Community Terms
These Community Terms (“Terms”) govern use of the Internet Forum (the “Forum”) at http://community.shmoop.com. To use the Forum, you must agree to these Terms with Shmoop University, Inc., a Delaware corporation (“Shmoop”). “You” or “your” refers to you as the user of the Forum. IF YOU ACCESS AND USE THE FORUM, YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THESE TERMS. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ALL OF THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THESE TERMS, DO NOT ACCESS OR USE THE FORUM. Shmoop may offer other products and services, under different Terms. These Terms apply only to use of the Forum. Nothing in these Terms grants you rights to access or use Shmoop’s other products and services.
Skip to:
- Important Terms
- Your Permission to Use the Forum
- Conditions for Use of the Forum
- Acceptable Use
- Content Standards
- Enforcement
- Your Account
- Your Content
- Your Responsibility
- Disclaimers
- Limits on Liability
- Feedback
- Termination
- Disputes
- General Terms
- Contact
- Changes
These Terms include a number of important provisions that affect your rights and responsibilities, such as the disclaimers in Disclaimers, limits on Shmoop’s liability to you in Limits on Liability, your agreement to cover Shmoop for liabilities, lawsuits, settlements, damages and expenses caused by your misuse of the Forum in Responsibility for Your Use, and an agreement to arbitrate disputes in Disputes.
Your Permission to Use the Forum
Subject to these Terms, Shmoop gives you non-exclusive permission to use the Forum. Everyone needs to agree to these Terms to use the Forum.
Conditions for Use of the Forum
Your permission to use the Forum is subject to the following conditions:
- You must be at least 13 years old or 16 in the EU, and have the legal capacity to enter agreements or have the permission of your parent or legal guardian to agree to these Terms.
- You may not be prohibited by US law or the laws of the jurisdiction in which you reside from using the Forum or agreeing to these Terms.
- You may no longer use the Forum if Shmoop contacts you directly to say that you may not.
- You must use the Forum in accordance with Acceptable Use and Content Standards set forth below.
- You may not break the law using the Forum.
- You may not use or try to use another’s account on the Forum without their specific permission.
- You may not buy, sell, or otherwise trade in user names or other unique identifiers on the Forum.
- You may not send advertisements, chain letters, or other solicitations through the Forum, or use the Forum to gather addresses or other personal data for commercial mailing lists or databases.
- You may not automate access to the Forum, or monitor the Forum, such as with a web crawler, browser plug-in or add-on, or other computer program that is not a web browser. You may crawl the Forum to index it for a publicly available search engine, if you run one.
- You may not use the Forum to send e-mail to distribution lists, newsgroups, or group mail aliases.
- You may not falsely imply that you’re affiliated with or endorsed by Shmoop.
- You may not hyperlink to images or other non-hypertext content on the Forum on other webpages.
- You may not remove any marks showing proprietary ownership from materials you download from the Forum.
- You may not show any part of the Forum on other websites.
- You may not disable, avoid, or circumvent any security or access restrictions of the Forum.
- You may not strain the infrastructure of the Forum with an unreasonable volume of requests, or requests designed to impose an unreasonable load on information systems underlying the Forum.
- You may not impersonate others through the Forum.
- You may not encourage or help anyone in violation of these Terms.
- You may not submit User Content to the Forum that is defamatory, obscene, false or misleading, illegal, offensive, or otherwise harmful to others. This includes User Content that is harassing, inappropriate, or abusive.
- You may not submit User Content to the Forum that violates the law, infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights, violates anyone’s privacy, or breaches agreements you have with others.
- You may not submit User Content that promotes or advertises products and services of others.
- You may not submit User Content to the Forum containing malicious computer code, such as computer viruses or spyware.
- You may not submit User Content to the Forum as a mere placeholder, to hold a particular address, user name, or other unique identifier.
- You may not use the Forum to disclose information that you don’t have the right to disclose, like others’ confidential or personal information.
Shmoop may investigate and prosecute violations of these Terms to the fullest, legal extent. Shmoop may notify and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting violations of the law and these Terms.
Shmoop reserves the right to change, redact, and delete content on the Forum for any reason. If you believe someone has submitted content to the Forum in violation of these Terms, contact us immediately.
Your Account and Privacy
You must create and log into an account to use some features of the Forum.
To create an account, you must provide some information about yourself. If you create an account, you agree to provide, at a minimum, a valid e-mail address, and to keep that address up-to-date. You may close your account at any time by e-mailing support@shmoop.com.
You agree to be responsible for all action taken using your account, whether authorized by you or not, until you either close your account or notify Shmoop that your account has been compromised. You agree to notify Shmoop immediately if you suspect your account has been compromised. You agree to select a secure password for your account, and keep it secret.
Shmoop may restrict, suspend, or close your account on the Forum according to its policy for handling copyright-related takedown requests, or if Shmoop reasonably believes that you’ve broken any rule in these Terms. Any personal information that you provide in creating an account or in participating in the Forum will be subject to our Privacy Policy at Privacy Policy | Shmoop.
Nothing in these Terms gives Shmoop any ownership rights in intellectual property that you share with the Forum, such as your account information, posts, or other content you submit to the Forum (collectively, “User Content”). Nothing in these Terms gives you any ownership rights in Shmoop’s intellectual property, either.
Between you and Shmoop, you remain solely responsible for User Content you submit to the Forum. You agree not to wrongly imply that content you submit to the Forum is sponsored or approved by Shmoop. These Terms do not obligate Shmoop to store, maintain, or provide copies of User Content you submit, and to change it, according to these Terms. We reserve the right, but do not have the obligation to modify, delete or remove User Content in whole or in part. ,
By submitting User Content to the Forum, you grant, and represent and warrant that you have all rights necessary to grant, to Shmoop, its subsidiaries, affiliates, successors, and assigns, and any other user of the Forum, an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid, non-exclusive, sub-licensable (through multiple tiers of sublicensees), and transferable license to use, copy, display, distribute, modify, reproduce, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and create derivative works of the User Content (in whole or in part), and to incorporate the User Content into other works in any format or medium now or later known.
Others who receive content you submit to the Forum may violate the Terms on which you license your User Content. You agree that Shmoop will not be liable to you for those violations or their consequences.
You agree to indemnify Shmoop from legal claims by others related to your breach of these Terms, or breach of these Terms by others using your account on the Forum or for any User Content you submit to the Forum, including, but not limited to, any costs of defending claims (including attorneys’ fees), settlements, and damages awards. Both you and Shmoop agree to notify the other side of any legal claims for which you might have to indemnify Shmoop as soon as reasonably possible. You agree to allow Shmoop to control investigation, defense, and settlement of legal claims for which you would have to indemnify Shmoop, and to cooperate with those efforts at your sole cost. Shmoop agrees not to agree to any settlement that admits fault for you or imposes obligations on you without your prior agreement, which shall not be unreasonably withheld.
The Forum is provided to you “as-is”. You accept all risk of using the Forum and User Content or other content on the Forum. As far as the law allows, Shmoop and its suppliers provide the Forum as is, without any warranty whatsoever. Shmoop disclaims all express or implied warranties regarding the Forum or any User Content or other content on the forum, including disclaiming any warranty that the Forum will be continuous, uninterrupted, secure, timely, useful, adequate, suitable, or error-free and the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement.
The Forum may hyperlink to and integrate forums and services run by others. Shmoop does not make any warranty about services run by others, or content they may provide or any User Content on the Forum. Use of services run by others may be governed by other Terms between you and the one running the services.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event will Shmoop, or Shmoop’s suppliers and licensors, be liable for any indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of the use of, or inability to use or access, the Forum or User Content, including, without limitation, loss of data, loss or profit, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other personal or commercial damages or losses, even if advised of the possibility thereof, and regardless of the legal or equitable theory (contract, tort, breach of warranty, or otherwise) upon which the claim is based.
As far as the law allows, the total liability to you for claims of any kind that are related to the Forum or User Content or other content on the Forum will be limited to $50.
Shmoop welcomes your feedback and suggestions for the Forum. See the Contact section below for ways to get in touch with us.
You agree that Shmoop will be free to act on feedback and suggestions you provide, and that Shmoop won’t have to notify you that your feedback was used, get your permission to use it, or pay you. You agree not to submit feedback or suggestions that you believe might be confidential or proprietary, to you or others.
Either you or Shmoop may end the agreement written out in these Terms at any time. When our agreement ends, your permission to use the Forum also ends. We may also suspend or terminate your access to the Forum at any time in our sole discretion.
The following provisions survive the end of our agreement: Your Content, Feedback, Your Responsibility, Disclaimers, Limits on Liability, and General Terms.
The laws of the State of California will govern any dispute related to these Terms or your use of the Forum, without regard to its choice of law principles.
You and Shmoop agree to seek injunctions related to these Terms or your use of the Forum only in state or federal court in Santa Clara County, California. Neither you nor Shmoop will object to jurisdiction, Forum, or venue in those courts.
Other than to seek an injunction or for claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, you and Shmoop will submit any dispute to arbitration under the provisions of Section XIX of the Shmoop University, Inc. Terms of Use. You will settle any dispute as an individual, and not as part of a class action or other representative proceeding, whether as the plaintiff or a class member. No arbitrator will consolidate any dispute with any other arbitration without Shmoop’s permission.
Any arbitration award will include costs of the arbitration, reasonable attorneys’ fees, and reasonable costs for witnesses to the prevailing party. You and Shmoop may seek to enter judgments for arbitration awards in any court with jurisdiction.
If a provision of these Terms is unenforceable as written, but could be changed to make it enforceable, that provision should be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. Otherwise, that provision should be removed.
You may not assign your account or your rights or obligations under these Terms. Shmoop may assign these Terms or your account to any affiliate of Shmoop, any other company that obtains control of Shmoop, or any other company that buys assets of Shmoop related to the Forum. Any attempted assignment against these Terms is void and has no legal effect.
Neither the exercise of any right under this Agreement, nor waiver of any breach of this Agreement, waives any other breach of this Agreement.
These Terms embody all the Terms of agreement between you and Shmoop about use of the Forum. These Terms entirely replace any other agreements about your use of the Forum, written or not.
You may notify Shmoop under these Terms, and send questions to Shmoop, at support@shmoop.com.
Shmoop may notify you under these Terms using the e-mail address you provide for your account on the Forum, or by posting a message to the homepage of the Forum, or your account page.
Shmoop last updated these Terms on November 28, 2022, and may update these Terms again. Shmoop will post all updates to the Forum. For updates that contain substantial changes, Shmoop will use reasonable efforts to e-mail you, if you’ve created an account and provided a valid e-mail address. Shmoop may also announce updates with special messages or alerts on the Forum.
Once you get notice of an update to these Terms, you must agree to the new Terms in order to keep using the Forum.