Terms of Use

We welcome you (“you” or the “user”) as a reader, editor, author, or contributor of the getsteps.com (“Site”, “we” or “us”) tutorials, and we encourage you to join our community. Before you participate, however, we ask that you please read and agree to the following Terms of Use (“Terms of Use”).

Overview

These Terms of Use tell you about public services at getsteps.com, our relationship to you as a user, and the rights and responsibilities that guide us both. We want you to know that we host many of educational and informational content, all of which is contributed and made possible by users like yourself.

You are welcome to join as a contributor, editor, or author, but you should follow these Terms of Use. Because we are dedicated to making content freely accessible to the public, we generally require that all content you contribute is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Please be aware that you are legally responsible for all of your contributions, edits, and re-use of content on Site under applicable laws (which may include the laws where you live or where you view or edit content). This means it is important that you use caution when posting content. In light of this responsibility, we have some rules about what you cannot post, most of which is either for your own protection or for the protection of other users. Please keep in mind that the content we host is for general informational purposes only, so if you need expert advice for a particular question (such as medical, legal, or financial issues), you should seek the help of a licensed or qualified professional. We also include other important notices and disclaimers, so please read these Terms of Use in their entirety.

Our Services

Our mission is to provide you single space to search, browse, create, edit, translate or share various types of tutorials in the hope that these tutorials will be useful for others. Content on our Site is provided by users like you so it is important that you acknowledge that we cannot guarantee the validity of the information found on Site. More information is in our General disclaimer.

Because of our unique role, there are a couple of things you should be aware of when considering our relationship to you, the Site, and the other users:

  • We do not take an editorial role: All of the content that we host is provided by users like you and we do not take an editorial role. This means that we generally do not monitor or edit the content of the Project websites, and we do not take any responsibility for this content. Similarly, we do not endorse any opinions expressed via our services, and we do not represent or guarantee the truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any submitted community content. Instead, we simply provide access to the content that your fellow users have contributed and edited.
  • You are responsible for your own actions: You are legally responsible for your contributions on Site, so for your own protection you should exercise caution and avoid contributing any content that may result in criminal or civil liability under any applicable laws. Although we may not agree with such actions, we warn editors and contributors that authorities may seek to apply local laws where you live or where you view or edit content. We cannot offer any protection, guarantee, immunity or indemnification.

Privacy Policy

We ask that you review the terms of our Privacy Policy, so that you are aware of how we collect and use your information. Because our services are used by people all over the world, personal information that we collect may be stored and processed in the United States of America or any other country in which content of the Site is hosted or administered. By using our services, you consent to any such transfer of information outside your country.

Content We Host

  • You may find some material objectionable or erroneous: Because we provide a wide array of content that is produced or gathered by fellow users, you may encounter material that you find offensive, erroneous, misleading, mislabeled, or otherwise objectionable. We therefore ask that you use common sense and proper judgment when using our services.
  • Our content is for general informational purposes only: Although we may host a great deal of information that pertains to professional topics, including medical, legal, or financial issues, this content is presented for general informational purposes only. It should not be taken as professional advice. Please seek independent professional counseling from someone who is licensed or qualified in the applicable area in lieu of acting on any information, opinion, or advice contained in any of content on Site.

Refraining from Certain Activities

Content on Site only exists because of the vibrant community of users like you who collaborate to write, edit, and maintain the content. We happily welcome your participation in this community. We encourage you to be civil and polite in your interactions with others in the community, to act in good faith, and to make edits and contributions aimed at furthering the mission of Site.

Certain activities, whether legal or illegal, may be harmful to other users and violate our rules, and some activities may also subject you to liability. Therefore, for your own protection and for that of other users, you may not engage in such activities on our sites. These activities include, but are not limited to:

Harassing and Abusing Others

  • Engaging in harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism; and
  • Transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users.

Violating the Privacy of Others

  • Infringing the privacy rights of others under applicable laws (which may include the laws where you live or where you view or edit content);
  • Soliciting personally identifiable information for purposes of harassment, exploitation, violation of privacy, or any promotional or commercial purpose; and
  • Soliciting personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18 for an illegal purpose or violating any applicable law regarding the health or well-being of minors.

Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud

  • Intentionally or knowingly posting content that constitutes libel or defamation;
  • With the intent to deceive, posting content that is false or inaccurate;
  • Attempting to impersonate another user or individual, misrepresenting your affiliation with any individual or entity, or using the username of another user with the intent to deceive; and
  • Engaging in fraud.

Committing Infringement

  • Infringing copyrights, trademarks, patents, or other proprietary rights under applicable law.

Misusing Our Services for Other Illegal Purposes

  • Posting child pornography or any other content that violates applicable law concerning child pornography;
  • Posting or trafficking in obscene material that is unlawful under applicable law; and
  • Using the services in a manner that is inconsistent with applicable law.

Engaging in Disruptive and Illegal Misuse of Facilities

  • Posting or distributing content that contains any viruses, malware, worms, Trojan horses, malicious code, or other device that could harm our technical infrastructure or system or that of our users;
  • Engaging in automated uses of the site that are abusive or disruptive of the services and have not been approved by us;
  • Disrupting the services by placing an undue burden on Site or the networks or servers connected with this Site;
  • Disrupting the services by inundating the Site with communications or other traffic that suggests no serious intent to use it for its stated purpose;
  • Knowingly accessing, tampering with, or using any of our non-public areas in our computer systems without authorization; and
  • Using any form of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks;
  • Probing, scanning, or testing the vulnerabilities of technical systems or networks of our network and hosting providers;
  • Probing, scanning, or testing the vulnerabilities of Site via HTTP/S protocols unless all the following conditions are met:
    • such actions are not for personal or commercial gain (except for credit for your work);
    • you will not publish or share with anyone detected vulnerability before it is remediated;
    • you will report all detected vulnerabilities to info@getsteps.com (you may include steps to remediate);
    • you do not undertake such actions with malicious or destructive intent;
    • you have obtained permission from us to perform such actions; and
    • you agree to stop these activities immediately when we ask you.
    • These rules adequately apply if you have found any vulnerability by accident.

Paid contributions without disclosure

These Terms of Use prohibit engaging in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, and fraud. As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. You must make that disclosure by making a statement in the description part of every affected tutorial.

Applicable law, or other policies and guidelines, such as those addressing conflicts of interest, may further limit paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure.

We reserve the right to exercise our enforcement discretion with respect to the above terms.

Password Security

You are responsible for safeguarding your own password and should never disclose it to anyone (nor to us - we will never ask for your password).

Licensing of Content

To grow the commons of free knowledge and free culture, all users contributing to the Site are required to grant broad permissions to the general public to re-distribute and re-use their contributions freely, so long as that use is properly attributed and the same freedom to re-use and re-distribute is granted to any derivative works. In keeping with our goal of providing free information to the widest possible audience, we require that when necessary all submitted content be licensed so that it is freely reusable by anyone who cares to access it.

You agree to the following licensing requirements:

  • Text to which you hold the copyright: When you submit text to which you hold the copyright, you agree to license it under:

    Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (“CC BY-SA”)

    Please note that this license do allow commercial uses of your contributions, as long as such uses are compliant with the terms.

  • Attribution: Attribution is an important part of this license. We consider it giving credit where credit is due – to authors like you. When you contribute text, you agree to be attributed through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the article to which you contributed.
  • Importing text: You may import text that you have found elsewhere or that you have co-authored with others, but in such case you warrant that the text is available under terms that are compatible with the CC BY-SA license. You agree that, if you import text under a CC BY-SA license that requires attribution, you must credit the author(s) in a reasonable fashion. One way of doing this is to add resources (links) to the tutorial.
  • Non-text media: Non-text media can be used on Site if you warrant that these media are provided under the terms of CC BY-SA to support the general goal of allowing unrestricted re-use and re-distribution. When you contribute non-text media, you agree to comply with the requirements of CC BY-SA.
  • No revocation of license: You agree that you will not unilaterally revoke or seek invalidation of any license that you have granted under these Terms of Use for text content or non-text media contributed to the Site, even if you terminate use of our services.
  • Re-use: Re-use of content that we host is welcome, though exceptions exist for content contributed under "fair use" or similar exemptions under copyright law. Any re-use must comply with the underlying license(s).

    When you re-use or re-distribute a text page displayed on Site, you agree to attribute the authors through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages that you are re-using.

    In addition, please be aware that text that originated from external sources and was imported into the Site may be under a license that attaches additional attribution requirements. Users agree to indicate these additional attribution requirements clearly. Such requirements may appear for example in a description or other notations pointing out that some or all of the content was originally published elsewhere. Where there are such visible notations, re-users should preserve them.

  • Modifications or additions to material that you re-use: When modifying or making additions to text or non-text media that you have obtained from Site, you agree to license the modified or added content under CC BY-SA.

    With both text content and non-text media, you agree to clearly indicate that the original work has been modified. For each copy or modified version that you distribute, you agree to include a licensing notice stating which license the work is released under, along with either a hyperlink or URL to the text of the license or a copy of the license itself.

Infringement

We want to ensure that the content that we host can be re-used by other users without fear of liability and that it is not infringing the proprietary rights of others. In fairness to our users, as well as to other creators and copyright holders, our policy is to respond to notices of alleged infringement. We will terminate, in appropriate circumstances, users of Site who are repeat infringers.

However, we also recognize that not every takedown notice is valid or in good faith. In such cases, we strongly encourage users to file counter-notifications when they appropriately believe a takedown demand is invalid or improper. For more information on what to do if you think a takedown notice has been improperly filed, you may wish to consult the Chilling Effects website.

If you are the owner of content that is being improperly used on Site without your permission, you may request that the content be removed. To make such a request, please email us your copyright concerns at info@getsteps.com. For such cases, we reserve the right to change, update or even completely erase content in question.

Third-party Websites and Resources

You are solely responsible for your use of any third-party websites or resources. Although Site contains links to third-party websites and resources, we do not endorse and are not responsible or liable for their availability, accuracy, or the related content, products, or services (including, without limitation, any viruses or other disabling features), nor do we have any obligation to monitor such third-party content.

Management of Site

We reserve the right, but do not have the obligation to:

  • Investigate your use of the service (a) to determine whether a violation of these Terms of Use or other applicable law or policy has occurred, or (b) to comply with any applicable law, legal process, or appropriate governmental request;
  • Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues or respond to user support requests;
  • Refuse, disable, or restrict access to the contribution of any user who violates these Terms of Use;
  • Ban a user from editing or contributing or block a user's account or access for actions violating these Terms of Use, including repeat copyright infringement;
  • Take legal action against users who violate these Terms of Use (including reports to law enforcement authorities);
  • Edit or delete any text or non-text media on Site with or without the notice of author to correct or improve it (especially when we are notified about an error or violation of these Terms of Use regarding the content on Site);
  • Manage otherwise the Site in a manner designed to facilitate its proper functioning and protect the rights, property, and safety of ourselves and our users, licensors, partners, and the public.

In the interests of our users and the Site, in the extreme circumstance that any individual has had his or her account or access blocked under this provision, he or she is prohibited from creating or using another account on or seeking access to the Site, unless we provide explicit permission.

We may also take action, including but not limited to warning, investigating, blocking, or banning users who violate these Terms of Use and you agree to comply with such action.

Termination

Though we hope you will stay and continue to contribute to Site, you can stop using our services any time. In certain (hopefully unlikely) circumstances it may be necessary to terminate part or all of our services, terminate these Terms of Use, block your account or access, or ban you as a user. If your account or access is blocked or otherwise terminated for any reason, your public contributions will remain publicly available (subject to applicable policies), and, unless we notify you otherwise, you may still access our public pages for the sole purpose of reading publicly available content on Site. In such circumstances, however, you may not be able to access your account or settings. We reserve the right to suspend or end the services at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice. Even after your use and participation are banned, blocked or otherwise suspended, these Terms of Use will remain in effect with respect to relevant provisions.

Disclaimers

We do our best to provide educational and informational content to a very wide audience, but your use of our services is at your sole risk. We provide these services on an "as is" and "as available" basis, and we expressly disclaim all express or implied warranties of all kinds, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We make no warranty that our services will meet your requirements, be safe, secure, uninterrupted, timely, accurate, or error-free, or that your information will be secure.

We are not responsible for the content, data, or actions of third parties, and you release us from any claims and damages, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with any claim you have against any such third parties. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you from us or through or from our services creates any warranty not expressly stated in these Terms of Use.

Any material downloaded or otherwise obtained through your use of our services is done at your own discretion and risk, and you will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or loss of data that results from the download of any such material. You agree that we have no responsibility or liability for the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any content or communication maintained by the Site. We retain the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time with or without notice.

Some states or jurisdictions do not allow the types of disclaimers in this section, so they may not apply to you either in part or in full depending on the law.

Limitation on Liability

We will not be liable to you or to any other party for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, including but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data, or other intangible losses, regardless of whether we were advised of the possibility of such damage. In the case that applicable law may not allow the limitation or exclusion of liability or incidental or consequential damages, the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you, although our liability will be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.

Modifications to these Terms of Use

Because it may be necessary to modify these Terms of Use from time to time, we will provide you notice of such modifications. However, we ask that you please periodically review the most up-to-date version of these Terms of Use. Your continued use of our services after the new Terms of Use become official following the notice constitutes an acceptance of these Terms of Use on your part. For the protection of us and other users like yourself, if you do not agree with our Terms of Use or its part, you cannot use our services.

Other Terms

These Terms of Use do not create an employment, agency, partnership, or joint venture relationship between you and us. If you have not signed a separate agreement with us, these Terms of Use are the entire agreement between you and us. If there is any conflict between these Terms of Use and a signed written agreement between you and us, the signed agreement will control.

You agree that we may provide you with notices, including those regarding changes to the Terms of Use, by email or postings on Site.

If in any circumstance, we do not apply or enforce any provision of these Terms of Use, it is not a waiver of that provision.

You understand that, unless otherwise agreed to in writing by us, you have no expectation of compensation for any activity, contribution, or idea that you provide to us.

Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in these Terms of Use, you agree not to modify the applicable terms and requirements of any free license that is employed on the Site when such free license is authorized by these Terms of Use.

These Terms of Use were written in English. While we hope that translations of these Terms of Use are accurate, in the event of any differences in meaning between the original English version and a translation, the original English version takes precedence.

If any provision or part of a provision of these Terms of Use is found unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that provision or part of the provision is deemed severable from these Terms of Use and will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and all other provisions of these Terms of Use will remain in full force and effect.

Thank You!

We appreciate your taking the time to read these Terms of Use, and we are very happy to have you contributing to the Site and using our services. Through your contributions, you are helping to build something really big – not only an important collection of tutorials that provide education and information to millions who might otherwise lack access, but also a vibrant community of like-minded and engaged peers, focused on a very noble goal.