Freethought Forum Rights, Duties and Privileges

[livius drusus]

Freethought Forum Rules

As stipulated in the registration agreement, the rules here are simple:

1. You may not post any messages or perform any action that impairs the functioning of the Freethought Forum.

• For example:
  • Anything that disables the site from rendering properly
  • Anything that disrupts the functioning of the server (DOS attack, etc.)
  • Any content designed to corrupt members' computers (viruses, scripts, etc.)
  • Any excessively repetitious content (flooding)

2. You may not post any messages that contain content illegal in the United States.

• For example:
  • Child pornography
  • Warez (pirated software)
  • Copyrighted content not covered by fair use provisions

3. You may not post any messages that violate the Freethought Forum Privacy Policy.

• For example:
  • Member's undisclosed personal information

4. You may not post spam.

By posted messages we mean any information transmitted via the Freethought Forum software, including private messages, emails, gallery, arcade, links, articles and journal entries and comments, and other current and future board resources.

Please report any posts you suspect of rule violations by clicking on the "Report Bad Post" button (). Your report will be sent to the administrators via email and PM. Also, a new thread viewable only by the reporting poster and the administrators will be automatically generated in the Reported Posts forum.

Please report any other violations by sending a private message to viscousmemories and/or livius drusus, or by sending an email to the admin mailbox.

If you suspect a crime has been committed, please read: How to Report Internet-Related Crime

Violations of these rules may be deleted on sight by the administrators.
Any member who has three rule violations will be banned.

The administrators reserve the right to withdraw or deny membership at their discretion.

[livius drusus]

Post Ownership and Editing Policy

Any post or article published on the Freethought Forum is the exclusive copyright of the author. The Freethought Forum can neither reproduce elsewhere nor seek to profit from any such writing without the explicit consent of the author.

The Freethought Forum does, however, own the work within its context. Although there is no case law to speak of on the subject, we consider the unique database of the FF a collective work - as defined by Title 17 of the United States Code - to which the FF owners/administrators hold the exclusive copyright.

You can repost your writing anywhere you wish, in other words, and the FF has no right to reprint or profit from it without your permission. You cannot, however, publish the work of other people in whole or in part, or remove, redact or in any other way significantly alter your contributions to the collective work without our permission.

To maintain the integrity of the compilation, we have therefore chosen (somewhat arbitrarily, granted) to set a 24 hour time limit on post editing on the grounds that any changes made to a post after a day has passed could materially damage the collective work. We believe the dynamic, interactive nature of thread development requires this protection as a mutilated thread is truly painful to behold. A tag noting the edit and, if the poster chooses to fill in the appropriate field, the reason for said edit will denote any changes made more than 10 minutes after the initial posting time.

If any member wishes to make a change past the 24 hour window, she is more than welcome to contact either administrator privately via PM or post a thread in Forum Administration. If the modification does not substantively alter the content of her post or inject chaos into the sense of the thread, we will be glad to make it for her.

[livius drusus]

Privacy Policy

The Freethought Forum is committed to protecting the privacy of its members. We receive a small amount of personal information during the registration process and have access to more from your participation in the community.

Email addresses
Registration at FF requires an active email address. The address is visible only in the Admin Control Panel to which only the Administrators have rights. We do not sell or in any other way disseminate email addresses. The only way your mail can be generally known is if you choose to reveal it to the indiscreet in private or if you post it in public. Please be advised that search engine spiders and data miners might harvest any publicly posted email addresses for any number of dubious (most likely spam-related) purposes.

By default, your profile is set to receive admin emails and to display the email option. Emails sent via the link in your profile do not reveal your actual address, but rather utilize a vBulletin email template. You may deselect both of these options thereby disallowing any public means of email contact; however, the Admins do reserve the right to email you if necessary.

Date of Birth
In order to ensure that the FF is COPPA compliant, we ask for full birth dates at registration. This information is retained solely in the ACP. It is not added to your profile automatically.

If you choose to fill in the birthday field in your user profile, all registered board members will be able to see it there as well as on the Calendar and in the footer of the main forum index on the happy day itself. You may opt to leave out your birth year in the profile field, and thereby get all the birthday love without revealing the vital statistics.

IP Addresses
Every time you access the FF, vBulletin logs your IP address. This information is accessible only to the Admins both through a link on every post and in an extra column in Who's Online and will not for any reason be publicly revealed.

It is possible to mask an IP address by using various proxy/spoofing services, but there is no guarantee that this will be effective. The software as currently configured can detect proxies and recognize the IPs they are attempting to mask. Again, this information will be used for administrative purposes only and will not be publicly revealed.

Cookies
The FF uses cookies to customize your board experience: i.e., mark certain threads read, remember the last post you've read in any given thread, remember your login information. If you'd prefer not to have any FF cookies deposited on your hard drive, uncheck the "Remember Me?" option in the login field. To delete cookies that have already been accepted, simply log out and all FF cookies will be cleared.

Aggregate Information
The Freethought Forum collects certain kinds of non-personal information about users (eg, browser make and model, operating system, country of origin of Internet service provider) for statistical purposes, but only in an aggregate form. Individual users cannot be identified.

Posting Personal Information
You may of course post any of your own personal information, but please keep in mind when doing so that the Internet is a wild and woolly place and you never know who might be taking notes. Any identifying information (eg, name, home address, telephone number) reprinted without express permission will be deleted on sight. Please report any such postings by clicking the "report bad post" icon () on the post in question.

Private Messaging
Private messages, like all content of online message boards, are stored in the database. There is no simple method to access this information which is why it is to all intents and purposes private. However, if required by law, the Administrators could scour the database and retrieve any of the data therein demanded on a search warrant or subpoena, including private correspondence. Outside of that highly unlikely scenario, PMs will only be seen by the sender and receiver.

Private Chats
Private chats cannot be seen by anyone else in the public rooms; however, the Administrators have access to complete chatlogs of all the rooms, including private ones. We will neither read nor produce any private chatlogs for third party perusal unless under legal constraint.

The Long Arm of the Law
If law enforcement requests that we provide any of your personal information, we will comply upon receipt of subpoena or court order or one of those Law & Order style warrants that show up just when the detectives have exhausted their panoply of dilatory tactics. Any personal information you've posted publicly will of course be as freely available to any legal entity as it is to everyone else.


If you have any questions or concerns about any of these issues, please feel free to contact either viscousmemories or myself via PM or post in the Administrative forum. Thank you and stay safe.

[viscousmemories]

Freethought Forum Technical and Financial Info

The FF domain is currently hosted on a Virtual Private Server (VPS). The benefit of a VPS over traditional shared hosting is a smaller number of customers on each server, thereby providing the same disaster planning, management and support as standard shared hosting, but with abundant server resources and for a fraction of the cost of a full dedicated server.

The Freethought Forum is a labor of love, and as such we are prepared to maintain it completely at our own expense for as long as it is online. However, we will of course accept donations, and will post regular summaries of donations vs. expenses for anyone to peruse. Please just click on the little Pay Pal square at the bottom of any page if you'd like to contribute. Very soon, we'll add the functionality to accept recurring donations in case any should want to offer a regular amount.

We firmly believe that anyone who is considering donating or has donated to the Freethought Forum should be apprised of where the money is going. The document FF Expenditures to Date contains that information. In future updates I will add the amount of donations we've received alongside the list of expenses, and we'll eventually set up a page or something to honor any donors who would like to be mentioned.