Tuesday 24 December, 2024

Terms of Use

1. Introduction

Thank you for visiting our websites (TheJournal.ie, The 42, Noteworthy and Factchecking.ie websites and applications)(each a “Site” and together “our Sites”)) owned and operated by Journal Media (references in these Terms of Use to ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ are references to Journal Media Limited). Please read these terms of use (the “Terms of Use”) carefully as they constitute a binding legal agreement between you and us in relation to your use of the Sites.

By viewing any of our Sites whether it be via a web browser, our mobile phone application, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail or any other platform, you acknowledge that you have read, understood and agree to be bound by these Terms of Use. If you do not agree then you must not use any of our Sites.

2. Privacy

Your privacy is important to us. Please read our Privacy Notice to see how we collect, use and protect your personal information. We recommend that you do this before using any of our Sites.

3. Changes to Terms of Use

We may change, modify, add to or delete portions of these Terms of Use at any time. When we do, we will notify you of the changes by adding an “updated” icon next to the Terms of Use link on the front page of the Sites for two weeks from the date of the change. However it is your responsibility to regularly review the Terms of Use for changes. By continuing to use any of our Sites you will be deemed to have read, understood and agreed to be bound by these changes.

4. Your use of our Sites

Our Sites are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only, except where otherwise authorised by us.

It is your responsibility, bearing in mind the global nature of the internet, to comply with all relevant laws which may apply to your use of our Sites and to the material you post, including but not limited to laws relating to acceptable content, online conduct and the export of data.

Failure to comply with all applicable laws or these Terms of Use may result in deletion of posts, suspension of posting privileges and/or banning.

(i) Your Account

If you register an account then as part of the registration process you may be asked to select a user name and password. You are responsible for all activities occurring under your username and for keeping your password secure. We strongly recommend you do not reuse a password which you also use elsewhere.

You may not select or use a username that:

Contains the name of any Site or otherwise misrepresents your relationship with any Site or any other party;
Contains any profanity, is vulgar or offensive, or promotes an illegal activity;
Violates any trade mark or other proprietary right; or
Impersonates someone else.

We reserve the rights to change usernames at our discretion.

We reserve the right to log off or deactivate accounts that are inactive for an extended period of time.

You may not use the account or password of another user and must not disclose your password to any third party. You must notify us immediately if you suspect any unauthorised use of your account or access to your password.

We shall not be liable for any loss that you may incur as a result of someone else using or accessing your password or account, either with or without your knowledge.

You may be held liable for losses incurred by us or any other party as a result of someone else using or accessing your password or account if you have not taken reasonable steps to keep your password or account secure.

We may at our absolute discretion refuse you access to any Site, delete posts by you or suspend/terminate your account without prior notice for any reason and you shall not be entitled to any compensation in respect of this.

These Terms of Use, including, in particular, the indemnities contained herein, shall survive any suspension or termination of your account.

(ii) Your Posts

We are committed to providing an open forum for discussion and debate on stories in the news. Each Site has a comments section available to its users to facilitate such discussion and debate. Please note that you are liable for the contents of any comments you post on any of our Sites. We shall not be liable whatsoever for any comments posted by you or any other user. Any views or comments expressed in the user posts are not necessarily the views of Journal Media, any entity associated with us or any of our Sites’ editorial team. We strongly advise that you read our separate Comments Policy before posting any comments on our Sites.

It is our policy not to allow users post comments anonymously and we therefore require users to log-in using a Twitter of Facebook account (a “Social Media Account”) to make a post in order to ensure that comments are attributable to a user. By logging-in with a Social Media Account you warrant and represent that you are the owner of the Social Media Account and that you are the person identifiable by that Social Media Account. You may not use the Social Media Account of another person or otherwise assume a false identity for the purposes of posting a comment on our Sites.

We are not responsible for and do not endorse the contents of users’ posts or warrant the accuracy, truthfulness, legality or reliability of user’s posts. You are entirely responsible for material which you post on our Sites and shall indemnify in accordance with section 13 of these Terms of Use.

We expect you to act responsibly in posting comments. You agree, through use of this service, not to post any material which:

Violates the criminal law;
Promotes or encourages illegal activity;
Is defamatory, invasive of privacy, abusive, harassing, threatening, profane, violent, sexually explicit, or which otherwise violates the rights of others;
May prejudice ongoing civil or criminal proceedings, violate the sub judice rule or may otherwise amount to a contempt of court;
Infringes the copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, database right, right of privacy or publicity or other proprietary or intellectual property right of any person;
Includes any spam, unauthorised advertising or any other form of commercial publicity;
Is irrelevant, repetitive or imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our servers, bandwidth or infrastructure;
Falsely claims to be sponsored or endorsed by us; or
Contains any virus or similar harmful and/or disruptive material.

Due to the real-time nature of our Sites, we cannot and are not required to review the contents of posted comments, nor do we confirm the validity of information submitted. We do not actively monitor user comments and we are not responsible for and give no warranty or make any representation in relation to any user comments. If you deem any comments offensive or objectionable, please bring these to our attention by identifying the specific material that you consider objectionable. You can do this by clicking ‘report this comment’. You will be asked to give your reasons for wanting the comment removed.

Whilst we do not monitor comments, we reserve the right to take down material that comes to our attention via a complaint or otherwise. Commenters who repeatedly flout our Comments Policy or these Terms of Use will be barred from joining discussions on our Sites. This operates on a “three-strikes-and-you’re-out basis”: if we have to remove three comments posted by you, you will be blacklisted. You will not necessarily be notified when comments are removed. We will not enter into any correspondence with or about users who have been blacklisted.

We reserve the right to immediately ban a user if there has been a serious breach of the Comments Policy or these Terms of Use. All decisions in relation to these matters are carried out at our sole discretion.

We reserve the right to reveal your identity (or whatever information we know about you) in the event of a complaint or legal action arising from any comment or content posted by you.

By posting any material on any Site, you grant us a licence to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such material. The licence you grant to us is non-exclusive, royalty free and fully paid up, sub-licensable, and worldwide. You also waive to the fullest extent permissible by law any moral rights in such material. You are responsible for making sure that you have all rights to what you post, including the rights necessary for you to grant the licence above.

By posting any material on any Site you represent and warrant that: (i) you own the material posted by you or otherwise have the right to grant the licence above, and (ii) the posting of the material does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, intellectual property rights, contract rights or any other rights of any person. You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, or any other monies owing any person by reason of any material posted by you.

(iii) Capacity

Our Sites are not directed at children younger than 16 and therefore children under the age of 16 are not permitted to view our Sites. We cannot guarantee that all content on our Sites will be suitable for minors.

You are only permitted to post comments if you are aged 18 or over. If you are aged 16 years or over but under the age of 18 you must obtain the consent of a parent or legal guardian before registering as a user of any Site. Any person who registers as a user of any Site represents that they are 18 years of age or older or that they are 16 years or over and have obtained the consent of a parent or legal guardian. We cannot and are not required to verify the age of users of our Sites. By posting a comment on any of our Sites you warrant and represent that you are over the age of 18 or that you are 16 years or over and have obtained the consent of a parent or legal guardian each time you post a comment.

If you are using any of our Sites as a representative of a body corporate, partnership, association or other entity (an “entity”), you represent that you have the authority to enter into these Terms of Use on behalf of that entity, and agree that the terms “you” and “your” in these Terms of Use refers to that entity.

5. The 42 Subscriptions

To access The 42, you must create an account. Unrestricted access requires a paid subscription.

If you subscribe to our monthly plan, the fee will be billed monthly until you cancel. If you subscribe to the annual plan, the fee will be billed annually until you cancel. We will email you towards the end of the annual term to remind you that the renewal and associated payment is coming up.

You can cancel your subscription at any time. To do so, sign in to your account (https://www.the42.ie/account/), select the “Subscription” tab, and switch auto-renew off. Your subscription will be cancelled at the end of your current billing period, and you will have access until that date.

If you purchased your subscription via the iOS App store, you can cancel from your Apple account (under settings, subscriptions), or in any way described in Apple’s terms and conditions. Any refunds due will be paid in accordance with Apple’s terms and conditions. For more information, visit: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Stripe or Apple processes payments on our behalf. If you have any queries regarding your payment, please contact us at support@the42.ie within 30 days

Any change in the price of our subscriptions (outside of promotions or trials) will not affect existing plans until the next billing period, and we will notify you in advance.

If we do not receive payment, we will notify you, and after a grace period, we will suspend your account.

Please contact us by email at support@the42.ie if you have any suggestions, questions or issues related to your subscription.

6. Intellectual Property

All intellectual property rights in our Sites design, text, graphics, the selection and arrangement thereof and all software vest in Journal Media unless otherwise indicated. Journal Media reserves all of its rights.

You acknowledge that all trademarks, trade names, service marks, rights (registered or unregistered) in any designs, applications for any of the foregoing; trade or business names; innovations, inventions whether or not capable of protection by patent or registration, registered design and topography rights; know-how, including data specifications, drawings and instructions; secret formulae and processes; rights protecting goodwill and reputation; database rights and rights under licences and consents in relation to such things, rights in the nature of unfair competition rights, and rights to sue for passing of and all rights or forms of protection of a similar nature to any of the foregoing or having equivalent effect anywhere in the world and all copyright, trademarks and other intellectual property rights in and relating to any of our Sites are solely owned by Journal Media.

You may not reproduce, publish, transmit, distribute, display, modify, create derivative works from, sell or participate in any sale of, or exploit in any way, in whole or in part, any material made available on any of our Sites without our written permission.

7. Copyright Policy

We respect the copyright of others
We strive to credit sources where relevant
We do not provide links to websites which object

Our policy is to respect the copyright of others and we strive to credit sources where relevant. While copyright does not subsist in ideas and in principle there is no copyright in the “news”, copyright may subsist in the form in which it is expressed in particular articles. If you believe that any material published in the Site infringes copyright, please report it to copyright@thejournal.ie identifying the specific material that is claimed to be infringing and providing sufficient information to permit us to contact the complaining party.

We do not provide links to sources and publications who object to such linking. If you have an objection to a link to your website, please notify us to copyright@thejournal.ie identifying the specific material, the link and providing sufficient information to permit us to contact the complaining party.

8. Site Searching, Indexing and Screenscraping

You agree not to modify, adapt, translate, or reverse engineer any portion of our Sites, nor to use any robot, spider, site search/retrieval application, or other device to retrieve, index or screenscrape any portion of our Sites, except as expressly authorised in writing by us. You agree not to reformat or frame any portion of our Sites. You agree to respect and follow the restrictions imposed by Journal Media’s robots.txt files.

9. Your Feedback and Suggestions to Us

From time to time users contact us with feedback, suggestions and submissions about our Sites and how to improve our Sites and the services we offer. We welcome your input, and the following terms ensure that we can use your contributions to improve.

You do not have to submit anything to us about our Sites, but if you do you acknowledge and agree that any questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, feedback, or any other submissions to us which may improve our products, services, or offerings shall become our property unless otherwise agreed by us.

By making a submission to us about our Sites, you grant a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works from, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, and use and commercialise, in any way now known or in the future discovered, anything that you submit to us, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.

If you do not want to grant us the rights set out above, please do not make submissions to us about our Sites.

10. Defamatory Content

We abide by the Code of Practice of the Press Council of Ireland.

Journal Media operates on a “notice and takedown” basis. If you believe that any content on our Sites contains a defamatory statement, please notify us immediately by sending an email to errors@thejournal.ie. Once this notification has been received, we will use all reasonable endeavours to remove the defamatory content complained about within a reasonable time.

11. Disclaimer and Waiver

We do not give any warranty or make any representation as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained on our Sites. Material posted on our Sites is not intended to amount to advice on which reliance should be placed. We therefore disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such material by any user, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents.

Although rigorous protocols are applied to our Sites we do not warrant that the website is free from infection by viruses or anything else that has contaminating or disruptive properties.

Under no circumstances shall we be held liable for any delay or failure in performance resulting directly or indirectly from acts of nature, forces, or causes beyond our reasonable control, including, without limitation, Internet failures, computer equipment failures, telecommunication equipment failures, other equipment failures, electrical power failures, strikes, labour disputes, riots, insurrections, civil disturbances, shortages of labour or materials, fires, floods, storms, explosions, acts of God, war, governmental actions, orders of domestic or foreign courts or tribunals, non-performance of third parties, or loss of or fluctuations in electricity or other utility supply.

Under no conditions and in no event shall we be liable whether in contract, tort or otherwise for any direct or indirect, incidental, consequential, special or exemplary damages or loss howsoever arising, (including but not limited to negligence or breach of these Terms of Use or otherwise) or for any loss of data, profit, revenue, goodwill or business howsoever caused even if that loss or damage was foreseeable by us, or the possibility of it was brought to our attention.

You acknowledge that your use of our Sites including any material downloaded or otherwise obtained through our Sites is at your own discretion and risk and you agree to waive to the fullest extent permissible by law any right to bring any claim or action against us, our investors, successors, subsidiaries, affiliates, co-branders, contractors, employees, servants, contributors, third-party advertisers, technology providers, service providers or other partners, and each of their respective officers, directors, agents, shareholders, employees and representatives, for any loss, damage, costs or injury arising from such use.

12. Links to Other Websites

Our Sites contains links to websites operated by third parties over which we have no control. These links are provided for your convenience only and do not amount to an endorsement or recommendation of those sites. We do not exercise any control or supervision over the content of these linked sites. We are not responsible for the content or accuracy of or for the opinions expressed in these third party websites and these websites are not investigated, monitored or checked for accuracy or completeness by us.

We accept no liability in relation to those sites and should you choose to access third party sites you do so at your own risk. Third party sites linked via our Sites are not covered by these Terms of Use. You should not assume that these third party websites will abide by the same privacy policy to which we adhere.

13. Links

We permit third parties to link to our Sites as so long as the link: (a) is not in any way misleading; (b) does not falsely imply sponsorship, endorsement or approval of the linking party and its products or services; and (c) fits within the context of the linking party’s site.

By linking to any of the above mentioned websites you hereby authorise Journal Media to link to any website owned or controlled by you.

14. Indemnity

You shall indemnify and keep Journal Media, our investors, successors, subsidiaries, affiliates, co-branders, contractors, employees, servants, contributors, third-party advertisers, technology providers, service providers or other partners, and each of their respective officers, directors, agents, shareholders, employees and representatives (each an “Indemnified Party”) indemnified on demand from and against any and all losses, judgments, awards of damages, fines, penalties, fees, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal expenses) suffered or incurred by an Indemnified Party as a result of any third party claim threatened or brought against any Indemnified Party arising out of or in connection with any of the following:

Your use of our Sites or any part thereof;
any violation of these Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy, our Comments Policy and our Copyright Policy by you;
any comments posted by you on any Site;
any infringement or misappropriation by you, or a third party using your computer, of any account or password to access and/or use any of our Sites; and
any infringement by you of any intellectual property rights of any person.

15. Information Society Service Provider / Intermediary Service Provider

You agree and acknowledge that Journal Media is an information society service provider and intermediary service provider, within the meaning of Directive 2000/31/EC as transposed into Irish law by the European Communities (Directive 2000/31/EC) Regulations 2003 (SI 68 of 2003), and that where it stores information provided by a recipient of the service – such as user comments – it is not liable for such information nor is it under an obligation to monitor such information.

16. Entire Agreement / No Waiver

These Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy, our Comments Policy and our Copyright Policy make up the entire agreement between you and us in relation to your use of our Sites and supersede any prior agreement. Any amendment to or waiver of this agreement must be in writing and signed by our authorised representatives. Failure to enforce any provision of this agreement shall not amount to a waiver of such provision.

17. Severability

If any provision of these Terms of Use is found to be void, invalid or unenforceable the remaining provisions will continue to be of full force and effect.

18. Governing Law

The agreement between you and use as constituted by these Terms of Use and any non-contractual obligations arising out of or in connection with your use of our Sites are governed by and shall be construed in accordance with the laws of Ireland, and the courts of Ireland shall have exclusive jurisdiction to hear, settle and determine any dispute which may arise out of or in connection with these Terms of Use save that we retain the right to bring proceedings against you in your country of residence or any other court of competent jurisdiction.

19. Availability of Service

We may at our sole discretion and at any time discontinue temporarily or permanently our Sites or any part thereof with or without notice.

You agree that any termination of access to our Sites under any provision of these Terms of Use may be effected without notice, and acknowledge and agree that we may immediately deactivate or delete your account and all related information and files in your account and/or bar any further access to such files or our Sites.

You may terminate this Terms of Use at any time by sending us an e-mail to privacy@thejournal.ie. Please note that if you choose to terminate this Terms of Use you will no longer be able to access our services.

Our Sites may be temporarily unavailable from time to time for maintenance or other reasons. We accept no responsibility for any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in transmission, communication line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to, or alteration of user communications.

Where possible, we will use reasonable efforts to give users fair notice of technical difficulties or termination or suspension of their access to our Sites. However you agree that we shall not be liable to you or any third party for any inability to access any of our Sites, termination or suspension of access to our Sites or modification of the service provided.

20. About us

Journal Media Limited is a private company limited by shares, incorporated in Ireland under registered number 483623 and has its registered offices at 3rd Floor, Latin Hall, Golden Lane, Dublin 8. Our VAT number is IE9744952M.

21. Copyright Statement Associated Press

Associated Press text, photo, graphic, audio and/or video material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium. Neither these Associated Press materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and non-commercial use. Users may not download or reproduce a substantial portion of the Associated Press material found on this web site. Associated Press does not accept any liability for any delays, inaccuracies, errors or omissions therefrom or in the transmission or delivery of all or any part thereof or for any damages arising from any of the foregoing.

22. Assignment & Novation

You may not, without our prior written consent, assign or dispose of any of your rights or obligations arising under these Terms of Use. We may assign or subcontract any or all of our rights and obligations under these Terms of Use to a third party at any time, at our discretion. You also hereby irrevocably agree that we may, at our sole discretion and at any time any by notice to you, transfer by way of novation all of our rights and obligations under these Terms of Use, and, upon completion of any such novation (including the assumption by the transferee of all of our remaining obligations under these Terms of Use) we shall be released from, and shall have no further obligations under, these Terms of Use. If requested, you shall promptly execute all documents reasonably requested by us to effect, perfect, record or implement any such novation, and shall promptly comply with any other reasonable requests we or our successors or assigns may have in respect of any such novation.

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Updated 20 December 2021