;

  4. Upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that you do not have a right to transmit under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements);

  5. Upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other proprietary rights of any party;

  6. Interfere with or disrupt the Website and/or Instance or servers or networks connected to the Website and/or instance, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Website and/or Instance;

  7. Solicit passwords or personal identifying information for unintended, commercial or unlawful purposes from other users;

  8. Provide any material that is illegal under United States law;

  9. Upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that contains viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content;

  10. Allow usage by others in such a way as to violate this Agreement;

  11. Make excessive or otherwise harmful automated use of the Website and/or Instance;

  12. Access any other person's account, or exceed the scope of the Website and/or Instance that you have signed up for; for example, accessing and using features you don't have a right to use.

XI. Copyright Infringement

If you believe that material located on the Website violates your copyright, you may notify us in accordance with our Digital Millennium Copyright Act ('DMCA') Policy at https://www.laborunionnetworking.org/legal/dmca. We will respond to all such notices as required by law, including by removing the infringing material or disabling access to the infringing material. As set forth by law, we will, in our sole discretion, terminate or deny access to the Website and/or Instance to users of the site who have repeatedly infringed upon the copyrights or intellectual property rights of others.

XII. Volunteers

We appreciate the service of volunteers in many aspects of Website and/or Instance management, including but not limited to providing technical support, creating web-based content, performing site administration and moderation duties, providing expert advice, research, technical writing, reviewing, categorizing, and other duties as necessary.

All volunteers are expected to be of legal age, or volunteering with the consent of a legal parent or guardian.

By volunteering, you agree that any work created as a result of your volunteer service shall be licensed to LUNI on a perpetual, irrevocable, and world-wide basis, to the extent permitted by law. You agree that LUNI may determine the basis upon which your volunteer work shall be licensed to others, including under Open Source licenses that may permit the further alteration or dissemination of your work. If laws prevent such licensing, you agree never to sue LUNI for the use of said work.

By volunteering, you agree that you are providing your work with no expectation of pay or future consideration by LUNI. You also agree that you have taken reasonable diligence to ensure that the work is correct, accurate, and free of defect. You agree that you will not disclose or share any proprietary or confidential information you are provided with in the course of your volunteer work.

No user is required to volunteer for the Website and/or Instance, and users without volunteer status will receive equal care, support, and attention.

XIII. Changes

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to modify or replace any part of this Agreement at any time. We will take reasonable steps to notify you of any substantial changes to this Agreement; however, it is your responsibility to check this Agreement periodically for changes. Your continued use of or access to the Website and/or Instance following the posting of any changes to this Agreement constitutes acceptance of those changes.

We may also, in the future, offer new services and/or features through the Website and/or Instance (including the release of new tools and resources). Such new features and/or services shall be subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

XIV. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Website and Instance are provided "as is". Labor Union Networking, Inc. and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither Labor Union Networking, Inc., nor its suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that the Website and/or Instance will be error free or that access to the Website and/or Instance will be continuous or uninterrupted. You agree that any interruptions to the service will not qualify for reimbursement or compensation. You understand that you download from, or otherwise obtain content or services through, the Website and/or Instance at your own discretion and risk.

No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you in any fashion shall create any warranty not expressly stated in this Agreement.

XV. Limitation of Liabilities

You expressly understand and agree that in no event will Labor Union Networking, Inc., or its suppliers or licensors, be liable with respect to any subject matter of this agreement under any contract, negligence, strict liability or other legal or equitable theory for: (i) any special, incidental or consequential damages; (ii) the cost of procurement or substitute products or services; (iii) interruption of use or loss or corruption of data; (iv) any statements or conduct of any third party on the service; or (v) any unauthorized access to or alterations of your Content. We shall have no liability for any failure or delay due to matters beyond our reasonable control.

The foregoing shall not apply to the extent prohibited by applicable law.

XVI. General Information

This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between us and you concerning your use of the Website and/or Instance. This Agreement may only be modified by a written amendment signed by an authorized representative of Labor Union Networking, Inc., or by the posting of a revised version to this location. Except to the extent that applicable law (if any) provides otherwise, any dispute arising between you and Labor Union Networking, Inc. regarding these Terms of Service and/or your use or access of the Website and/or Instance will be governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the federal laws of the United States of America, excluding any conflict of law provisions. You agree to submit to the jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in James City County, Virginia for any disputes arising out of or relating to your use of the Website and/or Instance or your acceptance of this Agreement.

If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that part will be construed to reflect the parties' original intent, and the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. A waiver by either party of any term or condition of this Agreement or any breach thereof, in any one instance, will not waive such term or condition or any subsequent breach thereof.

The section titles in this Agreement are for convenience only and have no legal or contractual effect.

XVII. Reporting Violations

If you find content which you believe to be in violation of this Agreement, you can report it to us with the built-in reporting tool on the Mastodon instance.

XVIII. Creative Commons

This Terms of Service document is based on one developed by Dreamwidth Studios, LLC (https://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/tos) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Version 1.1
Last updated 7 January 2023.