Terms of Use

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1.1 Acceptance and binding effect

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) form a binding agreement between you and The Desi Orbit Foundation, an Ohio nonprofit corporation (“TDOF,” “we,” “us,” “our”), governing your access to and use of desiorb.org and any related website, subdomain, application, newsletter, directory, or service operated by TDOF (collectively, the “Platform”).

You accept these Terms by checking the acceptance box presented at account registration or at submission of any content. If you browse the Platform without registering or submitting anything, you also agree to §§ 1.5, 1.7, 1.8, 1.12, 1.13, and 1.16 as conditions of access.

If you use the Platform on behalf of a business, organization, or other entity, you represent that you are authorized to bind that entity, and “you” includes that entity.

1.2 Definitions

“User Content” means anything you submit, post, upload, transmit, or otherwise make available through the Platform, including comments, business listings, event submissions, reviews, ratings, photographs, video, audio, logos, articles, letters, classified notices, obituaries, fundraising appeals, profile fields, display names, avatars, and messages sent through the Platform.

“TDOF Content” means content created, commissioned, or published by TDOF or its volunteers acting in that capacity, including editorial articles, curated listings, imported or seeded listings, and site design.

“Moderator” means a person authorized by TDOF to review, approve, label, restrict, publish, decline, or remove User Content. Moderators do not rewrite User Content.

“Designated Agent” means the agent TDOF has registered with the U.S. Copyright Office to receive copyright infringement notices, identified in the Copyright and DMCA Policy.

1.3 Eligibility and age

The Platform is not directed to children and is not intended for them.

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account, post a comment, submit a listing or event, or otherwise submit User Content. You must be at least 18 to enter a paid advertising, sponsorship, or listing arrangement, or to post a fundraising appeal.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If we learn that we have, we will delete the account and the associated information promptly — except where a legal hold or a legal retention obligation requires preservation, in which case we restrict access instead. A parent or guardian may contact privacy@desiorb.org.

Photographs and information about minors submitted by adults are governed by § 2.5.

1.4 Accounts and account security

Provide accurate information and keep it current. You are responsible for all activity under your account and for keeping your credentials secure. Notify us at legal@desiorb.org if you suspect unauthorized use.

Personal accounts are for one person and may not be sold or transferred. A business or organization may authorize more than one person to manage its listing through the Platform’s listing-management feature. Impersonating another person, a business, or a TDOF representative results in immediate termination.

We may refuse, suspend, or terminate any account at our discretion, with or without notice.

1.5 TDOF’s role: we host, we do not vouch

The Platform is an interactive computer service that publishes information provided by third parties. Except for clearly identified TDOF Content, TDOF does not create, endorse, verify, adopt, or guarantee User Content.

TDOF has no obligation to monitor User Content, but reserves the right to do so. Any review, approval, labelling, restriction, refusal, or removal of User Content by TDOF is undertaken voluntarily and in good faith, does not make TDOF the publisher, speaker, author, or endorser of any User Content, and creates no duty to review other content. TDOF asserts the protections of 47 U.S.C. § 230 to the fullest extent available.

Listing a business, publishing an event, or allowing a comment is not a recommendation, an endorsement, a certification of quality or licensure, or a statement that the information is accurate. You deal with businesses, event organizers, advertisers, and other users at your own risk. TDOF is not a party to and has no responsibility for any transaction, dispute, injury, or loss between you and any business, organizer, advertiser, or user.

1.6 Licence you grant TDOF

You retain ownership of your User Content.

By submitting User Content, you grant TDOF a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt for formatting and length, publish, distribute, publicly display, translate, excerpt, and archive that User Content, in any media, for the purposes of operating and archiving the Platform and TDOF’s charitable mission. The licence covers your name, username, business name, and submitted logo in connection with the content.

TDOF may sublicense this only to the service providers that host, distribute, or back up the Platform, and may transfer it to a successor organization. TDOF will not use your User Content in advertising, fundraising, or promotional material without your separate permission.

When you delete User Content, or TDOF removes it, the licence ends — except that TDOF may retain backup and archival copies for up to 24 months; copies required by a legal hold or legal retention obligation, for as long as that obligation lasts; and the record of the content in TDOF’s moderation log. TDOF cannot recall copies already distributed to or reshared by third parties.

You waive, to the extent permitted by law, moral rights or attribution rights that would prevent TDOF from exercising this licence.

You represent and warrant that you own or have all rights necessary to grant this licence; that the User Content infringes no copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, publicity, contractual, or other right; that you hold every consent and release required under § 2.5 for any identifiable person shown or named; and that the content complies with the User Content Policy and applicable law.

TDOF does not pay for User Content and has no obligation to publish, retain, or continue to display it.

1.7 Prohibited uses of the Platform

TDOF Content and marks. TDOF Content, together with the DesiOrb name and logo, TDOF’s other marks, and the design, selection, and arrangement of the Platform, is owned by TDOF or its licensors and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual-property laws. You may view, print, download, and share TDOF Content for personal, non-commercial purposes, provided you keep every copyright, credit, and attribution notice intact and, where practicable, link to the original page on the Platform. Any other use — including reproduction, republication, modification, framing, automated extraction, or commercial distribution — requires TDOF’s prior written permission, except as permitted by applicable law. Nothing in these Terms grants you any right or licence in TDOF’s name, logo, or marks. Requests for permission may be sent to legal@desiorb.org.

In addition to the User Content Policy and Community Guidelines, you may not:

• (a) use the Platform for any unlawful purpose;

• (b) scrape, crawl, harvest, or use automated means to extract data, including from the directory, except with prior written permission or as permitted by our robots.txt;

• (c) resell or commercially exploit the directory, event listings, or TDOF Content without written permission;

• (d) circumvent or disable any security, access-control, rate-limiting, or authentication measure. Good-faith security research is welcome: report a vulnerability to legal@desiorb.org, do not access or alter other users’ data, and give us reasonable time to fix it. We will not pursue researchers who follow this;

• (e) upload malware, or send spam, phishing, chain messages, or bulk unsolicited communications, including through listing-contact forms;

• (f) interfere with the Platform’s operation or place unreasonable load on it;

• (g) collect personal information about other users beyond what they have chosen to make public;

• (h) create accounts by automated means, or maintain multiple accounts to evade enforcement;

• (i) misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity, or manage a listing for a business you do not represent;

• (j) use TDOF’s name, logo, or marks to suggest endorsement or affiliation without written permission.

1.8 Third-party content, links, and services

The Platform contains links to third-party sites, embedded third-party content, and third-party services. TDOF does not control and is not responsible for them, their content, their privacy practices, or their safety. Links are not endorsements.

TDOF periodically reviews the outbound links on its own standing pages and in its directory, and will adjust or remove links that create legal or tax-exempt-status risk. TDOF cannot monitor linked sites continuously and makes no representation about them.

1.9 TDOF’s nonprofit status and political neutrality

TDOF is an Ohio nonprofit corporation pursuing recognition under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Federal tax law prohibits a 501(c)(3) from participating or intervening in any political campaign for or against a candidate for public office. The IRS treats material an organization posts on its own site as the organization’s own statement, and treats it as responsible for the links it establishes.

Accordingly:

• (a) No content on the Platform may endorse, oppose, or campaign for or against any candidate for public office, or a candidate’s party or slate, in any election. This covers comments, listings, event descriptions, letters, and advertisements. It restricts campaign intervention; it is not a ban on discussing politics or public issues.

• (b) TDOF accepts no advertising, sponsorship, or paid placement from candidates, campaign committees, parties, or political action committees.

• (c) TDOF may publish non-partisan voter education, candidate questionnaires offered equally to all candidates, and neutral coverage of public issues, subject to Board approval and IRS non-partisanship standards.

• (d) Content about politics outside the United States is a community-standards matter under § 2.3(k), not a tax matter, and is moderated under that rule.

• (e) Views in User Content are those of their authors and are not TDOF’s views.

1.10 Advertising, sponsorship, and paid placement

Paid placements are governed by a separate insertion order or listing agreement, and by these Terms and the User Content Policy and Community Guidelines.

All paid placement is labelled — “Advertisement,” “Paid Advertisement,” “Sponsored,” or “Paid Listing” — placed so a reader meets the label before or with the content, at comparable prominence. Advertisers may not request removal or dilution of the label. This applies to any paid Featured or Promoted directory placement.

TDOF applies the FTC’s Endorsement Guides (16 C.F.R. Part 255) and the Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule (16 C.F.R. Part 465) to its own use of reviews, testimonials, and endorsements. TDOF does not write, buy, sell, solicit, or incentivize reviews; does not offer compensation conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment; does not use unfounded legal threats or intimidation to suppress a review; and does not feature a user review in its own promotional material without a documented disclosure review.

Payment does not buy editorial coverage, the removal of unflattering coverage, or the removal of a negative review. TDOF’s editorial decisions are made independently of advertising relationships.

TDOF may refuse, remove, or decline to renew any advertisement or sponsorship at its discretion, including for legal risk, inaccuracy, or inconsistency with TDOF’s mission. Refusal is not a breach; TDOF’s liability is limited to a pro-rated refund for the unpublished placement.

1.11 Donations

Donations to TDOF are voluntary and, once processed, non-refundable except at TDOF’s discretion or as required by law. Deductibility depends on TDOF’s tax-exempt status at the time of the gift and on your circumstances; TDOF does not give tax advice. TDOF does not sell or rent donor personal information.

Appeals posted by community members seeking funds for themselves or others are User Content, governed by § 2.4.8. TDOF never receives, holds, or routes funds for a third-party appeal.

1.12 Disclaimers

THE PLATFORM, ALL CONTENT ON IT, AND ALL SERVICES PROVIDED THROUGH IT ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. To the fullest extent permitted by law, TDOF disclaims all warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and accuracy.

TDOF does not warrant that the Platform will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, or that any content — directory listings, event details, dates, times, venues, prices, business information, licensure, contact details, translations, or news reports — is accurate, complete, current, or reliable.

Content on the Platform is general community information. It is not legal, financial, tax, immigration, medical, mental-health, or professional advice and must not be relied on as such. Consult a qualified licensed professional.

TDOF does not screen, vet, background-check, verify, license-check, or endorse any business, service provider, advertiser, event organizer, volunteer, or user. Where a submitter has attested to a licence or credential, that attestation is theirs, not TDOF’s, and TDOF has not confirmed it.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions; there, they apply to the maximum extent permitted.

1.13 Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, TDOF AND ITS DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, VOLUNTEERS, MODERATORS, CONTRACTORS, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, OR REPUTATION, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE PLATFORM, THESE TERMS, ANY USER CONTENT, OR ANY INTERACTION WITH ANOTHER USER OR A LISTED BUSINESS, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, STATUTE, OR OTHERWISE, AND WHETHER OR NOT TDOF WAS ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY.

TDOF’S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE PLATFORM OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE LESSER OF (A) THE TOTAL FEES YOU PAID TDOF FOR ADVERTISING, SPONSORSHIP, OR PAID LISTINGS IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) FIVE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US$500). CHARITABLE DONATIONS ARE NOT FEES AND ARE NOT COUNTED.

These limits apply even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose, and are a fundamental basis of the bargain. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

1.14 Indemnification

This section applies to advertisers, sponsors, and persons who submit business, housing, job, event, or fundraising listings. It does not apply to individuals posting comments, reviews, letters, or personal photographs.

If it applies to you, you will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless TDOF and its directors, officers, employees, volunteers, moderators, contractors, and agents from any claim, action, loss, liability, damage, judgment, settlement, fine, penalty, cost, or expense (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of:

• (a) your User Content, including any claim that it defames, infringes, misappropriates, violates any person’s rights, or constitutes a discriminatory advertisement;

• (b) your breach of these Terms, the User Content Policy, or applicable law;

• (c) your dealings or disputes with any user, customer, tenant, applicant, or attendee arising from content you posted;

• (d) any misrepresentation you make to TDOF, including in a copyright notice or counter-notice.

TDOF will notify you of any such claim and may, at its expense, assume the exclusive defense and control. You will cooperate and will not settle in a way that imposes obligations on TDOF without TDOF’s written consent.

Every user, whether or not this section applies to them, remains responsible under law for their own content.

1.15 Suspension and termination

TDOF may suspend or terminate your access, remove your User Content, or discontinue any part of the Platform at any time, with or without notice or cause. You may request account deletion at any time at privacy@desiorb.org.

Sections 1.5, 1.6 (as to surviving retention), 1.12, 1.13, 1.14, 1.16, and 1.18 survive termination.

1.16 Governing law, dispute resolution, and venue

• (a) Governing law. These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Platform are governed by Ohio law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

• (b) Informal resolution first. Before filing any claim, send written notice to legal@desiorb.org describing the dispute and the relief sought, and attempt in good faith to resolve it for 45 days. This is a condition precedent to filing. Any applicable limitation period is tolled while this 45-day period runs.

• (c) Venue. You and TDOF submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the Portage County, Ohio Court of Common Pleas and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, and waive any objection to that venue. This does not prevent either party from bringing an individual claim in a small claims court of competent jurisdiction.

• (d) Class action waiver. YOU AND TDOF AGREE THAT EACH MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE OTHER ONLY IN AN INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY, AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS, COLLECTIVE, CONSOLIDATED, OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. If this waiver is held unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim proceeds individually in court under subsection (c), and the remainder of this section continues to apply. This subsection is not subject to the reformation provision in § 1.18.

• (e) Jury trial waiver. To the extent permitted by law, you and TDOF waive any right to a jury trial.

• (f) Time limit. Any claim arising out of or relating to the Platform or these Terms must be filed within one (1) year after it accrues, subject to the tolling in subsection (b), or it is permanently barred, except where a longer period is required by law.

• (g) Injunctive relief. Either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or confidential information without first completing informal resolution.

1.17 Changes to these Terms

TDOF may modify these Terms. We will post the revised Terms with a new effective date and version number, and keep prior versions posted. For material changes we will give at least 14 days’ notice by a prominent notice on the Platform, and by email to registered users where we hold a working address. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance; where the law requires affirmative consent, we will ask for it.

1.18 General

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the User Content Policy, the Copyright and DMCA Policy, the Privacy Policy, and any insertion order or listing agreement in force between you and TDOF, are the entire agreement regarding the Platform.

Severability and reformation. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary to be enforceable, or severed; the remainder stays in effect. This does not apply to § 1.16(d), which carries its own consequence.

No waiver. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms. TDOF may assign to a successor or affiliate.

No third-party beneficiaries, except that TDOF’s directors, officers, employees, volunteers, moderators, contractors, and agents are intended beneficiaries of §§ 1.12, 1.13, and 1.14.

Force majeure. TDOF is not liable for failure or delay from causes beyond its reasonable control.

Language. These Terms are made in English; translations are for convenience and the English version governs. Summaries of the community rules are published in other community languages for accessibility and do not alter these Terms.

Headings and plain-language boxes are for convenience and do not limit the operative text.

1.19 Contact

The Desi Orbit Foundation — 966 Hawkin Lane, Aurora, OH 44202