Terms v2.0

Welcome

We appreciate you’re taking the time to read these Terms and we’re very happy to have you using our services.

With 1000 new users joining mastodon.green we’re inviting you and others to contribute as volunteers. We’re also starting a social club, publishing a Patreon page and launching a Discord server.

When you’re contributing as a volunteer, you’re helping to build a friendly community working together towards our goal of having climate-positive servers in the Fediverse.

To include community, club membership and volunteer contributors in the best possible way, we’re updating the Terms from version v1.0 to v2.0.

Terms v2.0 lays the foundation for our new ways of collaborating. If you want to voice your opinion, give feedback or contribute to version 2.1 you can ask for an invite to our Discord server.

Terms v2.0 take effect 2022-05-20

By choosing to become a club member or contributing to Albin Social projects before 2022-05-20 you accept these terms and in that case they take effect from the day you join as a club member or contributor to the projects.

We’re going beyond net-zero on mastodon.green and all Albin Social projects. Albin Social’s mission is to build services that remove CO₂ from the air when you’re using them.

Introduction

Mastodon.green is a community and social networking service on the Fediverse. It’s hosted by Albin Social. Our server is running an instance of the Mastodon software. For legal clarity we have these written Terms of Service (“Terms”). They describe our commitments to you, and your rights and responsibilities when using our services. These terms apply to all Albin Social’s services and projects such as mastodon.green, dentep.org, consetti.org and our Discord server.

Privacy policy

What information do we collect?

Basic account information: If you register on this server, you may be asked to enter a username, an e-mail address and a password. You may also enter additional profile information such as a display name and biography, and upload a profile picture and header image. The username, display name, biography, profile picture and header image are always listed publicly.
Posts, following and other public information: The list of people you follow is listed publicly, the same is true for your followers. When you submit a message, the date and time is stored as well as the application you submitted the message from. Messages may contain media attachments, such as pictures and videos. Public and unlisted posts are available publicly. When you feature a post on your profile, that is also publicly available information. Your posts are delivered to your followers, in some cases it means they are delivered to different servers and copies are stored there. When you delete posts, this is likewise delivered to your followers. The action of reblogging or favouriting another post is always public.
Direct and followers-only posts: All posts are stored and processed on the server. Followers-only posts are delivered to your followers and users who are mentioned in them, and direct posts are delivered only to users mentioned in them. In some cases it means they are delivered to different servers and copies are stored there. We make a good faith effort to limit the access to those posts only to authorized persons, but other servers may fail to do so. Therefore it’s important to review servers your followers belong to. You may toggle an option to approve and reject new followers manually in the settings. Please keep in mind that the operators of the server and any receiving server may view such messages, and that recipients may screenshot, copy or otherwise re-share them. Do not share any dangerous information over Mastodon.
IPs and other metadata: When you log in, we record the IP address you log in from, as well as the name of your browser application. All the logged in sessions are available for your review and revocation in the settings. The latest IP address used is stored for up to 12 months. We also may retain server logs which include the IP address of every request to our server.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in the following ways:

To provide the core functionality of Mastodon. You can only interact with other people’s content and post your own content when you are logged in. For example, you may follow other people to view their combined posts in your own personalized home timeline.
To aid moderation of the community, for example comparing your IP address with other known ones to determine ban evasion or other violations.
The email address you provide may be used to send you information, notifications about other people interacting with your content or sending you messages, and to respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you enter, submit, or access your personal information. Among other things, your browser session, as well as the traffic between your applications and the API, are secured with SSL, and your password is hashed using a strong one-way algorithm. You may enable two-factor authentication to further secure access to your account.

What is our data retention policy?

We will make a good faith effort to:

Retain server logs containing the IP address of all requests to this server, in so far as such logs are kept, no more than 90 days.
Retain the IP addresses associated with registered users no more than 12 months.

You can request and download an archive of your content, including your posts, media attachments, profile picture, and header image.

You may irreversibly delete your account at any time.

Do we use cookies?

Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow). These cookies enable the site to recognize your browser and, if you have a registered account, associate it with your registered account.

We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our site, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety.

Your public content may be downloaded by other servers in the network. Your public and followers-only posts are delivered to the servers where your followers reside, and direct messages are delivered to the servers of the recipients, in so far as those followers or recipients reside on a different server than this.

When you authorize an application to use your account, depending on the scope of permissions you approve, it may access your public profile information, your following list, your followers, your lists, all your posts, and your favourites. Applications can never access your e-mail address or password.

Site usage by children

If this server is in the EU or the EEA: Our site, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 16 years old. If you are under the age of 16, per the requirements of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) do not use this site.

If this server is in the USA: Be at least 16 to sign up. If you are under the age of 13, per the requirements of COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) do not use this site.

Law requirements can be different if this server is in another jurisdiction.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.

This privacy policy is CC-BY-SA. It was last updated 2022-05-01.

Adapted from the Mastodon.social privacy policy.

Originally adapted from the Discourse privacy policy.

Impressum

Johan Sundström,
c/o Grosch Postflex #442
Emsdettener Straße 10
48268 Greven
Germany
email: post@albinsocial.com

Terms of service

Our services

We provide a social networking service where people, organizations and companies can post and share stuff; text, photos, videos and more. These terms and conditions (“Terms”) govern all use of Albin Social’s services, all content, volunteering for our projects, contributing to the community, club membership, and all our products available at or through the websites, including, but not limited to, mastodon.green, dentep.org, albinsocial.com, consetti.org and our Discord server (taken together, our “Services”). Our Services are offered subject to your acceptance without modification of all of the terms and conditions contained herein and all other operating rules, policies (including, without limitation, our privacy policy and community guidelines) and procedures that may be published from time to time by Albin Social (collectively, the “Agreement”). You agree that we may automatically upgrade our Services, and these Terms will apply to any upgrades. We refer to Johan Sundström, collectively as “Albin Social”, “Mastodon.green”, “us”, “our” or “we” throughout this agreement.

Please read this Agreement carefully before accessing or using our Services. By accessing or using any part of our Services, you agree to become bound by the Terms of this Agreement. If you do not agree to all the Terms of this Agreement, then you may not access or use any of our Services. If these Terms are considered an offer by Albin Social, acceptance is expressly limited to these Terms.

Served region and languages

Albin Social is a micro-company and cannot afford to provide our services worldwide. We make our services available in selected countries as described in our Served region policy. Due to limited moderation resources we also have a Language policy. It describes which languages can be used on public timelines and elsewhere in our services.

These two policies can change with time depending on factors such as if we are ready to expand our services into new countries or have to retract from countries. If we get more moderators with specific language skills we may be able to add languages, and if moderators leave we may have to remove a listed language.

Our services are primarily for people in Europe (EU/EEA). The reason for this is a) The cost associated with offering a worldwide service. b) The administrative burden that may fall upon us to comply with mandatory rules such as filing VAT reports. c) Unreasonable time needed for moderators to deal with spam-bot networks or heated human interactions related to international conflicts. d) Difficulty to find enough moderators with language skills. For these reasons we may have to close your account if you’re located outside of EU/EEA or if you live in a country outside of those described in our served region policy.

Your account

Albin Social offer several types of accounts, free accounts, premium accounts and volunteer accounts. Volunteer accounts are those that may be needed while contributing to Albin Social projects.

You can use a pseudonym on your Mastodon.green account, but you must provide us with accurate and up to date information if needed. If you create a Mastodon.green account, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your account.

Please use a good password, it’s your responsibility to keep it secure, and consider enabling two factor authentication. You are fully responsible for all activities that occur under the account and any other actions taken in connection with the account. You must immediately notify Albin Social of any unauthorized uses of your account, or any other breaches of security. Albin Social will not be liable for any acts or omissions by you, including any damages of any kind incurred as a result of such acts or omissions.

Without limiting any representations or warranties, Albin Social has the right (though not the obligation) to, in Albin Social’s sole discretion, (i) change or reclaim your username or website’s URL due to prolonged inactivity or for any other reason, (ii) refuse or remove any content that, in Albin Social’s reasonable opinion, violates any Albin Social policy or is in any way harmful or objectionable, or (iii) terminate or deny access to and use of Mastodon.green or other services to any individual or entity for any reason. If anything has been paid, for example membership fees, donations or sponsorships, Albin Social will have no obligation to provide a refund of any amounts previously paid.

Content

You own your content that you create and share on our Services. You keep all rights to your content, but you must give us the legal permission we need to provide the Services. When you share, post or upload content, for example photos or videos, that is covered by intellectual property rights, on or in connection with our services, you grant us a

non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content for the purpose of making Albin Social’s services and products available.

When you delete your content or account, this license ends. Be aware that your content may continue to appear if you have shared it, and others (including third party server owners) have not deleted it.

If you delete Content, Albin Social will use reasonable efforts to remove it as soon as possible, in accordance with our privacy policy, but you acknowledge that caching, backups or references to the Content may not be made immediately unavailable.

If you publish content on your profile page, make comments, post material to Mastodon.green and/or our other Services, post links on our services, or otherwise make (or allow any third party to make) material available (any such material, “Content”), you are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content or your conduct. That is the case regardless of what form the Content takes, which includes, but is not limited to text, photo, video, audio, or code. By using Mastodon.green, www.albinsocial.com and/or our other Services, you represent and warrant that your Content and conduct do not violate these Terms, our policies or the community guidelines. You must not break copyright law and therefore you must have all appropriate rights to post any content.

Albin Social has not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material posted to our Services and also not content posted to third party servers, and cannot therefore be responsible for that material’s content, use or effects. By operating our Services, Albin Social does not represent or imply that it endorses the material there posted, or that it believes such material to be accurate, useful, or non-harmful. You are responsible for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content.

Our Services may contain content that is offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable, as well as content containing technical inaccuracies, typographical mistakes, and other errors. Our Services may also contain material that violates the privacy or publicity rights, or infringes the intellectual property and other proprietary rights, of third parties, or the downloading, copying or use of which is subject to additional terms and conditions, stated or unstated. If you see objectionable content that break the law or our community guidelines you can and are encouraged to report such content.

Albin Social disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from the use by logged in users or non logged in visitors of our Services, or from any downloading by those, of content there posted. We reserve the right to remove, disallow, block or delete any content or contribution with or without notice to you.

Content posted on other servers and websites

We have not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, made available through the websites and web pages to which Mastodon.green links, and that link to Mastodon.green. We do not have any control over those non-Albin Social servers, software or websites, and we are not responsible for their contents or their use. By linking to a non-Albin Social website, Albin Social does not represent or imply that it endorses such website. Albin Social disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from your use of non-Albin Social websites, software, web pages and connected, or federated, servers, networks and services.

Funding

Mastodon.green is funded by membership fees, sale of merch, verification fees and sponsorships.

Club membership

Mastodon.green has free users and club members.

You’re welcome as a club member when you live in EU/EEA. At this point in time we can’t accept members from other countries, the reason for this is the unknown administrative burden that may fall upon Albin Social if we would be open to the whole world. There may for example be requirements for yearly, or even monthly, VAT reports for every country. Albin Social is a one person company, and the world is big.

A social club is made for it’s members. Your contributions can shape what the club and mastodon.green becomes. As an example members write mastodon.green community guidelines and moderation policy together.

We have modeled our online community on Wikipedia, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we will use a wiki to collaborate in our clubs. It means that we use some of their ways to organise a community. For example we mainly use consensus based decisions. Wikipedia has a long experience of online collaboration and they have some solid texts that are free for us to adapt. To quickly get organized in our community we copy some texts from their terms and policies. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel.

A club stands, go places or fall with its members. There are however some official policies written by Albin Social to set the scope, vision and mission of our projects. Wikipedia also has official policies and community developed policies. Official policies exist to avoid problems and keep the projects, including clubs, on track towards our goal of climate-positive social servers. If a million coal miners join and reach consensus to turn the club into a pro coal-mining social club, that’s obviously not happening. If a billionaire joins and convinces everyone that the club should be extreme right, or extreme left, that won’t happen. Our clubs are non political. Naturally the “.green” name and colour may attract some people or even political parties, but the clubs stay non political through the use of official policies.

Some of our official policies are not written yet, and from time to time we will update or release new policies. We try to be like a hexaflexagon while setting up our community. Hexaflexagons are often colourful. They bend in some ways, but not in others. There’s flexibility and a bit of magic in them.

There’s indeed magic on the internet but mythological creatures are rumored to lurk in the corners. Let’s speak about trolls, spammers and other misbehaving people or legal entities. If you violate policies, rules or community guidelines, that may lead to termination of your club membership without any refund of membership fees.

What’s the difference between premium members in our club and free users? Free users are not invited to have their say in the process of writing guidelines and moderation policy. Free users have a lower quota on storage space and server resource use compared with members. Exactly how a free membership differ from a premium member account is something we have to discuss. Maybe everyone can have the same storage space if we can afford it? Free users have no access to our Discord server and our planned Matrix server. A free user don’t have a members page (page.mastodon.green/@user) (planned feature) and thereby also no highlighted link they can place in their mastodon.green bio.

Sponsorship

Thank you for your interest in becoming a sponsor and for reading these terms. Please get in touch to discuss your specific needs. Albin Social reserves the right to reject sponsorships if we believe the association could harm our brand. Sponsorship is currently open for organisations/companies located in EU/EEA.

Paid services and Premium accounts

Club member: You as an indiviudal person can choose to level up from a free membership in our community to a premium membership in our club. We have various tiers to choose from. Community members with a free account have a lower quota for the use of storage space and server capacity than members with a premium membership. Club members may get access to additional benefits.

Organisations: Organisations and companies need a premium account to use our service as soon as their use goes beyond setting up an account and testing the service. Setting up and testing can only be done as long as it’s not incurring any unreasonable costs on Albin Social, i.e. the account isn’t following resource demanding third party accounts or using excessive amounts of storage/server capacity.

Served region: Currently the served region for paid services is EU/EEA. We may expand to Switzerland, UK, Canada and USA after investigating any mandatory administrative requirements such as VAT rules.

Micro sized organisation: If you’re a freelancer, hobby club, neighbourhood political group, or a micro sized company with low turnover you can choose the Boost tier on Patreon. Alternatively contact us for a solution suitable to your size.

Organisation Lite: At a minimum small and medium sized organisations/companies need an Organisation Lite account to to actively use our services beyond setup and testing.

We love businesses and work hard to find the right balance between business interest and the interests of club members and free users. Get in touch with us to find a good solution to your needs.

If your business is likely to attract a large following, our system may not be able to handle that without having an adequate budget and enough time for preparation. Please contact us if that’s the case. A usage policy applies for organisation and companies. This is to prevent our systems from being overburdened.

Remember: It’s important for your business to find the right tone of voice and frequency of posting on our services. We strive for genuine human interaction first and human-company interaction second. Sometimes less is more. It’s not popular among people in our community to see companies and organisations flood the timeline with posts.

We do reserve the right to temporary or permanently limit visibility on any account that we believe our community will see as annoying or “spammy”. We reserve the right to reject or terminate any account, including premium accounts, if we believe the usage of our services could harm our brand, Albin Social’s business or for any other reason.

If you buy any paid services (“Premium account”, “Club membership”, “Premium services”) you agree to pay us the applicable fees and taxes. Failure to pay will result in termination of your paid services. Payments are non refundable except as required by law.

Federation

Mastodon.green is connected, in a Federated network “the Fediverse”, with third party servers, software and services.

With an account on Mastodon.green you will be able to follow people on a large number of connected third party servers in the Fediverse.

We federate with as many servers as technically, practically and ecomomically possible, despite this we may block some servers for various reasons. Some individuals and some server owners may misbehave and break the law or share inappropriate content.

As a first line of action we may block/suspend individual accounts, but we may block domains/servers that have large amount of content that is not aligned with our community guidelines, terms and policies, or that are known to host illegal content. We may block servers that run outdated or incompatible software. We may block servers who are running software different from the software we are using in our services. We may block servers if the stream of content is overburdening our small server, the storage capacity or our economical resources.

Third party servers

The Mastodon software is made in such a way that data and other information is automatically passed around between several independent servers in the Fediverse. Such third party servers may run other software, be outside of the European Union and have different terms of service.

The Mastodon software we use is under continuous development and changes are made by several developers that work independent from Albin Social. There are no guarantees of any kind that things will be bug free, safe or work as it should. It’s open source so the code can be reviewed if you so wish. We aim to run the latest stable release of the software.

Be aware that some of your content, meta data and/or other data and information may automatically be passed by the Mastodon software to third parties when you use our services, and the respective third party’s terms of service, privacy policy, and other policies may apply.

As can be heard from the name, we’re not running the third party services and have no control at all over what they do or don’t do. We recommend that you don’t share any sensitive information, also not in personal messages as they are not encrypted and can technically be read by any owner of a server. If you do not like the idea of a federated network, please do not use Mastodon.green at all.

Third party services include, but are not limited to servers in federated networking platforms. Examples are GNU social, Mastodon servers including different forks of the Mastodon software, Tusky app, Pixelfed servers, and other ActivityPub and OStatus implementations.

Third Party Services are not vetted, endorsed, or controlled by Albin Social. By using Mastodon.green, you’re exposed to third parties by seeing posts in public feeds, by posting publicly, by posting personally to some other users, and in other ways. All use of Mastodon.green and the connected/federated Third Party Services is at your own risk, and we shall not be responsible or liable to anyone for Third Party Services.

It is your responsibility to review the Third Party’s terms and policies before accepting followers on other services and before interacting with Third Party Services in any way. Some of your data and content, for example when you post publicly or directly to a user on a connected network are transferred to a Third Party Services. Your data and content will handled in accordance with the Third Party’s privacy policy and practices. We do not have control over how a Third Party Service may use your data and content. You should carefully review Third Party Services’ data collection, retention, and use policies.

Third Party Services may not work appropriately with Mastodon.green, and we may not be able to provide support for issues caused by any Third Party Services. If you have questions or concerns about how a Third Party Service operates, or need support, please contact the Third Party directly. At any time, we may at our discretion, suspend, disable, or remove Third Party Services.

Prohibited uses

When using Albin Social services you agree not to:

Publish material or engage in activity that is illegal under applicable law.
Overburden Albin Social’s systems, as determined by us in our sole discretion.
Disclose sensitive personal information of others.
Send spam or bulk unsolicited messages.
Interfere with, disrupt, or attack any service or network.
Distribute material that is or enables malware, spyware, adware, or other malicious code.
Use unauthorized bots, for example to automatically post or analyze content.

Copyright infringement and DMCA policy

As Albin Social ask others to respect its intellectual property rights, it respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that material located on or linked to by Mastodon.green violates your copyright, you are encouraged to notify Albin Social. Albin Social will respond to all such notices, including as required or appropriate by removing the infringing material or disabling all links to the infringing material. Mastodon.green will terminate a visitor’s access to and use of the website if, under appropriate circumstances, the visitor is determined to be a repeat infringer of the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of Albin Social or others. In the case of such termination, Albin Social will have no obligation to provide a refund of any amounts previously paid to Albin Social.

We have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who claims that their intellectual property rights, or their right to privacy, are violated by your content or contributions.

Intellectual property

This Agreement does not transfer from Albin Social to you any Albin Social or third party intellectual property, and all right, title, and interest in and to such property will remain (as between the parties) solely with Albin Social.

At Albin Social, we protect our trademark rights so that we can protect our users from fraudulent impersonators. Because of this, we ask that you please respect our trademarks. All Albin Social trademarks belong to Albin Social, and any use of our trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, or domain names must be in compliance with these Terms of Use and in compliance with our Trademark Policy.

Your use of our Services grants you no right or license to reproduce or otherwise use any Albin Social or third-party trademarks.

Mastodon.green (sometimes called the Green Mastodon server) is the name of our domain and our community, it’s a social network within the Federation.

The word Mastodon on itself, without the “.green” part, refers to the Mastodon software and/or it refers to the wider Mastodon network of federated Mastodon servers.

The Mastodon software is open source and made by lead developer Eugen Rochko and a large number of other contributors. We would like to thank all of you for the excellent work in making the awesome Mastodon software. It’s highly appreciated and much needed work.

Mastodon.green is separate from the name of the Mastodon software and separate from the long list of other communities and domains that have the word mastodon as part of their name. Examples of different communities with ‘mastodon’ in their domain and/or community name include but are not limited to Mastodon.social, Mastodon.scot, Mastodon.eus, Mastodon.cloud, Mastodon.art, Mastodon.xyz and Mastodon.technology. Read more about other communities on joinmastodon.org

Changes

We are constantly updating our Services, and sometimes we have to change the legal terms under which our Services are offered. If we make changes that are material, we will let you know by posting on one of our blogs, official account or by sending you an email or other communication before the changes take effect. The notice will designate a reasonable period of time after which the new terms will take effect. If you disagree with our changes, then you should stop using our Services within the designated notice period. Your continued use of our Services will be subject to the new terms. However, any dispute that arose before the changes shall be governed by the Terms (including the binding individual arbitration clause) that were in place when the dispute arose.

Software updates

By using or downloading our software. You give us permission to download and install upgrades and updates to develop the software.

Termination

Albin Social may terminate your access to all or any part of our Services at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately. If you wish to terminate this Agreement or your Mastodon.green account (if you have one), you may simply discontinue using our Services. All provisions of this Agreement which by their nature should survive termination shall survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity and limitations of liability.

Disclaimer of Warranties

Our Services are provided “as is.” Albin Social and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither Albin Social nor its suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that our Services will be error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted. You understand that when you download from Mastodon.green, or otherwise obtain content or services, it’s at your own discretion and risk. Your use of our services is at your sole risk. We provide these services on an “as is” and “as available” basis, and we expressly disclaim all express or implied warranties of all kinds, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We make no warranty that our services will meet your requirements, be safe, secure, uninterrupted, timely, accurate, or error-free, or that your information will be secure. We are not responsible for the content, data, or actions of third parties, and you release us, our directors, officers, employees, and agents from any claims and damages, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with any claim you have against any such third parties. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you from us or through or from our services creates any warranty not expressly stated in these Terms of Use. Any material downloaded or otherwise obtained through your use of our services is done at your own discretion and risk, and you will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or loss of data that results from the download of any such material. You agree that we have no responsibility or liability for the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any content or communication maintained by the service. We retain the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time with or without notice. Some states or jurisdictions do not allow the types of disclaimers in this section, so they may not apply to you either in part or in full depending on the law.

Jurisdiction and applicable law

Except to the extent applicable law, if any, provides otherwise, this Agreement, any access to or use of our Services will be governed by the laws of Germany. To ensure that disputes are dealt with soon after they arise, you agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action you might have arising out of or related to use of our services or these Terms of Use must be filed within the applicable statute of limitations or, if earlier, one (1) year after the pertinent facts underlying such claim or cause of action could have been discovered with reasonable diligence (or be forever barred).

Limitation of liability

In no event will Albin Social, or its suppliers or licensors, be liable with respect to any subject matter of this Agreement under any contract, negligence, strict liability or other legal or equitable theory for: (i) any special, incidental or consequential damages; (ii) the cost of procurement for substitute products or services; (iii) for interruption of use or loss or corruption of data; or (iv) for any amounts. Albin Social will not be liable to you or to any other party for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, including but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data, or other intangible losses, regardless of whether we were advised of the possibility of such damage. In no event shall our liability exceed one thousand U.S. dollars (USD 1000.00) in aggregate. In the case that applicable law may not allow the limitation or exclusion of liability or incidental or consequential damages, the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you, although our liability will be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.

General representation and warranty

You represent and warrant that your use of our Services:

Will be in strict accordance with this Agreement;
Will comply with all applicable laws and regulations (including without limitation all applicable laws regarding online conduct and acceptable content, the transmission of technical data exported from the EU or the country in which you reside, privacy, and data protection); and
Will not infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any third party.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Albin Social, its contractors, and its licensors, and their respective directors, officers, employees, and agents from and against any and all claims and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, arising out of your use of our Services, including but not limited to your violation of this Agreement.

Translation

These Terms of Service were originally written in English. We may translate these terms into other languages. In the event of a conflict between a translated version of these Terms of Service and the English version, the English version will control.

Miscellaneous

This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between Albin Social and you concerning the subject matter hereof, and they may only be modified by a written amendment signed by an authorized executive of Albin Social, or by the posting by Albin Social of a revised version.

If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that part will be construed to reflect the parties’ original intent, and the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. A waiver by either party of any term or condition of this Agreement or any breach thereof, in any one instance, will not waive such term or condition or any subsequent breach thereof.

You may assign your rights under this Agreement to any party that consents to, and agrees to be bound by, its terms and conditions;

This agreement isn’t giving rights to third parties. You need our consent to transfer your rights or obligations under this agreement. Albin Social may assign its rights under this Agreement without condition. This Agreement will be binding upon and will inure to the benefit of the parties, their successors and permitted assigns.

We at Albin Social appreciate feedback, comments, ideas and suggestions. We appreciate that you want to help our projects to succeed, but we have no obligations to you. Any idea, suggestion or any related documentation, or other materials you may submit to us (collectively “Feedback”) are treated as a contribution. You agree that we may use Feedback in any way without any restrictions or obligation to attribute- or compensate you. We are not obliged to keep feedback confidential. Regardless of what your accompanying communication may say, the following terms will apply. If you choose to submit feedback you agree that it’s a contribution to Albin Social and treated accordingly, as described in these Terms.

Contributing

You can choose to contribute to Albin Social’s projects. Through your contributions, you’re helping to build a colourful community that goes beyond net-zero.

To make the transition from a small mastodon server to a community with volunteer contributors we looked at best practice for online collaboration. Wikipedia and their terms and policies published by Wikimedia foundation have been tested and refined through the years. We have copied relevant texts and adapted them to fit our situation.

We added sections from Wikipedia’s terms such as „other terms“ which explains that volunteering isn‘t an employment. That section is important to prevent any misunderstandings between Albin Social and the German tax institututions. For similar law related reasons we have added a section where you as a contributor give us permission to use your contributions in our projects.

Free licenses: When a project, project edition or feature requires a free license such as (A)GPLv3, Apache 2.0, CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 you agree to license your contributions under that particular license in addition to the permission you give Albin Social to use your contributions.

Your rights: The permission you give us is non-exclusive which means that when you own all the rights in your contribution you have the right to do what you want with it. You could for example give other people and companies permission to use your Work. As another example, you could publish your Work on your own website with a different Creative Commons license.

Attribution: When a free license is required our policies may mandate collective attribution. Let’s take an example: With CC BY-SA 4.0 and www.mastodon.green as the project edition, the attribution looks like this “CC BY-SA 4.0 Mastodon.green contributors” and it will link to www.mastodon.green/license. At that page a visitor can find information and links to the license text page and a page listing contributors. OpenStreetMap uses a system similar to this, but they have a different license.

Importing text and non-text media: You may import text/media that you have found elsewhere or that you have co-authored with others, but in such case you warrant that you have the rights to give Albin Social the required permissions and that the imported text/media are compatible with any required free license and project policies.

Public domain content: This type of content may have complications outside of USA and therefore specific policy apply on how, when and if such content can be imported to our projects.

No revocation of license: Except as consistent with your license, you agree that you will not unilaterally revoke or seek invalidation of any license that you have granted under these Terms for text content or non-text media contributed to Albin Social Projects or features, even if you terminate use of our services.

Permission: When you to contribute to Albin Social’s projects and services you give us permission, a license, to use your submitted contributions. The legal code for this permission is adapted from Creative Commons CC0 fallback license.

You, or the owner of your contribution, still own the copyright in the contribution submitted to us. By submitting a Contribution to Albin Social you (Affirmer), hereby grant us a royalty-free, no-charge, perpetual, worldwide, fully transferable, sub-licensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable and unconditional license to exercise your (Affirmer’s) Copyright and Related Rights in the Contribution in any current or future medium and for any number of copies, and for any purpose whatsoever, including without limitation commercial, advertising or promotional purposes.

Should any part of the License for any reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, such partial invalidity or ineffectiveness shall not invalidate the remainder of the License, and in such case Affirmer hereby affirms that he or she will not (i) exercise any of his or her remaining Copyright and Related Rights in the Work or (ii) assert any associated claims and causes of action with respect to the Work, in either case contrary to Affirmer’s express Statement of Purpose

Affirmers statement of purpose is to contribute in such a way that Albin Social can reliably and without fear of later claims of infringement build upon, modify, incorporate in other works, reuse and redistribute as freely as possible in any form whatsoever and for any purposes, including without limitation commercial purposes. For these and/or other purposes and motivations, and without any expectation of additional consideration or compensation, the person contributing with a Work (the “Affirmer”), to the extent that he or she is an owner of Copyright and Related Rights in the Work, voluntarily elects to contribute and grant Albin Social the above license to the Work

In the unlikely event that you contribute a patent to the project you grant us a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work. This legal code was adapted from the Apache 2.0 license.

Confidential information: As a volunteer you may come in contact with confidential information, for example while being a volunteer moderator. Such information could be e-mail addresses, IP numbers or Albin Social internal documentation. You are reminded that the privacy policy applies to you as a contributor and that you obviously must follow the law. You agree to keep confidential information confidential and act in line with Albin Social’s vision, mission and official policies.

Resolutions and Project Policies

Albin Social releases official policies from time to time. Some of these policies may be mandatory for a particular Project or Project edition, and, when they are, you agree to abide by them as applicable.

Other terms

These Terms do not create an employment, agency, partnership, or joint venture relationship between you and us, Albin Social. If you have not signed a separate agreement with us, these Terms of Use are the entire agreement between you and us. If there is any conflict between these Terms of Use and a signed written agreement between you and us, the signed agreement will control.

You agree that we may provide you with notices, including those regarding changes to the Terms of Use, by email, regular mail, or postings on Project websites. If in any circumstance, we do not apply or enforce any provision of these Terms of Use, it is not a waiver of that provision.

You understand that, unless otherwise agreed to in writing by us, you have no expectation of compensation for any activity, contribution, or idea that you provide to us, the community, or the Albin Social Projects or Project editions.

Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in these Terms of Use, we (Albin Social) and you agree not to modify the applicable terms and requirements of any free license that is employed on the Projects or Project editions when such free license is authorized by these Terms of Use.

These Terms of Use were written in English. While we hope that translations of these Terms of Use are accurate, in the event of any differences in meaning between the original English version and a translation, the original English version takes precedence.

If any provision or part of a provision of these Terms of Use is found unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that provision or part of the provision is deemed severable from these Terms of Use and will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and all other provisions of these Terms of Use will remain in full force and effect.

We ask that you please periodically review the most up-to-date version of these Terms of Use. Your continued use of our services after the new Terms of Use become official following the notice and review period constitutes an acceptance of these Terms of Use on your part. For the protection of Albin Social and other users like yourself, if you do not agree with our Terms of Use, you cannot use our services.

Definitions

„Affirmer“ (“You” or “Your”) shall mean an individual person or Legal Entity

“Legal Entity” shall mean the union of the acting entity and all other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with that entity. For the purposes of this definition, “control” means (i) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (ii) ownership of fifty percent (50%) or more of the outstanding shares, or (iii) beneficial ownership of such entity.

“Contribution” shall mean any work of authorship, including the original version of the Work and any modifications or additions to that Work or Derivative Works thereof, that is intentionally submitted to Albin Social for inclusion in the Albin Social projects and services. For the purposes of this definition, “submitted” means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to the Albin Social or its representatives, including but not limited to communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control systems, messengers and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, Albin Social for the purpose of discussing and improving the Work and Albin Social‘s services, but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise designated in writing by the copyright owner as “Not a Contribution.”

“Contributor” shall mean any individual or Legal Entity on behalf of whom a Contribution has been received by Albin Social and subsequently incorporated within the Work.

“Work” shall mean any work of authorship and/or a database (each, a “Work”).

„Copyright and Related Rights“ include, but are not limited to, the following:

i. the right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, perform, display, communicate, and translate a Work;
ii. moral rights retained by the original author(s) and/or performer(s);
iii. publicity and privacy rights pertaining to a person’s image or likeness depicted in a Work;
iv. rights protecting against unfair competition in regards to a Work, subject to the limitations in paragraph 4(a), below;
v. rights protecting the extraction, dissemination, use and reuse of data in a Work;
vi. database rights (such as those arising under Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases, and under any national implementation thereof, including any amended or successor version of such directive); and
vii. other similar, equivalent or corresponding rights throughout the world based on applicable law or treaty, and any national implementations thereof.

Thank you!

We appreciate that you’re taking the time to read these Terms, and we are very happy to have you using our services and contributing to the projects.

These Terms

This document is published under CC BY-SA 4.0. A Creative Commons Sharealike license, which means you’re are welcome to re-purpose it for your own use. Just make sure to replace references to us with ones to you, and if you don’t mind we’d appreciate a link to www.albinsocial.com somewhere on your website.

This document was first adapted from a text with CC BY-SA 4.0 license 2018-10-05, from Automattics Terms of service. Automattic run a blog and website hosting platform called WordPress.com

This document includes text with CC BY-SA 3.0 license from Wikimedia foundation, the host of Wikipedia, https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use/en
This document includes text from https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode
This document includes text with Apache 2.0 license from https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html

This document was previously updated: 2020-05-24, Terms v1.0

This document Terms v2.0 was updated: 2022-05-05 and had minor edits 2022-05-09

Terms v2.0 added the sections “Served region and languages”, “Club membership”, “Sponsorship”, “Paid services and Premium accounts”, “Contributing”, “Resolutions and Project Policies” and “Other terms”. The Terms had an overall update to reflect that we’re about to start a members club and invite volunteers to our projects. If you’re a member you can express your opinion or ideas related to the Terms, the place for that is in our Discord server.