Terms and Conditions
PLEASE READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS SITE OR ANY OF OUR SERVICES
1. Who we are and how to contact us
www.motherwords.org is a site operated by M/OTHERWORDS, an unincorporated partnership run by Rebecca Kirk and Elizabeth Crowe (“We”). M/OTHERWORDS is a literary criticism and review community offering reading and discussion groups, both online and in person, publishing original pieces from selected authors, and providing a space for users to review and critique selected extracts. Please note that our website and reading groups do not and cannot offer any kind of therapeutic or counselling experience or substitute for professional advice and assistance.
To contact us, please email contact@motherwords.org.
2. General terms
By using our site or our services you accept these terms
By using our site or our services, you accept these terms of use and agree to comply with them. If you do not agree to these terms, you must not use our site or our services.
These terms of use incorporate our Community Guidelines, Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy.
We may make changes to these terms
We amend these terms from time to time. Every time you wish to use our site, or our services, please check these terms to ensure you understand the terms that apply at that time.
We may suspend or withdraw our site
We do not guarantee that our site, or any content on it, will always be available. We may suspend or withdraw the availability of all or any of our site for business reasons. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any suspension or withdrawal.
You must keep your account details safe
If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, please keep it confidential and do not disclose it to any third party.
If you believe that anyone other than you knows your user identification code or password, please notify us promptly at contact@motherwords.org.
Rules about linking to our site
You may link to our home page, provided you do so in a way that is fair, legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it. You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association or endorsement where none exists. Our site must not be framed on any other site.
We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.
The website in which you are linking must comply in all respects with the Content Standards.
3. Intellectual Property
We are the owner or licensee of all intellectual property rights in our site, and the materials we create for our site and for use in the reading groups. Those works are protected by copyright laws around the world.
You must not copy or otherwise use any part of the content on our site, whether for personal or commercial purposes, without obtaining a licence to do so from us.
If you print off, copy, download, share or repost any part of our site in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our site and our services will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made.
M/OTHERWORDS is a trade mark of the M/OTHERWORDS business. You are not permitted to use it without our approval.
4. Our Liability To You
Information on this site
The information on our site is provided for interest and general information only. The site and reading groups are not intended to provide any kind of therapeutic or counselling experience or substitute for professional advice and assistance.
Although we make reasonable efforts to update the information on our site, we cannot guarantee that the content on our site is accurate, complete or up to date.
We are not responsible for websites we link to
Where our site contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these are provided for information only. Such links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them, as we have no control over the contents of those sites or resources.
We are not responsible for viruses and you must not introduce them
We do not guarantee that our site will be secure or free from bugs or viruses.
You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our site. You should use your own virus protection software.
You must not misuse our site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them.
Our responsibility for loss or damage suffered by you
We only provide our site and services for domestic and private use. You agree not to use our site for any commercial or business purposes, and we have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.
We are not responsible for the acts of any other site users, or participants in the reading groups, and exclude such liability to the extent it is permitted by law.
We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
5. How we may use your personal information
We will only use your personal information as set out in our Privacy Policy.
6. User Generated Content
User-generated content is not approved by us
Information and materials may be uploaded by other users to the site or during the reading groups. This information and materials have not been verified or approved by us. The views expressed by other users on our site or in our reading groups do not represent our views or values.
If you see uploaded content that you think breaches our Community Guidelines, our Terms of Use, or that you feel is otherwise inappropriate, please contact us at contact@motherwords.org.
Uploading content to our site
Whenever you create and/or upload content either to our site or during a Reading Group (a ‘Contribution’), you must comply with the Content Standards set out below, as well as our Community Guidelines.
All Contributions will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You retain all of your ownership rights in your Contributions but grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence to use, store and copy that Contribution (including to promote the site) and to distribute and make it available to third parties.
We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any content so created or uploaded by you constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights or of their right to privacy.
We may review Contributions before they are published and, at our sole discretion, refuse to publish, edit or remove Contributions at any time.
If you wish to contact us in relation to content you have uploaded to our site and that we have taken down, please contact us at contact@motherwords.org.
7. Reading Groups
Whenever you join a reading group, you agree that you will adhere to our Community Guidelines.
In order to join an online reading group, we ask that you install Zoom and have a Zoom account set up, and have tested your account access, microphone and camera before the group begins.
The Zoom link is for your use only and you are not permitted to share it.
Your booking to join a reading group will only be confirmed when we have received full payment for the course. Bookings for any reading group are non-refundable. However, in certain circumstances, it may be necessary for us to cancel one or more sessions within a course, or a whole course. In such circumstances, we will refund all affected consumers pro-rata to the percentage of the course that took/will take place.
You must not download, record, copy, store, distribute, publish or communicate in any format or medium any information, materials or content communicated to you or accessed by you in the course of participating in the reading groups or use any such information, materials or content except for the purpose of participating in such reading groups.
Please note that the reading groups are facilitator-led literary appreciation and discussion courses. They do not and cannot offer any kind of therapeutic or counselling experience or substitute for professional advice and assistance. Anyone contemplating or receiving professional advice or assistance in connection with issues around motherhood should seek advice from relevant medical professionals about participating in the reading groups.
8. Content Standards
The content standards set out below (the ‘Content Standards’) apply to any and all Contributions.
We will determine, in our discretion, whether a Contribution breaches the Content Standards.
A Contribution must:
- Be accurate (where it states facts)
- Be genuinely held (where it states opinions)
- Comply with the law applicable in England and Wales and in any country from which it is posted
A Contribution must not:
- Be defamatory of any person.
- Be obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory.
- Promote sexually explicit material.
- Promote violence or any illegal activity.
- Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.
- Infringe any copyright, database right or trademark of any other person.
- Be threatening, abusive or likely to deceive any person.
- Be likely to harass, upset or embarrass any other person.
- Impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person.
- Give the impression that the Contribution emanates from us if this is not the case.
- Contain any advertising or promote any services or web links to other sites.
9. Breach of these Terms of Use or the Community Guidelines
If we believe that you have breached these Terms of Use or the Community Guidelines, we may take such action as we consider appropriate, including the:
- issue of a warning;
- removal from a reading group;
- immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our site;
- immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any Contribution uploaded by you;
- legal proceedings against you including for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis resulting from the breach; or
- disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary or as required by law.
10. Which country’s laws apply to any disputes?
These terms of use, their subject matter and their formation, are governed by English law. You and we both agree that the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction except that if you are a resident of Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in Northern Ireland, and if you are resident of Scotland, you may also bring proceedings in Scotland.