ACCEPTANCE OF RULES FOR AFHK FORUMS
These rules (Rules) are the terms of use for any opinions, discussion forum, blog, wiki or article with public comments (each of them called the Forum in these Rules) operated by Adoptive Families of Hong Kong ("us", "we, "our"). The Rules apply to all users. Any submission of material by you to the Forum means that you accept and agree to abide by all the terms and conditions of these Rules.
The Rules supplement the terms of use and privacy policy applicable to the AFHK website www.afhk.org.hk and are in addition to any terms of use applicable to other websites on which a Forum may be hosted.
USER PROFILE REQUIREMENTS
Anonymous posting is not permitted in our Forums. All contributors to the Forums must make, as a minimum, their names visible to other members. Instructions for amending the amount of information other members and the public can see can be found here. If the subject matter you wish to post is sensitive, you may ask a moderator to post your question anonymously on your behalf.
MODERATION
If a Forum is moderated, contributions submitted to the Forum (Contribution) may be checked by us for compliance with the content standards below (Content Standards). We are under no obligation to you or any other person to oversee, monitor or moderate the Forum or any other service we provide on our site or any other site and we may stop moderating the Forum at any time. We reserve the right to remove, or to disable access to, any Contribution which we deem to be potentially defamatory of any person or which we deem unlawful or in violation of any third party rights, or which we deem undesirable to us for any reason whatsoever. We expressly exclude liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of the Forum by any person in contravention of these Rules.
SUBMISSION OF CONTRIBUTIONS
Follow the instructions pertaining to the relevant Forum to add a Contribution, including:
• Asking a question in a discussion forum
• Commenting on an article or blog post
• Replying to a question or comment
CONTENT STANDARDS
These Content Standards apply to each part of a Contribution as well as to its whole. The Content Standards must be complied with in spirit as well as to the letter. We will determine, in our absolute discretion, whether a Contribution breaches the Content Standards.
A Contribution must:
• Be accurate (where it states facts).
• Be genuinely held (where it states opinions).
• Comply with the law applicable in Hong Kong SAR and in any country from which it is posted.
• Be relevant.
A Contribution must not:
• Be defamatory of any person.
• Be obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory.
• Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.
• Disclose the name, address, telephone, mobile or fax number, e-mail address or any other personal data in respect of any individual.
• Infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person.
• Breach any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence.
• Be in contempt of court.
• Be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person.
• Impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person.
• Give the impression that the Contribution emanates from us if this is not the case.
• Advocate, promote, incite any third party to commit, or assist any unlawful or criminal act.
• Contain a statement which you know or believe, or have reasonable grounds for believing, that members of the public to whom the statement is, or is to be, published are likely to understand as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
• Contain any advertising or promote any services or web links to other sites.
COPYRIGHT
By submitting a Contribution to the Forum, you agree to grant us a non-exclusive licence to use that Contribution. Although you will still own the copyright in your Contribution, we will have the right to freely use, edit, alter, reproduce, publish and/or distribute the material contained in your Contribution. This licence will be free of charge, perpetual and capable of sub-licence. We may exercise all copyright and publicity rights in the material contained in your Contribution in all jurisdictions, to their full extent and for the full period for which any such rights exist in that material.
Please also note that, in accordance with the Content Standards above, you must ensure that your Contribution does not infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person. By submitting your Contribution to the Forum, you are warranting that you have the right to grant us the non-exclusive copyright licence described above and hereby indemnify us from any potential action against us if your warranty turns out to be untrue.
If you are not in a position to grant such a licence to us, please do not submit the Contribution to the Forum.
PRIVACY
In addition to our Privacy Policy, we shall (unless otherwise obligated by operation of the law) keep Contributions private and accessible only to members of the Forum.
We expect you to keep the information you find in the Forums private and not to reproduce the information elsewhere without the express permission of (i) us and (ii) the original author of the Contribution.
If we discover or have reason to believe that you have not kept Contributions private, we may (i) deem such acts as a breach of these Rules, (ii) notify the original author of the Contribution and (iii) where required, notify the relevant authorities.
Please always remember that even in private and moderated forums, there is a great risk of your Contributions ending up in the public domain. If you cannot accept these risk, please do not post in our Forums.
REACH OF THESE RULES
If we consider that a breach of the Content Standards above has occurred, we may at our absolute discretion take such action as we deem appropriate. Failure to comply with these Rules constitutes a material breach of the terms of use under which you are permitted to use the Forum, and may result in us taking all or any of the following actions:
• Immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use the Forum.
• Immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any Contribution already posted on the Forum.
• Immediate, temporary or permanent editing or censoring of any part or whole of the Contribution already posted on the Forum.
• Issue of a warning to you.
• Legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach.
• Further legal action against you.
• Disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary or as required by law.
We exclude liability for all action we may take in response to breaches of these Rules. The actions described above are not limited, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.
COMPLAINTS
If you wish to complain about any Contribution posted to the Forum, please e-mail us using the e-mail address contact@afhk.org.hk. We will then review the Contribution and decide whether it complies with the Content Standards above. We will deal with any Contribution which, in our opinion, violates the Content Standards as described above (see section "Breach of these Rules"). If we deem it necessary, we will inform you of the outcome of our review within a reasonable time of receiving your complaint.
CHANGES TO THESE RULES
We may revise these Rules at any time. You are expected to check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we may make, as they are legally binding on you.