Terms of User (TOU) of the websites, web-services and online player of earthTV network GmbH, such as liveonearth.com, earthtvnet.com and earthtv.com (with all top-level domains and sub-domains).
1. Application, Changes of the Terms of Use (TOU)
1.1 The services, for which you are registering (you are using), are services of the earthTV network GmbH, Neue Schönhauser Str. 3-5, 10178 Berlin, Germany, (“earthTV ” or “We”). earthTV provides its services on the basis of these TOU. By registering with or using our services, you agree to be bound by these TOU. Should you not wish to be bound by these TOU you must not use the services offered.
1.2 earthTV reserves the right to change the TOU, effective immediately as of such change. In this case, earthTV shall notify you of upcoming TOU changes and inform you that the changes shall be considered accepted by you unless you object within four weeks, and/or as soon as you use the services again [after having been notified of the changes]. We may also inform you of changes of these TOU or other matters by posting appropriate notices or links in our service.
2. Application, Pre-Requisites for Participation, Legal Declarations
2.1 Only such users may participate who are of legal age and not otherwise barred from entering a binding contract, or who are acting with the consent of their legal guardian.
2.2 You agree to provide true, accurate, current and complete information about yourself as required in the registration form and to keep your member account data current and accurate. After Registration, you will be assigned a password for your member account.
2.3 We hereby notify you that you may be receiving legal declarations (e.g. confirmation e-mails, changes to the TOU) by e-mail. These shall be considered served when they are available for you in your mail box in our service. By accepting the General Terms & Conditions the user accepts to be sent periodic newsletters about earthTV at the email address indicated in the registration. The user is entitled to unsubscribe from such newsletters at any time by by clicking on the corresponding link in the newsletter-email itself or open a request to be removed via https://www.global.earthtv.com/#contact.
2.4 Your member account is not transferable and not inheritable.
3. Termination, Blocking of Member Accounts
3.1 You may have earthTV delete you member account at any time for any reason. At that time, earthTV will also delete the data stored for you.
3.2 You hereby agree that earthTV as well, at their own discretion and for whatever reason may terminate you password, your member account (or parts or certain content therein) or any other use of our services by you, and delete any of your content. This is applicable especially if you have not used the earthTV services for an extended period of time or if earthTV has reason to believe that you have violated these TOU or not complied with essential premises of these TOU.
3.3 You agree that any interruption of your access to the earthTV services as per the provisions of this agreement may occur without prior notice and that earthTV may block your member account and immediately lock or delete all information and files and/or prevent any further access to such files or services.
3.4 In case of a deletion of your member account, you may regain access to our service only after prior written and explicit consent. You must not aid any user whose member account has been deleted or blocked to gain access to our service using your member account.
3.5 To the extent their application concerns your actions before the time of deletion, the obligations as per 4.2, 4.3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 continue to be in force after deletion of a member account.
4. General User Obligations
4.1 It is your obligation to make sure your member account is only being used by yourself and, to that end, you are especially required to keep your password secret.
4.2 You acknowledge that the owner of a member account is fully responsible for all activities taking place via her/his member account. If you have allowed use of your account to another person, such as a minor without consent of their guardian, you acknowledge that you are fully responsible for the actions of that user, for the access control to your account, and the use of the service by such user and the consequences of any abuse.
4.3 You shall inform us immediately of any abuse of your password or member account as well about any other violation of security provisions, and be liable to earthTV for any abuse of your member account caused by you.
4.4 You will, at your own cost, provide the technical pre-requisites for participation in our service (such as internet connection, mobile phone connection).
4.5 You agree to abstain from any activity which is or could be detrimental to the functioning of our services (e.g. by software or other scripts). This especially concerns the use of “robot”, “spider” or “offline reader” software, which automatically generate user inquiries over the internet. You shall further refrain from modifying, overwriting, copying or distribution of any areas of our web site not provided to you for such purposes, including areas of other users.
5. Responsibility, Prohibited Content and Behavior
5.1 The sole responsibility for any information, data, text, software, music, sounds, photographs, graphics, videos, messages or other materials (“content”), stored, published or transmitted using the earthTV service by you or other users is in its entirety with the person where such content originates; that is, for example, [the responsibility for] content you created yourself but also for content acquired by you from other sources and stored, published and/or transmitted by you lies exclusively and solely with you.
5.2 earthTV, as a matter of policy, does not control the content stored, published and/or transmitted by you or other users using our services, and therefore does not warrant any accuracy, appropriateness, nor quality of such content. You acknowledge that, by using the service, you may be exposed to content which may be insulting, obscene, or in other ways objectionable if the user responsible for that content fails to comply with the provisions of these TOU or their applicable laws.
5.3 Within your use of the earthTV services you may not:
- Store, publish, or transmit any data, text, images, files, links, software or other content that, according to the applicable legal provisions or in the opinion of earthTV , is unlawful, harmful, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, hateful, racist, or otherwise objectionable, or in any way may cause harm to minors, especially by being pornographic, by glorifying violence, or otherwise harmful to minors
- Store, publish, or transmit content that infringes on any rights of third parties, especially any patents, trademarks, copyright or other proprietary rights, trade secrets, or personal or property rights
- Store, publish, or transmit any material that contains software viruses or any other information, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment
- Store, publish, and/or transmit content which you are not authorized to pass on Impersonate on the earthTV services any other person, such as an earthTV official, or any other person responsible for the services, or otherwise represent a non existing affiliation with such person or entity
- Forge headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any content transmitted through the Service
- Store, publish, and/or transmit any unsolicited advertising, promotional materials, junk or mass emails (“Spam“), chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other form of solicitation
- In the context of using our services, violate any national or international law, including stock exchange regulations (such as the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ or the Frankfurt Stock Exchange)
- Harass, insult, threaten, defame, distress or embarrass anyone, be it a natural personal or legal entity or cause inconvenience in any other manner or to claim or disseminate untrue facts about any natural person or legal entity or company
- Collect, store, or transmit personal data about other users without their consent.
5.4. As a matter of policy we do not verify and control user content. However, we reserve the right to reject or to lock out or to move to a different location within our service any content available through our service without citing reasons, especially when we have learned of user content violating these TOU.
6. User Content
6.1 earthTV permits you to use our services in accordance with the applicable legal provisions and those of these TOU, in order to store, publish, and to transmit content, and to share it with other users. In this, earthTV does not supervise you and claims no ownership in your content whatsoever and does not change it.
6.2 In using our services, you authorize us according to the provisions of these TOU with storing of your content an with making it publicly available within our services in its applicable design.
6.3 You are aware that we sell advertising as part of our service offerings which also may appear in the environment of your content, possibly before and after your content, and you expressly agree with this. For better usability of our service, especially for use in a search function, you also permit us to generate reduced size images (thumbnails) of your images and videos, and to use them in earthTV services. You further know, that the technical processing and transmission of our /service/offerings, including the content entered by you, may make it necessary to use various networks, and/or undertake technical modifications or other changes, in order to meet the requirements of connected networks or other technical facilities.
6.4 You warrant that you possess any and all required rights as relates to the content, for which you are using our services to store, publish, and/or transfer them, and that [by doing so] you are not violating any rights of third parties whatsoever, no legal provisions, nor the conditions of these TOU, in particular the rules as set out in sub-paragraph 5.3. In case you are not owner of the rights in any content provided by you, you ensure that you have effectively procured any necessary assignments, licenses, permissions, consent and the like. In case you violate this pre-requisite warranty, you absolve us, as per paragraph 11, from any liability to third parties and hold us harmless to the fullest extent.
6.5 earthTV is entitled to store content, transfer it to third parties to the extent required by law or in a good faith belief that such access or disclosure is reasonably necessary or legally allowed in order to (a) comply with legal provisions or court orders or governmental ordinances, (b) enforce these TOU, (c) respond to third party claims of rights violations or (d) protect the rights, the property or the personal safety of earthTV, its users or the public.
7. Notice of Rights Violations
7.1 earthTV respects the intellectual property of third parties and we ask our users to do the same.
7.2 If you believe that your intellectual property right has been infringed upon by content of another user who is using our service for storing, publication or transfer of her/his content, please let us know by providing following information:
- a description of the copyrighted work or other intellectual property that you claim has been infringed
- a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the site
- an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other intellectual property interest
- your address, telephone number, and email address
- a 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
- an affidavit (statement) by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright or intellectual property owner or authorized to act on the copyright or intellectual property owner’s behalf.
7.3 The person in charge of claims of copyright or other intellectual property infringement at earthTV, who is to be notified of intellectual property infringement, is: Earth Television Network GmbH, Neue Schönhauser Str. 3-5, 10178 Berlin, Att: Manager Business & Legal Affairs; legal(a)earthtv.com .
7.4 Please notify us of any violations of these TOU by prohibited content. If you find that content of other users violates these TOU or any provisions of law, please inform us of the identification data of the person violating the rules along with the content concerned and its description.
8. Privacy
The subject of Privacy is covered in our Privacy Policy.
9. Disclaimer of Warranties, Links
9.1 We are offering our services in the shape and form we consider best and reserve the right to interrupt or terminate it at any time. You are using our service at your sole risk. This especially applies to the download or other usage of content from our services, in particular, content of other users. You will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or other devices utilized for using our service, for loss of data, or for other damage including damage suffered by third parties as caused by your actions in this context.
9.2 earthTV in no way warrants toward you or any natural person or legal entity that the service/offering does meet your requirements, and that it is available at any time without interruption, timely, secure and free of error. earthTV also does not warrant any results that can be achieved by using the service, nor the accuracy and reliability of the information available within the service. earthTV further does not warrant that the hardware and software used to operate our service operates fault free or that any errors occurring will be corrected, and is not liable for any damages arising from the use or inability to use the earthTV services, including loss and corruption of data. In particular, earthTV is not liable for the costs of attaining replacement or costs arising within the context of goods or services purchased, of messages received, or other business activities, or changes of your entries or data or otherwise in connection with the earthTV services. earthTV also is not liable for the behavior of users or other third parties, nor for content or declarations transmitted by users or third parties within the framework of the service/offering.
9.3 Our service may contain links to other web sites and services, including content stored on our servers by users of our service/offerings within the framework of our services. We do not control the targets of such links, do not adopt such content available using third party /service/offerings or sources, and exclude any and all liability in relation to them.
10. Liability and Limitation of Liability
10.1 Claims for damages against earthTV shall be excluded independent of their legal basis, unless earthTV, its legal representatives or agents have acted intentionally or with gross negligence. earthTV is liable for normal negligence only when earthTV, its legal representatives, officers, or agents violated a contractual obligation of fundamental necessity for achieving the fulfillment of this contract.
10.2 The above Limitation of Liability does not apply for damage claims resulting from an injury of life, body, health, or the acceptance of warranted properties or a malicious concealment of deficiencies on the part of earthTV.
10.3 To the extent earthTV is liable for normal negligence as per subsection 1, such damage claims shall be limited to the predictable, damages typically awarded in relation to such contracts.
10.4 The statute of limitations for damage claims against earthTV shall be 12 Months after they arise, unless they are based on a prohibited or pre-meditated action.
10.5 To the extent a liability of earthTV is excluded, such exclusion shall also cover earthTV affiliated companies as well as personal liability of employees, representatives, partners, and agents of earthTV and/or earthTV affiliated companies.
11. Indemnity
You hereby agree to indemnify and hold harmless earthTV, earthTV affiliated companies, as well as the officers, employees, representatives, partners, and agents of earthTV, and/or earthTV affiliated companies on first demand from any claim or demand of any kind made by any third party due to or arising out of content you store, publish, or transmit or your use of the service, your violation of the TOS, or your violation of any rights of another. This includes in each instance reasonable attorneys’ fees.
12. Trademarks and Other Proprietary Rights of earthTV
You acknowledge that any and all rights in the service/offerings of earthTV and its representation, including trademarks, patent, copyrights or licensing rights or other rights or comparable legal entitlements in relation to you are exclusively those of earthTV and that you will not use them without prior explicit written consent by earthTV, nor remove any indications of the ownership of rights by earthTV. In particular, you may not use the trademark earthTV, copy or modify software, reverse assemble, create derivative works from, or otherwise attempt to discover any source code, sell or assign software, grant sublicenses, or any rights in or otherwise claim any related rights. For clarification, the above is not applicable to your own content which you place into our service/offering as well as for similar such content of other users. However, you shall equally respect the rights of others in such content.
13. Applicable Law, Place of Performance, Venue
13.1 The applicable law shall be German law, excluding rights arising from the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.
13.2 Place of performance and sole venue – to the extent allowed by law – shall be Munich. Germany.
13.3 There are no verbal side agreements. Changes of the terms of this agreement are required to be in text format. This also includes the repeal or amendment of this text format provision.
13.4 If any provision of these TOU is invalid as a whole or in part, the remaining contract remains in full force and effect. In case of such invalidity, the parties shall agree to a valid replacement provision that most closely resembles the invalid one. The same goes for the omission of a provision.