Terms of use for Jisc Microsoft Teams community

1. Introduction to Jisc Microsoft Teams community

Jisc is dedicated to creating and maintaining a positive communities experience where everyone is treated with dignity, courtesy and respect, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age or religion. We do not tolerate bullying, intimidation, harassment or victimisation of event participants in any form.

Any discriminatory language and imagery are not appropriate at any Jisc event, including in presentation material. If you violate these rules you may be sanctioned or expelled from the event without a refund.

When agreeing to use the Jisc Microsoft Teams community (here after referred to as ‘Jisc community’) you must comply with these Terms of use so please read them carefully. Jisc may review these Terms of use to ensure that they reflect our services and the needs of the wider educational community and changes will be communicated on our website. If you continue to use Jisc Community following any such changes, this will constitute your agreement to follow and be bound by these modified Terms.

As well as these terms of use, as a user of the Jisc Microsoft Teams community you are subject to the Acceptable Use Policy within the Microsoft Online Services Terms.

2. Personal information

Please note that subject to compliance with data protection legislation Jisc may process information necessary to operate our systems, run the service, comply with the law, and protect the Jisc community and its users.

Where necessary in order to keep participants safe and foster a welcoming environment in our communities we may record incidents of misconduct and inappropriate behaviour. We may keep the information for two years, or until it is no longer relevant and we will use this personal information as described in our standard privacy notice.

For more information about how Jisc uses personal information please see our privacy policy.

3. Acceptable use of Jisc community

We expect your conduct when using the Jisc Microsoft Teams community to be legal and honest. All members of the community are expected to treat others with dignity and respect, as they themselves should expect to be treated. This includes any contributions to Microsoft Teams online meetings.

Jisc community may be used for any lawful activity including activities resulting in commercial gain as well as for not for profit activities.

However, some things that are not permitted include:

Collecting information about others (such as email addresses or other personal information) without their agreement
Using the community for commercial exchange such as charging to post messages to the community or the selling of email addresses or other personal information without the agreement of the individuals concerned

4. Unacceptable use

Jisc community may not be used for any activity that may reasonably be regarded as unlawful or potentially so. This includes, but is not limited to, any of the following activities:

Communicating or transmitting material which is untrue, false, inaccurate or misleading
Using Jisc community in any way that is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful or in connection with any unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful purpose or activity
Creating or transmitting, or causing the transmission, of material which is illegal or unlawful, including any offensive, obscene or indecent images, data or other material, or any data capable of being resolved into obscene or indecent images or material
Engaging in the targeted harassment of someone or inciting other people to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm
Promoting violence against, threatening, or harassing other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, background, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease
Creating or transmitting material with the intent to defraud
Creating or transmitting defamatory material
Creating or transmitting material with the intent to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety
Creating or transmitting material such that this infringes the copyright or any other intellectual property of another person
Creating or transmitting unsolicited bulk or marketing material (spam)
Communicating or transmitting material which infringes any right of confidence, right of privacy or right under data protection legislation
Communicating or transmitting material which constitute an incitement to commit a crime, instructions for the commission of a crime or the promotion of criminal activity
Engaging in any activity that is harmful or disruptive to the community or attempting to circumvent restrictions on access, usage or security of the community
Conducting any systematic or automated data scraping, data mining, data extraction or data harvesting, or other systematic or automated data collection activity, by means of or in relation to Jisc community

The list of unacceptable activities in this section is not exhaustive. The purpose is to illustrate those activities most commonly associated with the abuse and potentially unlawful use of an online community.

5.Your responsibility for content

When you place comments or posts, contribute to Microsoft Teams meetings, share material, post links on the Jisc community, or otherwise make (or allow any third party to make) material available by means of the Jisc community, you are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that content. That is the case regardless of whether the content in question constitutes, comments, text, graphics, audio files or computer software (here after referred to as "Content").

Content must not contain or consist of, and you must not promote or distribute by means of Jisc community, any viruses, worms, spyware, adware or other harmful or malicious software, programs, routines, applications or technologies.

Jisc strongly recommend that you do not discuss the details of personal affairs on the Jisc community or provide any form of personal details.

By submitting Content to the Jisc community you agree that:

This Content may be reused for purposes including but not limited to education and research
If you request Content to be deleted from the Jisc community, we will use reasonable efforts to remove it, but you acknowledge that references to the Content or the Content itself may not be made immediately unavailable

Without limiting any of those representations or warranties, Jisc has the right (though not the obligation) to, in our sole discretion:

Refuse or remove any Content that, in our reasonable opinion, breaches our moderation policy or is in any way harmful or objectionable, or
Terminate or deny access to and use of the Jisc community to any individual or entity for any reason

6. Information provided by Jisc

Jisc may use the Jisc community to respond to general, but not personal, queries. Jisc’s engagement in the community may include supplying information or answering questions. This engagement is intended as an informal channel which complements Jisc’s formal communications. It does not overwrite Jisc’s existing channels of communication.

7. Intellectual property

If you believe that material located on or linked to by the Jisc community breaches your or a third party's copyright or other intellectual property rights, please notify Jisc.

Jisc will respond to all such notices, including as required or appropriate by removing the infringing material or disabling all links to the infringing material.

In the case of a user who infringes or repeatedly infringes the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of ours or others, Jisc may, in our sole discretion, terminate or deny access to and use of the Jisc community.

These Terms of use do not transfer to you any intellectual property rights in the Jisc community, and all rights, title and interest in and to such property which is vested in Jisc will remain vested in Jisc. You may not use any of our trademarks without our prior written permission. Other intellectual property such as trademarks, graphics and logos used in the Jisc community may be the intellectual property of other third parties.

When making contributions to the Jisc community you retain intellectual property in your work (and you must ensure all necessary rights, permissions or licenses have been obtained in the intellectual property) For the purposes of the community you agree that Jisc will have the right to reproduce and otherwise use such Content or part of such Content and where appropriate we will acknowledge the source.

8. Disclaimer

Jisc does not make any warranty that the Jisc community will be error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted.

Despite our efforts, the Jisc community may contain content that is offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable, as well as content containing technical inaccuracies, typographical mistakes, and other errors.

Postings, including but not limited to comments and replies to discussion topics, are not to be relied on as professional opinions or advice, and postings are not intended to constitute technical, financial or legal guidelines or to supplant individual judgment with respect to particular circumstances.

You are responsible for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from malware, spyware, viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content.

Jisc cannot review all of the material posted to the Jisc community and cannot therefore be responsible for that material's content, use or effects. By operating the Jisc community, Jisc does not represent or imply that we endorse the material posted there, or that we believe such material to be accurate, useful or non-harmful.

Jisc disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from the use by users of the Jisc community or resulting from the downloading of or linking to content posted there by users.

9. Contact Jisc

Where content is posted to the Jisc community that contravenes these Terms of use we will endeavour to remove it whenever possible.

If you consider that anyone has breached these Terms of use please contact Jisc.

10. Termination

Jisc may terminate your access to all or any part of the Jisc community at any time, for any reason, with or without notice, effective immediately.

11. Governing Law

Any disputes in connection with the Jisc community will be governed by the laws of England and Wales.