Bloginabox: Legal stuff

Monday, 21 November 2005

Legal stuff

Appendix 1: Legal Disclaimer

The International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy and 21Publish owns the intellectual property rightsto the service and the contents of this website, including, for the avoidance of doubt, information provided by participants to the website.
By registering on this site you agreed to the processing of any personal data in your message and to the reproduction of your message for the purposes of the evaluation by the project
Any potentially defamatory statements will not be published on the site. Participants must be in no doubt of the potential consequences arising from the submission of allegations of criminal activity. These will be passed onto the police.
Posters on the readmyday website should not reveal any personal information, such as their telephone number, home or email address, to anyone else on the site.

Acceptable use policy

About your posts:

Contributions must be civil and tasteful
No disruptive, offensive or abusive behaviour: contributions must be constructive and polite, not mean-spirited or contributed with the intention of causing trouble.
No unlawful or objectionable content: unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable.
If you use multiple logins for the purpose of disrupting the forum or annoying other users you may have action taken against your accounts.
Readers be patient: allow the moderators time to check your message before it is posted on the site
No spamming or off-topic material: we don’t allow the submission of the same or very similar contributions many times. Please don't re-submit your contribution to more than one discussion, or contribute off-topic material in subject-specific areas.
No advertising
Contributions containing languages other than English may be removed
No impersonation
No introduction of content that may result in actions for libel, defamation or or other claims for damages
No inappropriate (e.g. vulgar, offensive etc) user names

Definition of a Civic Leader

Elected Members of U.K. Local Authorities, Parish councillors or opposition
Local Authority Chief Executives, Heads of Service, Communication Officers and Group Managers
Operational Managers in the NHS, non-privatised Fire and Police Services
Social workers

Registrants with other occupations will be vetted on application. Your identity may be verified before you are accepted to the system.

Defamation

A defamatory statement is one that causes an adverse effect on a person’s reputation. It must be published to a third person and refer to the defamed individual. Libel, which is a form of defamation, is the publication of a statement which exposes a person to hatred, ridicule or contempt, or which causes him to be shunned or avoided, or which has a tendency to injure him in his office, trade or profession in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally.

Members may not use their Blog to publish defamatory statements or material. Anyone who believes that they have been defamed by a *Councillor* will be able to take legal action directly against the *Councillor* concerned. The relevant legislation is the Defamation Act 1996 and the full text can be found at http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1996/1996031.htm.

Data Protection

In managing a website, you may receive comments, enquiries or complaints from members of the public. Members from Local Authorities may refer to (or publish) material that is based upon information drawn from the Local Authority or obtained from external sources. All such personal information should be treated with care and respect for relevant data protection law.

Anyone processing personal data must comply with the eight enforceable principles of good practice. They say that data must be:

fairly and lawfully processed;
processed for limited purposes;
adequate, relevant and not excessive
accurate;
not kept longer than necessary;
processed in accordance with the data subject’s rights;
secure
not transferred to countries without adequate protection.

Personal data covers both facts and opinions about the individual. It also includes information regarding the intentions of the data controller towards the individual. The definition of processing incorporates the concepts of ‘obtaining’, holding’ and ‘disclosing’.

Further details about these eight principles can be found at: http://www.dataprotection.gov.uk/dpr/dpdoc.nsf

The Data Protection Act applies, and the full text of the 1998 Act can be found at
http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/19980029.htm

Representation of the People Act Restrictions

During election times (from the ‘notice of an election’ to the election itself), *Councillors* who use this site must suspend links to their Local Authority. Visitors will still, however, be able to contact them through the website.

If you breach this policy

If you fail to abide by these House Rules when taking part in the consultation, you will be sent an e-mail which informs you why your contribution has been failed or edited. This mail will also include a warning that continuing to break the rules may result in action being taken against your account.

This action may include your relevant account being placed into temporary or permanent suspension of your ability to participate in the blogging system.

If you post or send offensive or inappropriate content anywhere on the forum or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on www.bloginabox.co.uk and the administration team considers such behaviour to be serious and/or repeated, the team may use whatever information that is available to it about you to stop any further such infringements. This may include informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school or email provider about the infringements.

The administration team reserves the right to delete any contribution, or take action against any account, at any time, for any reason.

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Legal stuff