Version 1.0 from November 2017
We think General Terms of Service are evil. Their letter's size is too small, they are ridiculously long, people just have to accept them, and by doing so they sell their soul.
While some others obtain your consent for digitally slavering you as much as possible and getting the rights of all you do for free, we, on the contrary, assure to set you and your work free forever.
Here is the main deal:
The above is a humane summary of our General Terms of Service. However, it is sadly not a substitute of the real thing below - for unavoidable legal reasons.
(1) wikical is an open global calendar for everyone to discover and share events, sorted by deadlines, with enhanced searches, notifications and social functionality. wikical runs on a free software stack and its public data is freely licensed, even for commercial purposes.
(2) For the purposes of this document:
(3) Users must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If they are between age 13 and 18, they confirm that they have their parent's or legal guardian's consent to use the Services and that they have read and agreed to these Terms of Service.
(4) Users who accept the terms of the service provider are permitted to use the service wikical. They may contribute either as unregistered or registered users using their real name or a pseudonym. In principle wikical usage is always free of charge. A registration as a user of wikical is free of charge. wikical requires an Internet connection which may incur charges from the respective Internet Service Provider. The wikical service provider and third parties may offer additional free or paid "apps" and services for additional functionality and better accessing wikical with current devices such as mobile phones and tablets.
(5) wikical attempts to provide accurate, complete and quality information about events. Because of the open editing policy, the wiki principle, wikical cannot universally assure that the contributed content is useful for a user or that information proves accurate under any circumstances. Usually the service provider is commercially unaffiliated with event organizers - otherwise it will be expressly stated.
(6) Users can voluntarily interact in many ways, like for instance sharing their location and other data to make shown events better fit their personal interests ("personalize"). They can also set up automated notifications via email.
(7) The service provider takes user privacy very seriously. In order to safeguard the online privacy of its users, wikical uses an in-house web analytics solution Piwik to optimize its web services instead of a service run by a third party. For more on technically and legally required data storage and safeguards for the protection of the personal data wikical explicitly refers its users to its privacy policy.
(8) Diligence of the contributing users and data management: Users are encouraged to contribute and edit data about events. Contributing users take legal responsibility for the content they contribute to wikical and pay due diligence to the rights of others and the applicable laws. Contributing users shall not invoke the impression that the service provider takes an organizing role for an event. That applies in particular to events which require prior authorization. Contributing users are responsible to hold the copyright (and other rights) to their personal contributions or if applicable have cleared in advance the possible rights of third parties.
(9) The service provider does not review contributed content prior to its publication. The service provider reserves its right to correct, add or change entries, and to remove entries, in particular duplicates, without notification or justification. This particularly applies to dubious or factually incorrect event data, and obsolete event data.
(10) Users of wikical shall not add events data about offensive, indecent, extremist, criminal or terrorist events, and contribution of such events is expressly inconsistent with the terms and conditions of the service provider. Information about such events is to be shared directly with competent authorities accordingly to the law.
(11) The service provider reserves the right to restrict unregistered users to read-only access or to deny service for users from a specific IP address range, specially to prevent abuse.
(12) Permission of copyright or other rights: The event data or images contributed by users may be subject to legal protection by copyright and related rights. In these cases contributing users grant the service provider without remuneration, and without limitation of location, time and content the simple use rights to their data contributed to wikical (including rights to photographs), in particular rights to the uses of reproduction, distribution, utilization, marketing, translation, presentation, performance, exhibition, public access, and the right of communication through visual and sound recordings, the right of communication of broadcasts, as well as work modification and licensing under any conditions, even in the context of derivative works. In addition, a contributing user also grants comprehensively all rights for yet unknown uses. In any case the moral rights of contributing users and their rights to the protection of personal data remain unaffected. In the case that third parties held some rights on the data, the contributing user is solely responsible to revise that such rights are compatible with this terms of service.
(13) Open Data: The public data in wikical is not only available to the service provider but all users. Everyone may reuse them, also for commercial purposes without obtaining prior permission. That is made possible by the data license of wikical popularized by the successful online encyclopedia Wikipedia among others: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 or later. Data that cannot be published under such license is not allowed, except for images. Images under other licenses are allowed as long as they can be used in wikical and their licenses are explicitly noticed. Users must respect such notices. Users are not entitled to demand from the service provider a publication of any data other than what the service providers offers through the service.
(14) Open Web formats and interfaces: The service provider supports some common open formats to store and access to the public data. Various interfaces are made available to wikical users for accessing the public data. Interfaces such as web pages and electronic services from third parties may embed public event data from wikical, both on the server and the client side.
(15) For compatibility reasons and user requirements it may be useful that the service provider supports additional interfaces and formats which are not free and open. This is allowed.
(16) The service provider bases its interpretation of "free and open" formats and interfaces on the European Interoperability Framework, version 1.0. Standards, specifications and supporting documents ought to meet the following minimum characteristics:
The specification is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.). The specification has been published and the specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use the specification for no fee or at a nominal fee. The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the specification is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
(17) Free Software: The service provider supports the free and open source development model. wikical builds on a Free Software stack, and a compatible software for the main event data of wikical named GriCal is licensed as Free Software under the AGPL 3.0 license by the service provider. grical is a registered European word mark under the No. 010022622. The service provider guarantees to enforce the free availability of GriCal whenever possible for the service provider. There is no lock-in or forced trust. For example if people disagree with how the service provider operates the platform, they can put up their own website using the GriCal software, the free data of wikical, and improve it themselves.
(18) The registered users of wikical must keep their access credentials confidential and protect them from misuse by others. The staff of the service provider is not entitled to ask passwords of wikical users by email or telephone. Where a user suspects a misuse of a user account he shall immediately notify the service provider. Users may be liable for misuse of their users account.
(19) The service provider may suspend or terminate user participation to the service if the users infringes upon the Terms of Service or legal obligations or while the service provider checks a suspected wrongdoing. Registration of users can be terminated at any time, especially at the expressed wish of the user, or when someone makes false statements, commits identity theft, publishes unlawful or undesirable content, or impairs the functioning of wikical. The service provider excludes those users who damage unauthorized data, delete, interfere with, alter or suppress or compromise the integrity of the information technology systems of the service provider. Equal sanctions apply to users who harass other users.
(20) The user shall inform the service provider about an illegal use of the online portal using preferably a flag button if available, otherwise an electronic contact or a written notice to the service provider. A service provider of web sites may be required by law to notify competent authorities immediately about alleged illegal activities undertaken or to share data with the competent authorities by which a user's identity may be revealed.
(21) Extension and change of functionality: wikical team members from different parts of the world are further improving the platform, and adapting it to changes in consumer behavior and technological advancements. For regular or emergencies maintenance usage limitations are possible. For these evident reasons or similar reasons users are not legally entitled to continuous uninterrupted use and accessibility of wikical. The service provider reserves its right to change or discontinue wikical. The service provider pledges that all public data from wikical would always remain available under an accepted free license even in case of discontinuance when possible.
(22) Terms of services from partners of the service provider shall be given priority, when they evidently contribute online functionality.
(23) External Link: A user of wikical may follow links to third party websites for which the service provider takes no responsibility. wikical does not espouse the content of these external sites, for instance web pages of event organizers.
(24) Scientific Studies: wikical conducts scientific studies on data on events, user behaviour and generation of data. wikical may publish such data, aggregated and anonymized when users are involved. wikical also offers these data, specially but not limited to scientific purposes, and may charge for services regarding it.
(25) We are not participating in a dispute settlement procedure before a consumer agency. However, the law on alternative dispute resolution in consumer goods requires that we nevertheless point out a consumer complaint agency responsible for you:
Allgemeine Verbraucherschlichtungsstelle
des Zentrums für Schlichtung e. V.
Straßburger Str. 8
77694 Kehl
Germany
www.verbraucher-schlichter.de
wikical non-profit limited company
Greifswalder Str. 228
10405 Berlin
Germany
Tel: +493039820596
Fax: +493034060473
Email: info@wikical.com
Managing Director: Iván Fernando Villanueva Barrio
Comercial Register: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg
Register Number: HRB 190397 B
Tax Number: 27/612/05956
Bank: Berliner Sparkasse
BIC: BELADEBEXXX
IBAN: DE38 1005 0000 0190 6514 15