License agreement for this site
TL;DR summary of this agreement
Respect other persons and their rights here; don’t use things without permission, and we won’t either. The usual stipulations apply. (We intend this paragraph as a non-binding summary of the agreement below.)
The actual agreement
This is an agreement between you, the user of this site, and us, the site’s owners and organizers. (The latter include Brian Larson, who owns the LegalCommunication.org domain, and other organizers of particular portions of the site, usually identified as “Leaders.”) We provide you access to this site as consideration for your agreement to the following terms.
We operate this site independently from the academic institutions with which we are affiliated, our “home institutions.” We do not run this site within the scope of our employment with our home institutions, and our home institutions do not endorse the activities on this site. Our home institutions are not parties to this agreement.
When you use this site, you may use it for your personal benefit in your role as teacher, scholar, and academic, and for no other purpose. We describe the scope of each portion of this site in that portion. You must confine your use of any portion of this site to the scope as we have described it. We will use the portions of the site to which you have access only for the purposes we have defined for that portion.
We are providing access to the materials on the site as-is, and we make no warranties about the content, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We also do not warrant that the content we have supplied is non-infringing, though we make reasonable efforts to ensure that for all material we post, we are its authors, have a license to it, they are in the public domain, or posting them is consistent with the ‘fair use’ doctrine.
You must not post materials or make contributions on the site that are infringing, defamatory, or otherwise in violation of law.
You may not distribute material from this site outside the context of this site without our permission. You may not disclose the observations or comments of other participants on this site without their permission. We will not disclose your observations or comments on this site without your permission. (The provisions of this paragraph are subject to parties’ obligations to disclose as a result of legal compulsion—for example, subpoena—or in cooperation with law enforcement, so you should not disclose confidential information here.)
This site operates on the Moodle learning-management-system platform. Moodle records pretty much everything all of us do here—clicks on content, posts to forums . . . etc.—and it retains that information. We may use the information Moodle records to structure the programs here. Otherwise, we will treat information we have about your activities here as your “observations or comments” as described above.
We retain the right to delete content and to suspend accounts for any reason (or no reason at all). You may terminate your participation and account at any time. In either of these cases, you and we continue to be bound by this agreement’s requirements for permission before disclosure.
If there is any dispute between you and us arising from your use of the site or this agreement, all parties consent to personal jurisdiction in Dallas and Tarrant Counties, Texas, and the state and federal courts there; the parties must submit to mediation before filing any claim with a court or adjudicatory body. The parties acknowledge that any breach of a promise in this agreement would be difficult to remedy with money damages; consequently, they consent to equitable remedies (meaning that a court could order you or us to do, or not to do, something).
We can amend this agreement at any time by giving you notice of the new terms. If you use the site after we give you notice, that means you have assented to the new terms.
In the event we become aware of any breach of the security of this site, we will inform you within 24 hours at the email address with which you have registered here. Brian Larson is this site's data protection officer. Moodle allows you to request deletion of your observations and comments when you cancel your account. You may also direct your request for deletion to the data protection officer.
Responses specifically to GDPR questions (for users in Europe)
- What information is collected. See above; registration requires that you give some personally identifying informaiton.
- The purpose of all processing to be performed on the users data.
Marketing must be listed separately with a separate revocable “consent”. We have described the purposes above. We don't use data for marketing or any commercial purpose. We don't use data for research without obtaining a separate consent from you.
- The identity of the data controller and contact information. Brian Larson is the data controller. Contact him at admin@legalcommunication.org.
- List of rights. See above. We don't use data except as described above. You agree to the same.
- The period the data is stored. We retain the data forever (until and unless you request its deletion).
- The mechanism for withdrawing consent. Email Brian Larson at admin@legalcommunication.org.
- The mechanism for requesting corrections, or erasures of personal data. Email Brian Larson at admin@legalcommunication.org.
- The mechanism for requesting a record of all personal data. Email Brian Larson at admin@legalcommunication.org.
- List of third parties that data will be shared with (This includes integrations such as LTI, portfolios, plagiarism, repositories, authentication etc.). We do not share data except as expressly provided above.
- Whether the personal data will be used for any automated decision
making process, including the significance and details of the process
(e.g. analytics). We will not use data for these purposes until and unless we obtain a separate consent from you to do so for research purposes.