Portal Agreement

This Agreement concerns the terms of use governing the learning portals associated with the Virtualinstitute of the Interpreting department, Faculty of translation and interpreting, Université de Genève. By accepting the provisions of this Agreement you agree to abide by the terms spelled out in this Agreement as well as any other terms explicitly referenced in this Agreement.

This Agreement concerns the general terms of use of the learning portals associated with the Virtualinstitute, as well as provisions relating to confidentiality and copyright.

Please read this document carefully to the end before clicking on “I accept”, as your registration will be invalidated unless you have accepted the terms of this Portal Agreement.

Table of content

1. Acceptance of terms of use and amendments
2. Your responsibilities and registration obligations
3. Registration and password
4. Your conduct
5. Confidentiality
6. Privacy
   6.1. Collection of data
   6.2. Use of data
   6.3. Cookies
   6.4. JavaScript
   6.5. Editing or deleting your personal information
   6.6. User account closure and deletion
   6.7. No guarantees
7. Copyright
8. Indemnification
9. Limitation of liability
10. Reservation of rights
11. Applicable law
12. Changes to this Portal Agreement
13. Miscellaneous information
14. Acceptance of Portal Agreement

1. Acceptance of terms of use and amendments

Each time you visit, use or cause access to this site, you agree to be bound by this Agreement, as amended from time to time with or without notice to you.

This portal and the services provided to you on and via this portal are provided on an 'AS IS' basis. You agree that the portal administrator reserves the right to modify or discontinue provision of this portal and its services, and to remove the data you provide, either temporarily or permanently, at any time, without notice and without any liability towards you (please see below for information about notice of changes). The portal administrator will not be held responsible or liable for timeliness, removal of information, failure to store information, inaccuracy of information, or improper delivery of information.

2. Your responsibilities and registration obligations

In order to use the learning portals associated with this site, you will be required to register for a user account; in this case, you agree to provide truthful information when requested. By registering for a user account, you explicitly agree to this Portal Agreement, including any amendments made by the portal administrator that are published herein.

3. Registration and password

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password, and you will be held responsible for all usage of your user account and/or user name, whether authorised or not authorised by you. You agree to immediately notify the portal administrator of any unauthorised use of your user account, user name or password.

The portal administrator may apply the policy of requiring to grant prior approval of a new user account registration before the account is activated and available for logging-in. By registering for an account on this site, you agree that the portal administrator retains sole discretion regarding the approval of new registrations and the closure of existing accounts, without incurring any liability towards you.

4. Your conduct

You agree that all information or data of any kind, whether text, software, code, music or audio, photographs or graphics, video or animations, or other materials ('content'), made available publicly or privately, will be under the sole responsibility of the person providing the said content and whose user account is used. The portal administrator will not be responsible to you in any way for content provided on this site, nor for any error or omission.

• You shall not impersonate or misrepresent your association with any person or entity.

• You shall not forge or otherwise seek to conceal or misrepresent the origin of any content provided by you.

• You shall not collect or harvest any information about other users.

• You shall not provide, and you shall not use this portal to provide, any content or service in any commercial manner, or in any manner that would involve junk mail, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other form of unauthorised advertising or commerce.

• You shall not use this portal to promote or operate any service or content without the portal administrator's prior written consent.

• You shall not use this portal or any services or facilities provided on this portal or via this portal to contact and communicate with portal users or other persons for any illicit or illegal purpose.

You shall not provide any content that might give rise to the portal administrator being held civilly or criminally liable, or that might be considered a violation of any local, national or international law; this notably includes - but is not limited to - laws relating to copyrights, trademarks, patents, or trade secrets.

Failure to comply with any of the clauses of this section of this Portal Agreement will be considered to be just cause for immediate closure of your user account, and may render you liable to legal action. If you become aware of any infringement of this Portal Agreement by a registered user of this site, please e-mail the portal administrator.

5. Confidentiality

As user of one or more of the learning portals of the Virtualinstitute, you undertake

• Not to disclose your user name and password to any third party and not to give any third party access to the Virtualinstitute© by means of your user name and password;

• To keep confidential any information you will receive, in writing, orally and by any other means
  
  • in the form of written documents, drawings, electronic data, objects, technologies, IT programs, software, textbooks, oral presentations, databases, through participation in research projects or in the form of know-how;
  • concerning the Virtualinstitute©, its components, its different versions, upgrades, updates, modules and content;

• Not to make use of this information for your research projects, developments or productions, without the written authorisation of the Director of the Interpreting Department at the Faculty of translation and interpreting; only research projects carried out by members of the Interpreting Department (students, staff) and approved by the developers’ group are accepted.

• Not to take advantage of this information to further your own interests or those of a third party.

6. Privacy

The portal administrator takes your right to privacy seriously, and wants you to feel comfortable using this site. Provisions in this section cover personally-identifiable information (referred to as 'information' or 'data' below) that may be collected or acquired by this site.

6.1. Collection of data

Registration for an account on this portal requires only a valid e-mail address and a user name that is not already in use. You are not required to provide any other information if you do not want to.

Please be aware that the user name you choose, the e-mail address you provide and any other information you enter may render you personally identifiable, and may possibly be displayed on this portal intentionally (depending on choices you make during the registration process, or depending on the way in which the portal is configured), or unintentionally (subsequent to a successful act of intrusion by a third party).

As on many sites, the portal administrator may also automatically receive general information that is contained in server log files, such as your IP address, and cookie information, together with the additional information that can be deduced from those items (such as country, location, dates and times of visits, pages visited, etc.).

Server and portal logs may be purged at regular time intervals, but past records may still exist in back-ups of the portal data storage system or server file system.

By registering for a user account on this site, you agree that you accept the portal administrator's policy with regard to retention or non-retention of log records, and you agree that this policy may change at any time, with or without notice.

6.2. Use of data

Data may be used to customise and improve your user experience on this site. Efforts will be made to prevent your data being made available to third parties. In the event you choose to use links displayed on this portal to visit other sites, you are advised to read the privacy policies published on those sites.

6.3. Cookies

Like many sites, this portal sets and uses cookies to enhance your user experience - to remember your personal settings, for instance. The cookies set by this portal are only used for technical purposes (storage of settings, and access control, etc.). They are not used to gather other information about you, or to provide information to other parties.

By using this portal and by allowing your browser software to accept cookies, you grant the portal administrator permission to use the technical data contained in the cookies generated by the portal for the purpose of managing your sessions on the site, and for enhancing the ergonomics of your visits.

Note that most browsers provide the possibility of disabling cookies. While you are free to make this choice, you may find your usage of the portal to be slightly impaired, although the portal will remain functionally useable.

6.4. JavaScript

Like many sites, this portal employs JavaScript to enhance your user experience - to provide dynamic content, for example, that adapts and reacts to your choices and actions. The JavaScript scripts used on this portal are only intended for such technical purposes. They are not designed to gather information about you for any other purposes, nor to permanently affect or make changes to your browser or system.

By using this portal and enabling your browser software to accept JavaScript, you grant the portal administrator permission to use JavaScript technology (Ajax) for managing your sessions on the site, and for enhancing the ergonomics of your visits.

Note that most browsers provide the option of disabling JavaScript in Web pages. While you are free to make this choice, the ergonomics or behavior of some pages may be slightly degraded, although most or all pages are designed to provide a fully useable alternative in the absence of JavaScript.

6.5. Editing or deleting your personal information

During the user account registration process, you are invited to enter personal information. After logging into the site, you have the possibility at any time of amending or deleting your personal information. You can do this by visiting your user account panel, which can provide means for managing many aspects of your membership of this site.

6.6. User account closure and deletion

6.6.1. Account deletion at your request

You can request that your user account be deleted; please e-mail the portal administrator to request a user account deletion.

After an account deletion, all personal information items contained in your user account profile will have been deleted from the site's data storage system, and from the server's file system. Even so, that information will still be held in any back-up taken from the site's data storage system or the server's file system.

In addition, content or other data that you may have provided, and that do not fall within the scope of personal information items stored within your user account profile, may remain on the portal even after your user account is deleted. Possible examples of this are articles and other content published in the site's pages, comments you have added to articles, and messages you have posted in forums. Your user name may continue to be associated with these items as attribution. However, any information that would previously have been displayable by another user by viewing your account profile will no longer be available.

Also, if the portal has a private messaging system, all messages that were previously stored in your private messaging mailbox will have been deleted. However, deletion of your account does not include deletion of messages from you that have been received by other registered users of the site.

Furthermore, deletion of your account on this portal will not include deletion of information that might have been stored in server logs and portal logs about your visits to this portal (IP address, times and dates, pages visited, etc.). The extent and lifetime of information stored in logs depends on the policies of the portal administrator and server operator.

6.6.2. Account closure and deletion by the portal administrator

For the purpose of this Portal Agreement, the term 'account closure' means interdiction of your further access to your user account(s). The term 'account deletion' means deletion of your user account(s) and personal information from the portal data storage system.

Your user account(s) may be closed if it is found that your use of this portal violates the provisions of this Portal Agreement or other applicable usage guidelines.

A closed account will normally be deleted, provided no illicit or illegal usage of that account is suspected. However, by using this site, you agree that the portal administrator has sole discretion in account closure and deletion decisions, without incurring any liability towards you.

In addition, you should be aware that the portal administrator may be legally compelled not to delete your user account by local or national authorities, if suspected illegal or illicit usage is involved.

6.7. No guarantees

This Portal Agreement states intentions for preservation of information. However, while efforts will be made to fulfill the said intentions, the portal administrator is not in a position to guarantee non-disclosure of information. There may be factors beyond the portal administrator's control that may result in disclosure of information. Consequently, although the portal administrator will endeavour to protect your personal information, no warranties are given as regards the preservation or non-disclosure of information or data.

7. Copyright

University of Geneva explicitly cautions the students and users authorized to access the portal that all contents made available by University of Geneva on this portal are protected by the Federal Law on Author Rights and Related Rights [“Loi fédérale sur les droits d’auteur et les droits voisins”] (LDA, RS 231.1) and that any violation of these rights might carry consequences at criminal law and /or at disciplinary level and give rise to claims for damages.

Therefore, students and authorized users must abide by the applicable law and ensure, specifically, that the use of the accessed content will be strictly for private purposes and undertake not to copy, broadcast nor alter a work or part thereof published on the portal (text, photography, picture, sketch…) without the prior assent of the holder of the relevant authorship rights.

It is also a requirement that the students and authorized users abide by the regulations applicable to quotations extracted from a work (art. 25 LDA – Federal Law on Authorships Rights) and that they acquire knowledge and understand the Directive relating to student plagiarism, available at https://memento.unige.ch/doc/0008 .

8. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the portal administrator and the portal administrator's representatives, subsidiaries, affiliates, related parties, officers, directors, employees, agents, independent contractors, advertisers, partners, and co-branders, from any claim or demand, including reasonable legal fees, that may be filed by any third party, arising out of your conduct or connection with this portal or service, your provision of content, your violation of this Portal Agreement, or any other violation by you of the rights of another person or party.

9. Limitation of liability

You expressly understand and agree that the portal administrator will not be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential or exemplary damages (even if the portal administrator has been advised of the possibility of such damages). This includes, but is not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses resulting from:

• The use of services or the inability to use services;

• The cost of obtaining substitute goods and/or services resulting from any transaction entered into on through-services;

• Unauthorised access to or alteration of your data transmissions;

• Statements by any third party or conduct of any third party using services;

• Or any other issue pertaining to services.

10. Reservation of rights

The portal administrator reserves all of the portal administrator's rights, including but not limited to any and all copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, and any other proprietary right that the portal administrator may have in respect of this site, its content, and goods and services that may be provided. The use of the portal administrator's rights and property requires the portal administrator's prior written consent. By making services available to you, the portal administrator is not providing you with any implied or express licences or rights, and you will have no right to make any commercial or other unforeseen use of this portal or provide services without the portal administrator's prior written consent.

11. Applicable law

You agree that this Portal Agreement and any dispute arising out of your use of this portal or products or services provided will be governed by and construed in accordance with local laws applicable at the portal administrator's domicile, notwithstanding any differences between the said applicable legislation and legislation in force at your location. By registering for a user account on this site, or by using this portal and the services it provides, you accept that jurisdiction is granted to the courts having jurisdiction over the portal administrator's domicile, and that any disputes will be heard by the said courts.

12. Changes to this Portal Agreement

Changes may be made to this Portal Agreement can be made from time to time. You should be notified of noteworthy changes by one or more of the following means:

• The posting of an announcement on the site;

• A requirement to read and accept the new Portal Agreement before you can log into the site;

• An e-mail message sent to the e-mail address you provide as part of your user account information.

Notwithstanding, failure to post notification of changes to the site's Portal Agreement will in no way invalidate the application of the new or changed clauses of the Portal Agreement, which you are recommended to re-read regularly.

13. Miscellaneous information

• In the event that any provision of this Portal Agreement is deemed to conflict with legislation by a court with jurisdiction over the parties, the said provision will be interpreted to reflect the original intentions of the parties in accordance with applicable law, and the remainder of this Portal Agreement will remain valid and applicable.

• The failure of either party to assert any right under this Portal Agreement will not be considered to be a waiver of that party's right, and the said right will remain in full force and effect.

• You agree that any claim or cause in respect of this portal or its services must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause arose, or the said claim or cause will be forever barred, without regard to any contrary legislation.

• The portal administrator may assign the portal administrator's rights and obligations under this Portal Agreement; in this event, the portal administrator will be relieved of any further obligation.

14. Acceptance of Portal Agreement

This Portal Agreement is an important legal document. Please print it for reference.

By accepting this Portal Agreement you agree to be bound by all of its provisions from the moment your account registration is activated until your account is deactivated, and for an additional 24 months after said date.

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Last modified on Jul 19, 2012