This page will contain the terms of service of your choice.
The ToS constitute the entire agreement between you and Blissful Ignorance (BI) and govern your use of BI's service (hereinafter "Service" or "BI"). It takes the place of all prior agreements between you and the BI concerning your use of the Service.
BI's "Terms of Service" (ToS), the relationship between you and the Service, and all disputes arising out of or related to it, shall be governed by the laws of the United States and specifically the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict of law provisions.
You and BI agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located within Dallas County, Texas, and to waive any objection to the laying of venue there.
BI's failure to enforce any part of the TOS will not waive BI's ability to enforce it, and any waiver with regard to a specific instance shall not constitute a waiver of any other breaches of the TOS, even with regard to the same user.
If any provision of the ToS is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, you agree that the court should give effect to the party's intentions as reflected in the provision, and that the other provisions of the TOS remain in full force and effect.
You agree that, regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of the Service or the TOS must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred.
Blissful Ignorance hosts and shares content created by fans, for fans. Our Privacy Policy is a part of these Terms of Service and is contained in . By submitting a work, comment, image, tag, item of information including personally identifying information like an email address, User Name, link, embedded image, audio file or video, or any other form of content ("Content") to BI's website, or by creating a User Account and/or by viewing any Content on BI, you affirm, confirm and state that you comply with and assent to the TOS, which incorporates the BI Privacy Policy.
We may update the ToS as necessary. If the TOS change at any time after May 18, 2020, this is how the process will work: Changes in the TOS may be proposed at any time by or to BI's owner. Proposed changes will be prominently disclosed on the Service, and we will offer at least a two-week comment period for proposed changes. At the end of the comment period, proposed changes will be considered against the comments received. Once the decision has been made, the changes will become effective at that time. You can learn about changes in the TOS by visiting the Service.
The Terms of Service cannot be changed by, e.g., emails or oral communications with you.
BI provides services, on an "as is" and "as available" basis. The Service does not warrant (that is, does not make a legally binding promise) that our services will meet your requirements; that our services will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; or that the results you get from using the services will be accurate, reliable, or satisfactory to you. We will endeavor to provide the best possible service to users of the Service, but many things (e.g., possible outages, hackings, etc.) are not within our control and we cannot provide for all eventualities. In the event we learn of a breach of personally identifying information that users have submitted to the Service, we will notify affected users as soon as practicable.
Any material you download, view, or otherwise access through the Service is at your own risk. You will be solely responsible for any damage or loss of data that results from the download of any such material.
BI expressly disclaims all warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. The TOS govern your use of the Service, and therefore no communication from anyone associated with the BI will create any warranty that isn't expressly stated in the TOS.
You expressly agree that BI shall not be liable to you for any damages of any kind (even if BI has been advised of the possibility of such damages) resulting from the Service, including but not limited to your use of or inability to use the Service; unauthorized access to or changes in Content or information you submit; and the acts and statements of third parties who use the Service.
You agree that BI shall not be liable to you or any third party for any termination of or limitation on your access to the Service. BI may change, end, or put on hiatus the Service, or parts of its Services, at any time.
You agree that BI shall not be liable to you for any claim arising out of Content you make available, your use of the Service, your connection to the Service, your use of the TOS, or your violation of any rights of another.
In other words, BI is not liable to you for allowing you to post Content, download Content, use the Service, or interact with BI and its users. BI does not assume whatever legal risks you face by posting, viewing, or doing other things with Content.
You agree not to use the Service (as well as the e-mail addresses and URLs of BI's website:
to make available any Content or work that violates the Content Policy;
to impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a BI representative or volunteer, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
to forge headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any Content transmitted to or through the Service or any BI Content, sites, servers, networks, or services (headers and identifiers are defined as information actually used or intended to be used to route or authenticate Content, and do not include Content that simulates identifiers as part of a story, such as a fictional e-mail exchange);
to make available any Content that a court has ruled constitutes patent, trademark, trade secret or copyright infringement (please be aware of BI's position on fanwork legality);
to make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising (defined as solicitations for direct or indirect commercial advantage), junk mail, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other form of solicitation;
to make available any material that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer or hardware or telecommunications equipment;
to interfere with or disrupt the Service, any BI-hosted Content or sites, servers, Services or networks connected to BI's site;
to create an account if you are a resident or national of any country to which the U.S. has prohibited transactions by mandating a trade embargo, as detailed further by the State Department;
to create an account if you are under the age of thirteen;
to create an account if you are: between the ages of 13 and 16, and a resident or citizen of a country, including a European Economic Area country that states an age that is older than yours is required to consent to the processing of personal data without our obtaining written permission from a parent or legal guardian under the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR").
A list of countries that apply the GDPR can be found here. Each user is responsible for knowing the laws of their own country.
to use BI's services to break any law that applies to you, including any rules or regulations having the force of law. This provision is not intended to deal with matters subject to the Content Policy, but the Content Policy cannot cover every law in every country. As a general matter, BI follows US law. Content that is alleged to violate the law of a relevant jurisdiction will be dealt with according to the procedures established in the Abuse Policy.
BI and/or users of its services may provide links to or content via sites that are owned or controlled by third parties, and may use such sites, including Twitter and Tumblr, to communicate information about BI and its content. The Service has no control over such sites or their terms of use or privacy policies, and you agree that BI is not responsible for and does not endorse their content, terms or availability.
While we limit the types of embedded content visible or accessible via BI-hosted Content, some of the content and/or works that you see displayed are not hosted on the BI. Such embedded content can include videos, tweets, images that are hosted by third-party sites, or audio files ("User-Embedded Content"). If you access a page that includes User-Embedded Content, the content file may share data with the hosted site as if you were on or at the hosted site. Although all visible Content, including embedded images or other works, must comply with our Content Policy, User-Embedded Content is not otherwise governed by these Terms of Use or the Privacy Policy, and instead is covered by the Terms of Use and/or Privacy Policy of the service that hosts the User-Embedded Content. BI reserves the right to provide an indicator to users that User-Embedded Content is present on or visible via your Content.
You understand that BI does not prescreen Content or review it for purposes of compliance with the TOS. This includes but is not limited to work information, a work's content, text, graphics, comments, or any other material. Content, including User-Embedded Content, is the sole responsibility of the submitter. You understand that using the Service may expose you to material that is offensive, triggering, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, grammatically incorrect, or badly spelled.
You recognize that BIdoes not endorse Content on the Archive in any way, except when material appears as an official statement or in the newsletter. No members or volunteers are acting in an official capacity when they post fanworks, commentary, or other Content of the type generally provided by site users.
BI is not liable to you for any Content to which you are exposed to because of your voluntary use of the Service.
As part of your registration, you agree to provide an accurate and current e-mail address and to update the address as necessary. If your e-mail address is inaccurate or not current, BI may suspend your account. Content provided by suspended accounts before the suspension will not be removed unless the BI staff reasonably believes that presence/inclusion of said Content exposes the Service to liability.
We reserve the right to share your e-mail address with the owners and/or moderators of any Contests that you sign up for; your email address may be shared with the entity that manages the work(s) being administered through the Contests section of the Service.
By registering or otherwise using an e-mail address in connection with the Service, you assert that the e-mail address is not listed on any child protection registry. (There are child protection registries in Michigan and Utah, and our policy applies to any others that exist or may be adopted, whether local, state, or national, including any outside the U.S.)
BI does not claim any ownership or copyright in your Content. Repeat: we do not own your Content. Nothing in this agreement changes that in any way. Running the Service, however, requires us to make copies, and backup copies, on servers that may be located anywhere around the world.
You agree that we can make those copies and show your Content to other people, subject to your privacy settings. Specifically, by submitting Content, you grant BI a world-wide, royalty-free, nonexclusive license to make your Content available. "Making available" includes distributing, reproducing, performing, displaying, compiling, and modifying or adapting.
Modifying and adapting here refer strictly to how your work is displayed—not how it is written, drawn, or otherwise created. But, because your Content may be transmitted over various networks, we may have to make changes to the formatting or display of your Content in order to adapt to the technical requirements of different networks or devices. Multimedia content may not display properly on all devices. In some circumstances, we may make changes to improve accessibility. For example, we may automatically convert html tags to our standard forms (e.g., changing "bold" html to "strong"). Or we may make special provisions for accessibility, such as allowing you to use nonstandard fonts but also providing an alternate format for those who cannot read such fonts. We may use an internal search engine whose results display relevant snippets from your Content.
User-provided tags are subject to organization.
Subject to the next paragraph of this policy, this license exists only for as long as you choose to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate within a reasonable time after you remove or BI removes such Content from the Service. We will always strive to make your Content unavailable to users as soon as possible should you choose to remove it. Though removed Content will not be publicly available, for legal and disaster recovery purposes we may retain backup copies for longer periods.
You may provide Content to a part of the Service that you do not completely control. For example, you may decide to participate in a contest run by another user. Or you may provide Content to a part of the Archive where your Content can be deleted by other users, for example a Comments page. Where this is the case, by submitting Content to those parts of the Service, you agree to the rules for removing and retaining such Content on those parts of the Service.
You acknowledge and agree that BI may preserve Content and may disclose Content if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: comply with legal process; enforce the TOS; respond to claims that any Content violates the rights of third parties; or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of BI services' users and the public.
BI's serivce exists to host Content by creative people like you. In order to host or share your works, as well as comments, Likes and whatever you put into your User Profile, we have to process certain data and information including personally identifying information that we collect from Users, and that each User inputs. In order to operate the site, BI and user Content, and prevent technical issues and breaches, we need to process (e.g., collect, store, retrieve, disseminate, make available, and delete) certain data and information including personally identifying information, also known as "Personal Data". Personal Data includes your username, your email address, your IP information and any personally identifying information you enter on the website, including information that you put into your profile, a work's notes or tags, into the body of a work or other Content itself.
By using the site, you consent to our collection, processing, retention and display of your Content as set forth and explained in these Terms of Use so we can operate, manage, display and share the creativity on BI's website; if we believe that using, retaining and/or sharing that information is necessary to preserve the integrity of the Service and the Content that we host; for legitimate legal and/or accounting audit purposes; when we have a good faith belief it is required by law, such as pursuant to a subpoena or other legal process; or when we have a good faith belief that doing so will help prevent imminent harm to someone.
This Age Policy covers the Service's treatment of (a) users who are residents or citizens of the European Union and of the age where consent of a parent or legal guardian is required for the processing of personal data of children including email addresses and IP addresses, as well as certain uses of cookies; and (b) users who are under the age of thirteen (13) and residents or citizens of any other country.
In compliance with United States regulations regarding online privacy for children, the Service does not knowingly solicit or collect information from children under the age of thirteen (13). Children under the age of thirteen (13) are therefore not permitted to have an account or upload Content of any type to the Service. By submitting Content to BI, you thereby confirm that you are thirteen (13) years old or older.
Asking a parent or legal guardian to upload Content does not constitute submitting Content under this policy. If you are under the age of thirteen (13) and not an Age-Barred Individual (as defined below), your parent or legal guardian may upload your Content through their account.
We as an organization have opted to protect teen users' privacy. As a result, we cannot receive or host Content from individuals that we know are under the age of sixteen (16) and residents/citizens of the European Union, unless they are residents/citizens of the EU countries that allow the collection of Special Categories of Personal Data from those at a younger age and are old enough to consent to the collection of Special Categories of Personal Data in their own country. Any individual who is between the ages of 13 and 16 and a resident or citizen of a country, including a European Economic Area country, that states an age that is older than theirs is required to consent to the processing of personal data without our obtaining written permission from a parent or legal guardian under the GDPR ("Age-Barred Individual") may not maintain accounts or submit Content. BI Personnel may, in their reasonable discretion, hide and/or delete accounts held by and/or Content submitted by Age-Barred Individuals.