Hostos Community College recognizes the increasing use of social networking technologies in an educational context, and is providing an official Hostos social networking platform to faculty, staff, and students. You are strongly encouraged to use Hostos hosted social media software to communicate in an academic context. Anytime you access, contribute to, or cite, any content on the hostos domain (hostos.cuny.edu) you are subject to the terms of service below. Hostos employees may be subject to the college social networking policies even on social networking and interactive Internet sites not affiliated with the college.
Hostos Social Media Terms of Use
1.- General Use of the Site and Agreement to these Terms.
- These terms of use are adopted from the various sources [listed below], and apply to all activities and modalities on the Site, including but not limited to Blogs, Forums, Groups, and Wikis.
- The “Site” is defined as any URL in the hostos.cuny.edu domain, including all sub-domains, and any other communication protocol that utilizes any technology on the hostos.cuny.edu domain, including, but not limited to, email and chat.
- Contributing to the Site signifies that you have read, understand, and agree to these terms. If you do not agree to these terms you are not authorized to use the Site.
- Unless otherwise agreed to, all users are subject to these terms of use, and any additional terms that may apply. These additional terms, if any, create a legal agreement between all users (you) and the Site and supersede any prior agreements between you and the Site.
- By accessing this Site, you agree to comply with the [CUNY Policy on Acceptable Use of Computer Resources], which includes, but is not limited to, requirements that you comply with applicable laws (including, but not limited to, libel, obscenity, and child pornography), assume responsibility for your activities, agree not to harass, disrupt, abuse, or invade the privacy rights of others.
2.- Conduct
The nature of most social networking sites is to reach a public audience. Please be aware that any information submitted whether through forms or email, including personally identifiable information, may be publicly displayed on sites hosted at the hostos.cuny.edu domain, or on websites not within our control. If you don’t want others to see such information, don’t submit it.
- Forms and Content
- To create a new blog, or register for an existing one, you may be required to submit an email address and other personal information. We may publicly display the personal information. Your email address may also be used to send you bulletins from individual Hostos sites to which you subscribe, or to attribute comments or posts to you. If there are problems with your individual site, we may contact you via email as well.
- If you contribute content, such as discussion comments, to any of our blogs, your contribution may be publicly displayed including personally identifiable information. Display of visitor content is determined by the discretion of the individual blog editors.
- As the editor of a blog, you may establish a range of access restrictions to your material. The initial default setting for individual blogs allows outside search engines, indexes and third party sites to scan each blog, create hyperlinks to individual blogs or distribute it further via feeds. If you change these settings, there is no guarantee that outside search engines will omit your blog from its searches. Please check your default settings to discern the level of access the public has to your individual blog.
- Each time you update your individual blog, it may also send pings or feeds to sites that index or track newly updated blogs. These sites may publicly display a hyperlink to your site and the time that you updated it. If your site publishes XML feeds, content from or links to your site may be publicly displayed on third party sites.
- Depending on the settings on your site, email bulletins that contain content from your site may be sent out to subscribers.
- Children’s Privacy (adopted from Harvard University policy)
The Hostos social network and related interactive Internet sites are intended for adults and we will not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 years old. Parents or legal guardians of a child or children under age 13 who have become a member(s) of a site in the hostos.cuny.edu domain must contact the Office of Educational Technology at edtech@hostos.cuny.edu or 718-518-7014 to report the suspected violation.
- Privacy Policy
- The Hostos Privacy Policies are enforced for all social media sites within the hostos.cuny.edu domain.
- Additionally, the CUNY Academic Commons Privacy Policies are adopted and enforced for all sites, blogs, forums, groups, wikis, and any information being published on the Hostos social media sites.
- Rights in the Content You Submit
Users retain all rights to content submitted in accordance with CUNY and Hostos related copyright policies.
- Copyright & Fair Use
- The CUNY Copyright and Fair Use policies apply to any post or contribution made by users whether faculty, staff, student, alumni, or other CUNY or non-CUNY affiliated party. Copyright and fair use regulations and procedures for enforcing related infringements are defined. Posting content in a manner that violates the copyright of others is prohibited and will be removed from any Hostos site. All violators will be subject to the full enforcement of CUNY policies.
- The CUNY Academic Integrity policy focused primarily on questions of student academic integrity, including but not limited to plagiarism, addresses procedures for violations. The policy applies to any contributions made by Hostos and non-Hostos affiliated users of the social network and related interactive Internet sites.
- CUNY complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
- *Hostos Community College reserves the right to use posted information (text, photos, videos, etc.) shared publicly for its own purposes.
- Intellectual Property and Trademark Rights: The CUNY Intellectual Property and Trademark polices focus primarily on information posted by faculty and staff and include content creation, copyright issues, and fair use violations. Users found in violation of intellectual property, copyright, fair use, trademark, or any other related policy are subject to full enforcement of CUNY and Hostos policies.
- Right to Remove Content and Discontinue Service
- The term content herein refers to any user submission reflected in the site: e.g. user posting or user comment. In Hostos sites that allow users’ submission of content (including photographs and videos), any content that violates the terms of use policy in any way or does not pertain to the subject of the social media site (or topic of discussion) will be removed. Users may only post their own, original content. Reproduced or borrowed content that violates third party rights (ex: copyrights or trademarks of others) will be deleted.
- Advertisements, solicitations, or any content that could be construed as non-academic or profit-making are disallowed. Thus, any content that could be intentionally or unintentionally considered commercial, may be removed from the site.
- Personal attacks of any kind or offensive comments that target or disparage any ethnic, racial, age, or religious group, gender, sexual orientation, or disability status are prohibited and subject to immediate removal.
- Similarly prohibited (and subjected to immediate removal) is the use of obscene, threatening, or harassing language.
- Also, content that promotes illegal activity may be removed from the site.
- In the aforementioned cases, the content may be deleted without notice. Furthermore, user’s account may also be banned from posting additional content or the user will be denied future access to the non-public site, at the discretion of the site’s moderator.
- This Right to Remove Content and Discontinue Service policy is subject to amendment or modification at any time.
3.- Governing Law
You agree that if the Hostos Social Media sites do not exercise or enforce any legal right or remedy that is contained in these terms and conditions (or for which Hostos is entitled under any applicable law), this will not be taken to be a formal waiver of these rights and remedies.
4.- Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability
- Hostos’ social networking Site is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. These services make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, as to the sites’ operation or the information, content or materials included on these sites.
- Hostos and its affiliates, officers, agents, employees and partners disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, functionality, or availability of information or Content displayed on these social networking sites. They will not be held liable for damages of any kind arising from the use of or inability to use these sites. Hostos does not warrant that the site will be secure, accurate, complete, and error-free. Users expressly agree and acknowledge that the use of this Site, including any material downloaded, is accessed at their own discretion and risk.
- Under no circumstances will Hostos be made liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special or exemplary damages arising out of or in connection with use of these services, whether or not Hostos has been advised of such damages.
- Such limitation of liability shall apply (1) whether the damages arise from (a) misuse or use and reliance on the services (b) any loss or corruption to data arising from inability to use the services (c) any loss of income, business or profits (whether direct or indirect) arising from from the interruption, suspension, or termination of the services (including such damages incurred by third parties (d) unauthorized access to or alteration of your content or transmissions or (E) statements or conduct of any third party on the services and (II) notwithstanding any failure of essential purpose of any limited remedy and to the fullest extent permitted by law.
5.- Terms License
Unless otherwise specified, all content on the Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License
6.- Modification of These Terms of Use
Hostos Community College reserves the right to change, at any time, and at the University’s sole discretion, the terms and conditions of use. Please refer back to this page often to review these terms and conditions. Continued use of the social networking sites constitutes a user’s agreement to all such terms and conditions.
Links:
http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/about/tos/
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/privacy-policy/
http://www.hostos.cuny.edu/wspp/
http://www.nyc.gov/html/misc/html/social_media_policy.html
http://www.cuny.edu/libraries/services/copyright/basics.html/
http://www.cuny.edu/libraries/services/copyright/FairUse.html/
Cuny Policy on Academic Integrity
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
http://policy.cuny.edu/manual_of_general_policy/article_vi
http://www.cuny.edu/website/copyright.html/