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Standard Terms of Use

Preamble

The following Standard Terms of Use shall apply to the relationship between DFKI GmbH, represented by its managing directors Dr. Walter Olthoff and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster, Trippstadter Str. 122, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany, as the provider of the web based platform "ALOE" (hereinafter referred to as ALOE) and registered users (hereinafter referred to as the user) and shall apply to all offerings of ALOE and to the services offered on the associated sub-pages and additional pages.

§ 1 Description of the ALOE Service

1.1 ALOE makes a platform available to users who wish to save and manage digital resources and links in a personal account. Users not only have access to their own saved content but also to the content saved and managed by other users. Every user can decide whether to save a resource or link for him or herself, for members of selected groups or publicly for other users. ALOE makes it possible to exchange such resources and links with other users, to evaluate them, and to provide them with personal comments.

1.2 If a user does not consent to the amended Terms of Use, he can terminate his ALOE membership by cancellation or serving notice. The user is committed to abide by the amended Terms of Use if he continues to use the ALOE website after one month following announcement of the amendments.

1.3 The provider of ALOE reserves the right to change its offerings as and when required.

1.4 The provider of ALOE also reserves the right to delete or privatize members' names and user accounts, keywords (tags), URLs (links), comments, resources, collections and groups if they:

  • have racist, sexist, insulting, slanderous, inciting, religiously injurious, or threatening content
  • have content that is criminally relevant in any way or violate legal regulations
  • may be regarded as spam (see § 8 Anti-Spam Guidelines).
  • improperly use the name of a natural person or legal entity or any other legally protected names
  • misuse the function for sending messages to other users for the purpose of distributing spam, advertising, or bulk messages.
  • affect or compromise the functionalities offered by ALOE, e.g., by automatically generating information such as tags and comments.

§ 2 Registration; Conclusion of a Contract

2.1 Part of the ALOE platform is accessible without registration as a user. However, in order to save and manage personal content on the ALOE platform it is necessary to register as a user.

2.2 A contract concerning use of the ALOE website comes into being upon submission of registration after prior acceptance of the present Standard Terms and Conditions.

2.3 The User can cancel his registration with ALOE at any time in text form (e.g. letter, fax, email) without having to state reasons. Cancellation must be sent to:

DFKI GmbH

Chief executive officers:
Dr. Walter Olthoff, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster

Address:
Trippstadter Str. 122
67663 Kaiserslautern

Telefax:
0631-20575-5030

E-Mail:
aloe@dfki.uni-kl.de

§ 3 Users' Rights and Duties

3.1 Registered users shall be entitled to use all ALOE services in full within the scope of these Terms of Use.

3.2 When ALOE services are being used, general laws must be observed. In particular, users are not allowed to use the ALOE website

  • in order to disseminate material that is either illegal or in any other way defamatory or offensive
  • in order to threaten or harass third parties or to violate third-party rights (especially the general right of personal privacy, copyrights and any other rights involving industrial rights protection)
  • in order to upload to the ALOE website any data that is either infected or harmful in any other way
  • in order to make incorrect or erroneous entries concerning their person upon registration, especially registering with a false identity.

3.3 Notwithstanding any consequences in common law and/or criminal law, non-observance of the above code of conduct shall entitle the provider of ALOE to terminate the relevant user's access without notice and to permanently exclude the same from use for the future, or to restrict the visibilty of the information he provided. The method of sanctioning is at the discretion of the ALOE provider.

§ 4 Rights and Duties of the ALOE provider

4.1 The provider of ALOE is not obliged to make its website and services available at all times or to ensure that it can be used without errors. This particularly applies if access to the ALOE website and services is affected by disruptions that are beyond the influence of the provider of ALOE. Furthermore, the provider of ALOE shall be entitled, at all times and without prior notice, to temporarily completely discontinue or restrict the availability of its website for maintenance or modernization work.

4.2 The provider of ALOE shall be entitled, at all times and without prior notice, to limit extent of its website and services, or to completely shut down its website and services.

4.3 The provider of ALOE shall be entitled, in response to such a request, to surrender the data saved by the user in the event of any criminally relevant actions on the part of the user (especially such concerning pornographic or anti-alien content) and any other common-law violations, especially with respect to trademark law, competition law or copyright law concerning third parties (e.g. criminal prosecution authorities, parties involved or injured directly or indirectly).

4.4 The provider of ALOE shall be entitled but not obliged to check the user's bookmarks, links and any other content (hereinafter referred to as "content") with regard to compliance with general laws and these Terms of Use and to delete such content at its own discretion if a violation is revealed.

§ 5 Guarantee and Liability

5.1 The provider of ALOE does not give any guarantee that the website and services made available by it is available at all times without any errors or that it is suitable for certain purpose. This particularly applies if access to the ALOE website is affected or unavailable on account of disruptions, the cause of which is beyond the influence of the provider of ALOE.

5.2 The provider of ALOE gives no guarantee for content provided by users and in particular it is not obliged to check such content for legal violations.

5.3 If third parties claim the provider of ALOE because of illegal contents by users, the responsible user is obliged to exempt the provider of ALOE from any liability, and to compensate the provider of ALOE for all costs caused by a possible pursuit of legal claims.

5.4 The provider of ALOE is liable

  • for any damage caused by harm to the body, life or health that is due to willful intent or negligent violation of duties on the part of the provider of ALOE, a legal representative of the provider of ALOE, or a universal agent of the provider of ALOE;
  • for any damage that is covered by liability under the German Product Liability Act;
  • for any other damage that is due to willful or grossly negligent violation of duties on the part of the provider of ALOE, a legal representative, or a universal agent of the provider of ALOE;
  • for any damage that is caused by simple negligence on the part of the provider of ALOE, inasmuch as the negligence involves violation of material contractual duties (cardinal duties). Cardinal duties are such duties as the contract has to grant the contracting party according to the spirit and meaning of the contract, or ones whose fulfillment enables proper performance of the contract and on compliance of which the contracting party may rely. In such cases, however, the liability of ALOE shall be restricted to damage that is typically associated with the contract and is foreseeable.

5.5 The provision in \ยง 5.4 covers all contractual and legal claims that result from these Terms of Use and use of the service provided by ALOE. In all other cases the provider of ALOE explicitly accepts no liability. This particularly applies to any loss of data that has not been caused by willful intent on the part of the provider of ALOE and its employees.

§ 6 Data Protection

The provider of ALOE respects the privacy of its users. The provider of ALOE treats the personal data of its users confidentially and only makes such data available to third parties if this conforms to applicable law or the user has consented to data being passed on. Details concerning data protection at ALOE are contained in the Data Protection Regulations.

§ 7 Term of Contract and Termination

7.1 The contract of use is concluded for an unlimited period of time.

7.2 Either party may terminate this contract at any time without having to state reasons.

7.3 The provider of ALOE is also entitled to cancel membership at any time for a good reason. A good reason in particular is if the user has violated these Terms of Use or applicable law.

§ 8 Anti-Spam Guidelines

According to § 1 para. 5 the provider of ALOE reserves the right, in the case of spamming, to perform permanent privatization (or deletion) of an account, a URL or a whole domain (blacklist); these will then no longer appear publicly on the ALOE website.

Spam is defined by ALOE as follows:

  • Use of a number of accounts in order to manipulate the popularity of a bookmark
  • Saving pure affiliate links or partner links
  • Made for AdSense websites which only serve the purpose of presenting AdSense, banners and affiliate links and do not have far-reaching personal content
  • Get rich quick websites ('Get rich with only 5 minutes of work a day')
  • Saving websites under construction and domain sale offers
  • Saving an usually large number of bookmarks pointing to just one domain
  • Use of advertising in the description of the bookmarks
  • Unsuitable and/or erroneous descriptions of bookmarks that are not associated with the website proper
  • Misuse in order to develop link popularity
  • Links to pornographic, right-wing extremist, violence-glorifying, illegal, morally objectionable and/or unreasonable content
  • Links to dialer sites, phishing sites or sites with other damaging content
  • Automatically redirecting websites and websites that open a large number of advertising windows
  • Saving bookmarks for advertising purposes

§ 9 Referrals and Links

The provider of ALOE has no influence whatsoever on the current or future design, content, or authorship of the linked sites. For this reason the provider of ALOE explicitly dissociates itself from all content on all linked sites. This shall apply to all links and references placed on its own website and to any third-party entries. With regard to any illegal, erroneous or incomplete content, and particularly any damage or loss that may result from use or any information not disclosed in such a way, liability is held solely by the owner of the site to which the linked pointed, and not the party that merely points to the respective publication in links.

§ 10 Copyright and Distinctive Mark Law

In all publications the provider of ALOE endeavors to observe the copyrights of the pictures, graphics, sound documents, video sequences, and texts used, to use pictures, graphics, sound documents, video sequences, and texts created by the provider of ALOE itself, or to resort to license-free graphics, sound documents, video sequences, and texts.

All brand names and trademarks indicated on the website and possibly protected by third parties are entirely subject to the provisions of distinctive mark law as amended and the property rights of the various registered owners. On the basis of a mere naming it is not possible to infer that brand names are not protected by third-party rights!

The copyright for published items created by the provider of ALOE itself remains solely with the provider of ALOE. Duplication and use of such graphics, sound documents, video sequences, and texts in other electronic or printed publications is not permitted without the explicit consent of the provider of ALOE.

§ 11 Final Provisions

11.1 In the event of disputes in connection with the ALOE website German law shall apply and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods shall not apply.

11.2 Merchants, public law entities and special public corporations shall be subject to the jurisdiction of Kaiserslautern courts.

11.3 If individual clauses of these Terms of Use should be or become entirely or partially invalid, this shall not affect the validity of the other Terms of Use. If any provision should be invalid, a provision shall apply that commercially comes as close as possible to the spirit and meaning of the invalid provision. The same shall apply to any provisions omitted.

Correct at: November 2010