Please read user agreement (effective as of January 25, 2011) before using this service. By continuing to use slate.com, you agree to abide by the conditions of this agreement.
SLATE (TM) SERVICE USER AGREEMENT
© 2007, 2010 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. All Rights Reserved.
1. Welcome to Slate (“Slate”, “Service” or “we”), a division of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (“WPNI”), a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company. By using this Service, you agree to be bound by all of the terms of this Agreement (“User Agreement”) and by the Slate Message Board Guidelines. The Service is currently free to all users, however, we reserve the right to charge for this Service in the future. In such event, we will notify you in advance, and give you an opportunity to subscribe to this Service. We reserve the right to change the terms of this Agreement or to modify any features of this Service at any time. By registering for this Service and/or continuing to use this Service after the posting of Notices regarding such changes, you agree to be bound by such changes.
2. You represent that you have read and agree to abide by the Slate Message Board Guidelines.
3. This Service (including, but not limited to, text, photographs, graphics, video and audio content) is protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. All individual articles, content and other elements comprising this Service are also copyrighted works. You must abide by all additional copyright notices or restrictions contained in this Service. By posting content on the Service, a user is giving Slate the right to display such content on the Service and its affiliated publications and to distribute such content and use such content for promotional and marketing purposes.
4. (a) Except for content you have posted on the Service, or unless expressly permitted, you may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, enter into a database, display, perform, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any part of this Service, except that you may download material from this Service for your own personal use as follows: you may make one machine readable copy and/or one print copy that is limited to occasional articles of personal interest only. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you may not distribute any part of this Service over any network, including a local area network, nor sell or offer it for sale. See Slate’s Rights and Permissions section for more information on distribution. In addition, these files may not be used to construct any kind of database.
(b) We are concerned about the integrity of our Service when it is viewed in a setting created by a third party that includes advertising or other materials that we have not authorized to be displayed with our Service. Without limiting the provisions of (5a), neither you nor any third party shall make use of the contents of the Service in any manner that constitutes an infringement of our rights, including copyright or that has not been authorized by us.
(c) Just as Slate requires users to respect our copyrights, and those of our affiliates and partners, we respect the copyrights of others. If you believe in good faith that your copyrighted work has been reproduced on our site without authorization in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, you may notify our designated copyright agent either by mail to Copyright Agent, c/o Legal Department, WPNI, PO BOX 17370, Arlington, VA 22201-7370 or to copyrightagent@wpni.com. This contact information is only for suspected copyright infringement. Contact information for other matters is provided elsewhere on this site. Any personal information you provide in your email will be used only for purposes related to your email.
5. You will be responsible for all charges incurred while your account is being used, if any, including charges for any goods or services. You are also responsible for all statements made or materials posted under your account, including liability for harm caused by such statements or materials. You may not transfer, sell, or otherwise assign your rights or obligations under this Agreement.
6. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Slate, WPNI, The Washington Post Company, and its divisions and affiliates, and their directors, officers, managers, employees, shareholders, agents, and licensors, from and against all losses, expenses, damages and costs, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, resulting from any violation of this Agreement or the Slate Message Board Guidelines, or the failure to fulfill any obligations relating to your account incurred by you or any other person using your account. We reserve the right to take over the exclusive defense of any claim for which we are entitled to indemnification under this Section. In such event, you shall provide us with such cooperation as is reasonably requested by us.
7. This Service is available “as is.” We do not warrant that this Service will be uninterrupted or error-free. There may be delays, omissions, interruptions and inaccuracies in the news, information or other materials available through this Service. We are not responsible for the availability or content of other services that may be linked to this Service. We do not make any warranties, express or implied, including without limitation, those of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with respect to this Service or any information or goods that are available or advertised or sold through this Service. We do not make any representations, nor do we endorse the accuracy, completeness, timeliness or reliability of any advice, opinion, statement or other material or database displayed, uploaded or distributed in this Service or available though links in this Service. We reserve the right to correct any errors or omissions in this Service. Although we intend to take reasonable steps to prevent the introduction of viruses, worms, “Trojan horses” or other destructive materials to this Service, we do not guarantee or warrant that this Service or materials that may be downloaded from this Service do not contain such destructive features. We are not liable for any damages or harm attributable to such features. If you rely on this Service and any materials available through this Service, you do so solely at your own risk.
8. Slate, WPNI, The Washington Post Company, and its divisions and affiliates, and their directors, officers, managers, employees, shareholders, agents and licensors are not liable for incidental, indirect, consequential, special, punitive, or exemplary damages of any kind, including lost revenues or profits, loss of business or loss of data, in any way related to this Service or for any claim, loss or injury based on errors, omissions, interruptions or other inaccuracies in this Service (including without limitation as a result of breach of any warranty or other term of this Agreement). Any claim against us shall be limited to the amount you paid, if any, for use of this Service.
9. This Agreement may be terminated by either party for any reason at any time. Sections three (3) and six (6) through nine (9) of this Agreement shall survive such termination.
10. This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the United States and the Commonwealth of Virginia. BY CONTINUING TO USE SLATE, YOU AGREE TO ABIDE BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT.
SLATE PRIVACY POLICY
(effective as of January 25, 2011)
This Privacy Policy governs Slate’s data collection practices. At the same time that Slate and WPNI are committed to bringing you information tailored to your individual needs, we recognize the importance of protecting the privacy of your personally identifiable information. In adopting this Privacy Policy, our intent is to balance our legitimate business interests in collecting and using personally identifiable information and your reasonable expectations of privacy. Please note: this policy applies only to information collected by Slate, and does not govern or apply to information collected or used by Slate, WPNI, The Washington Post Company or its divisions or affiliates through other means.
What personally identifiable information do I provide to Slate?
Slate may ask you to provide various types of personally identifiable information to enhance your experience on our site. For example, Slate may ask for information such as your name or e-mail address. The more information you provide, the better we are able to customize your experience. We may also ask you for other information at other times - such as when you enter a contest or participate in a promotion, when you participate in our message boards, or when you order products from Slate. Whenever you provide personally identifiable information to us, we will make an effort to link to our Privacy Policy. See below about “cookies” and what other information is collected.
How does Slate use my personally identifiable information?
Our primary goal in collecting personally identifiable information is to provide you, the user, with a customized experience on our network of sites. This includes personalization services, interactive communications, online shopping and many other types of services, most of which are completely free to you. Slate uses the personally identifiable information you provide to us in several ways. Some examples follow.
A user’s personally identifiable information may be used by Slate for editorial purposes such as to contact you as part of an online survey. Additionally, we may also use the information provided by you to: 1) contact you with legal notices, 2) to advise you of any changes or additions to our Service or terms and conditions, and 3) account status (including confirmation of registrations).
We may also use information about our users and their activities on our site to send offers and information about Slate, The Washington Post Company and its affiliates. However, if you do not wish to receive the foregoing, please click the following link (http://help.slate.com/ics/support/ticketNew.asp?deptID=15081) to request removal from this list.
Further, if you told us in your account preferences that you would be interested in receiving certain e-mail newsletters from us, we will send you those e-mail subscriptions. Please note that regardless of those subscription preferences, we may contact you by e-mail as described elsewhere in this privacy policy (e.g., to notify you about changes or additions to our Service, such as new features). However, if you no longer wish to receive any of the foregoing, you may change your preferences for the future at any time by clicking on the following link (http://help.slate.com/ics/support/ticketNew.asp?deptID=15081).
In order to provide services free of charge, we display advertisements. Slate delivers targeted advertisements on behalf of advertisers. Advertisers give us an advertisement and tell us the type of audience they want to reach (for example, females over 25 years old). We take the advertisement and display it to users meeting those criteria. In this process, the advertiser never has access to your Slate.com account.
Slate also does research on our users’ demographics, interests and behavior based on the information you provide to us including upon registration, on order forms, during a promotion, as well as from our server log files or from surveys. We do this to better understand and serve our users. This research is compiled and analyzed, and Slate may share aggregated versions of this data with advertisers or other businesses. In addition, under confidentiality agreements, Slate may match user information with third party data.
If Slate changes its use of your personally identifiable information, it will notify you by the email that you provided at registration and /or prominently post such changes in this Privacy Policy.
Do other companies or people have access to personally identifiable information I provide to Slate?
When you are on an area of Slate and are asked for personally identifiable information, you are providing that information to Slate, WPNI, The Washington Post Company, its divisions or affiliates, or vendors providing contractual services for Slate (such as hosting vendors and list managers). If personally identifiable information is being provided to and/or maintained by any company other than these, our policy is that we will not transfer that personally identifiable information unless notice is given prior to transfer. If you do not want your information to be shared, you can choose not to allow the transfer by not using that particular service or by expressing this preference, if requested. Additional information about personally identifiable information follows.
Promotions: Promotions that run on Slate may be sponsored by companies other than Slate or WPNI or may be co-sponsored by Slate, and/or WPNI and another company. Some or all personally identifiable information provided by you during a promotion may be shared with the sponsor. If information will be shared, we will disclose such sharing prior to the transfer. You can decide not to participate in the promotion if you don’t want your personally identifiable information to be shared. In certain circumstances, you may not be able to participate in a particular promotion if you chose not to share personally identifiable information. Currently, most Slate promotions are limited to U.S. or North American residents.
Advertisers and Links: Slate advertisers, or Web sites that have links on our site, may also collect personally identifiable information directly from you. The information practices of companies collecting data on our site or Web sites linked to Slate are not covered by this Privacy Policy.
We do not control the privacy policies of our advertisers, sponsors or other sites or businesses to which we provide hyperlinks or access. Please visit the sites of these businesses to review their privacy policies.
Slate users should also be aware that, when you voluntarily disclose personal information in chat areas or bulletin boards, that information may be collected by others and may result in unsolicited messages from others.
Except as stated in this Privacy Policy or at the time of collection, a user’s personally identifiable information will not be transferred to a party outside Slate, WPNI, The Washington Post Company, its divisions or affiliates, or its service vendors unless notice is given at the time of collection or prior to transfer. Slate, WPNI, The Washington Post Company or its divisions or affiliates may also disclose account information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information may be necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be violating our User Agreement, may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) Slate’s rights or property, other Slate users, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities, pursuant to a request from law enforcement, a subpoena, or a court order, or when otherwise required by law.
Data Security: We have in place physical, electronic and managerial procedures to protect the information we collect online. However, as effective as these measures are, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our database, nor can we guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the internet.
What information do web servers collect?
Web servers serving Slate automatically collect certain non-personally identifiable information, such as which pages each user visits and the domain name of visitors. This information is used for various purposes including internal review, to tailor information to individual visitors and other users, for traffic audits, and as described elsewhere in this privacy policy. We also provide this information (as well as information from third-party market researchers) about our users on an aggregated, anonymous basis to our advertisers.
What are cookies and how does Slate use them?
Slate places a “cookie” on the browser of a Slate user’s computer to store and sometimes track information about you. A cookie can be used to tell when your computer has contacted a Web site; we may also use the information for editorial purposes and for other purposes such as measuring certain traffic patterns. For example, cookies are used to ensure that you don’t see the same ad too many times in a single session and that you do not have to reenter your login name or password during your visit. We may also use cookies to understand your use of the Service. Advertising service vendors that serve ads into our site may also use their own cookies. You may opt out of those cookies as described below. You may opt-out of the cookies delivered by Slate by changing the setting on your browser. Please be aware that this will disable all cookies delivered to your browser, not just the ones delivered by Slate.
Online advertising for the Service is delivered by the vendor DoubleClick. DoubleClick places cookies on your browser to facilitate serving particular ads – for instance, to help determine whether you have seen a particular advertisement before and to avoid sending you duplicate advertisements. You can opt out of DoubleClick’s use of cookies for these purposes by visiting http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/index.aspx.
How Can I Opt-Out of Online Advertising Cookies?
In some cases, we and advertisers on the Service work with other third-party vendors to help deliver advertisements tailored to your interests. These vendors include ad networks and audience segment providers, and they place cookies on your browser to collect information about your online activity (e.g., the sites and pages you have visited) in order to help advertisers deliver particular ads that they believe you would find most relevant. You can learn more about how those vendors collect and use such information, and opt out of those vendors’ use of cookies to tailor advertising to you, by visiting http://www.aboutads.info.
Often our advertisers contract with a third-party service to host their ads. In this case, an ad serving vendor contacts the advertisers’ hosting service for a particular advertisement. In that case, an independent cookie may be used by the third-party service. We do not have a mechanism to allow visitors to opt-out of cookies from vendors with whom we do not have a contractual relationship.
Kids under 13: Do not send any information about yourself to us - including information like your name, address or e-mail address. In general, we do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. If, in limited circumstances, we do knowingly collect personally identifiable information from a child under the age of 13, we will do so only with verified parental consent prior to collection. In the event that we learn that we have collected any personal information from a child under the age of 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information from our database as quickly as possible.
Users of this site who have signed up for the Microsoft Passport Network (the “Passport Service”) will also be subject to the Microsoft Passport Network Privacy Policy for services provided pursuant to the Passport Service.
