[Please see also the ‘Privacy Policy’ and ‘Cookie Policy’]
What I think all the legal jargon below means:
This is a genealogy site, a historical narrative site about families and people and the events that affected their lives. The information presented here has been contributed by many people who believe that it is correct, but the accuracy of the information is not guaranteed. No one, not the site owner or any contributor does any of this for any reason other than the pleasure of learning more about their family history. None of the site contributors does this with any intent to harm anyone, but rather it is done in good faith that the information is correct and is appropriate to the purpose of researching and preserving family history.
The Willis Tree website is a free and open resource of genealogical and biographical data. I absorb the cost of making this site and its information freely available to you without restriction of access (except where noted) and want to see that this philosophy is continued. I encourage you to use this information and to share it, but I ask that you don’t charge people to see it or inhibit access to it. I ask that you don’t provide it to some other person or entity who will make a profit from it or who will inhibit access to it (e.g. behind a password, a subscription, etc.).
Regarding copyright (see “Intellectual Property Rights” below) most genealogical data is not covered by copyright laws. The accompanying biographical data (the stories, etc.) might be. Copyright also covers the way the data is presented as well as photographs, biographical narratives, documents and other information created by the site owner and its contributors. As noted above, I make this information available without access or restriction, other than the requirement that any use you make of it also be without access restrictions, and it would be nice were you to attribute your source of this data to this website.
Not everyone would do things the way they are done here and your patience and understanding are requested if you think it should be done differently. I welcome your contributions or suggestions for corrections via the contact form. Tacky, rude or threatening communications will be ignored.
Let’s keep genealogy fun, free and accessible.
Paul
Terms Of Website Use
In using this website you are deemed to have read and agreed to the following terms and conditions. These terms and conditions govern your use of this website; by using this website, you accept these terms and conditions in full. If you disagree with these terms and conditions or any part of these terms and conditions, you must not use this website.
License To Use Website
Unless otherwise stated, The Willis Tree website and it’s administrator, Paul Willis, own the intellectual property rights in the website and material on the website. Subject to the license below, all these intellectual property rights are reserved.
You may view, download for caching purposes only, and print pages or other content from the website for your own personal use, subject to the restrictions set out below and elsewhere in these terms and conditions.
Accessing the Site
Access to our site is permitted on a temporary basis, and we reserve the right to withdraw or amend the service we provide on our site without notice (see below). We will not be liable if for any reason our site is unavailable at any time or for any period.
Restricted Access
The data on this site is presented without restriction or expectation of compensation. Some portions of the site are restricted to allow for contribution of data. This is to allow the site administrator(s) to examine and edit the data before making it public. There are certain other functions, unrelated to the data, which are private and restricted. The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul, reserves the right to restrict access to any area of this website, or indeed this entire website, at his discretion.
If The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, provides you with a user ID and password to enable you to access restricted areas of this website or other content or services, you must ensure that the user ID and password are kept confidential. We ask that you not access password-protected (restricted) areas from any computer other than your own as your user name may be recorded and stored on that computer in the form of a cookie.
The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, may disable your user ID and password at his sole discretion without notice or explanation.
Information About You and Your Visits to Our Site
We process information about you and your visits to our site in accordance with our privacy and cookie policies. By using our site, you consent to such processing and you warrant that all data provided by you is accurate.
Acceptable Use
(Rules of Conduct, Abuses e.g. Scraping, Harvesting, Viruses, Hacking and Other Offences.)
You must not use this website in any way that causes, or may cause, damage to the website or impairment of the availability or accessibility of the website; or in any way which is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful, or in connection with any unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful purpose or activity.
You must not post, transmit, or otherwise make available any material which would give rise to criminal or civil liability, which encourages conduct that constitutes a criminal offence, or which encourages or provides instructional information about illegal activities.
You must not post, transmit, or otherwise make available anything that is or may be (i) threatening, harassing, degrading, hateful, or intimidating; (ii) defamatory; (iii) fraudulent or tortuous; (iv) obscene, indecent, pornographic, or otherwise objectionable; or (v) protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, right of publicity, or other proprietary right without the express permission of the owner of such copyright, trademark, trade secret, right of publicity, or other proprietary right.
You must not use any material from this website to invade, reveal or jeopardize the privacy of any living individual (with the exclusion of material in the public domain). (See our Privacy Policy.)
You must not use this website to copy, store, host, transmit, send, use, publish or distribute any material which consists of (or is linked to) any spyware, computer virus, Trojan horse, worm, logic bomb, keystroke logger, rootkit or other malicious computer software or any other material which is malicious or technologically harmful.
You must not conduct any systematic or automated data collection activities (including without limitation scraping, data mining, data extraction or data harvesting) on or in relation to this website without express written consent from the owner or administrator of this site.
You must not use this website to post, transmit, send or otherwise make available unsolicited commercial communications or promotional materials, “junk mail”, “spam”, “chain letters”, “pyramid schemes”, investment opportunity, or any other form of solicitation..
You must not use this website or its contents for any purposes related to marketing without our express written consent.
You must not attempt to gain unauthorized access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack.
You must not frame or mirror any part of this website (see bandwidth theft in the next paragraph).
You must not use our bandwidth for your own purposes, such as through inline linking, hotlinking, leeching, piggy-backing, direct linking, offsite image grabs or any other form of bandwidth theft.
You Agree You Will Not:
- republish material from this website to any site that makes a profit from the use, publication or display of it;
- restrict access to any republished material from this site behind a password, firewall or other means;
- sell, rent or sub-license material from the website;
- reproduce, duplicate, copy or otherwise exploit material on this website for a commercial purpose.
Intellectual Property Rights
The works on this site are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved. (See Copyright & Genealogy)
You must not use any part of the materials on our site for commercial purposes without obtaining written permission from us.
You must not publish any material from this site on a commercial site or restrict access to it, e.g. behind password protection. The material on this site has been purposely provided without charge or restriction (except where noted) and it is intended that any use of material from this site be similarly free of charge or other restriction.
Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of material on our site must always be acknowledged.
If you print, reproduce, copy or download any part of our site in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our site will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made.
User Content
In these terms and conditions, “your user content” means material (including without limitation text, documents, images, audio material, video material and audio-visual material) that you submit to this website, for whatever purpose.
You grant to The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, adapt, publish, translate and distribute your user content in any existing or future media. You also grant to The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, the right to sub-license these rights, and the right to bring an action for infringement of these rights.
Your user content must not be illegal or unlawful, must not infringe any third party’s legal rights, and must not be capable of giving rise to legal action whether against you or The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, or a third party (in each case under any applicable law).
You must not submit any user content to the website that is or has ever been the subject of any threatened or actual legal proceedings or other similar complaint.
The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, reserves the right to edit or remove any material submitted to this website, or stored on their servers, or hosted or published upon this website.
Notwithstanding The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis’ rights under these terms and conditions in relation to user content, The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, does not undertake to monitor the submission of such content to, or the publication of such content on, this website.
This Site Changes Regularly
We aim to update our site regularly, and may change the content at any time. If the need arises, we may suspend access to our site, or close it indefinitely. Any of the material on our site may be out of date at any given time, and we are under no obligation to update such material.
No Warranties
Reliance on Information Posted & Disclaimer
This website is provided “as is” without any representations or warranties, express or implied. TheWillisTree.info and its owners makes no representations or warranties in relation to this website or the information and materials provided on this website.
Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing paragraph, The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, does not warrant that:
- this website will be constantly available, or available at all; or
- the information on this website is complete, true, accurate or non-misleading.
We do not accept any responsibility for any loss or damage which may arise from accessing or reliance on the information on this site and to the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all liability for loss or damages direct or indirect arising from the use of this site.
We do not accept responsibility for any product or service advertised on this site.
We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack, viruses or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material due to your use of our site or to your downloading of any material posted on it, or on any website linked to it.
The materials contained on our site are provided for general information purposes only and do not claim to be accurate or to constitute legal or other professional advice of any kind and shall not be relied upon as such. (If you require advice in relation to any matter, legal, financial, medical or otherwise, you should consult an appropriate professional.)
No article, document, media or any other material on this site shall constitute anything other than the best knowledge of the contributor and no advice is meant or implied and no recommendation of any product, service or procedure is meant or implied.
Limitations of Liability
The material displayed on our site is provided without any guarantees, conditions or warranties as to its accuracy or usefulness.
We will not be liable to you (whether under the law of contact, the law of torts or otherwise) in relation to the contents of or use of, or otherwise in connection with, this website. To the extent permitted by law, we and third parties connected to us, hereby expressly exclude:
- All conditions, warranties and other terms which might otherwise be implied by statute, common law or the law of equity.
- Any liability for any direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage incurred by any user in connection with our site or in connection with the use, inability to use, or results of the use of our site, any websites linked to it and any materials posted on it, including, without limitation any liability for:
- Any direct loss;
- Any indirect, special or consequential loss; or
- Any personal or business losses, loss of revenue, income, profits or anticipated savings, loss of contracts or business relationships, loss of reputation or goodwill, loss or corruption of information or data, or wasted management or office time.
Where our site contains links to other sites, resources, products or services provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources, and accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them. When accessing a site via our website we advise you check their terms of use and privacy policies to ensure compliance and determine how they may use your information.
These limitations of liability apply even if we have been expressly advised of the potential loss.
Reasonableness
By using this website, you agree that the exclusions and limitations of liability set out in this website disclaimer are reasonable.
If you do not think they are reasonable, you must not use this website.
Other Parties
You accept that The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, has an interest in limiting his personal liability. You agree that you will not bring any claim personally against The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis, in respect of any losses or injury you suffer in connection with the website.
You agree that the limitations of warranties and liability set out in this website disclaimer will protect The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis.
Indemnity
You hereby indemnify The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis and undertake to keep The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis indemnified against any losses, damages, costs, liabilities and expenses (including without limitation legal expenses and any amounts paid by The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis to a third party in settlement of a claim or dispute on the advice of their legal advisers) incurred or suffered by The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis arising out of any breach by you of any provision of these terms and conditions, or arising out of any claim that you have breached any provision of these terms and conditions.
Breaches of These Terms and Conditions
Without prejudice to The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis’ other rights under these terms and conditions, if you breach these terms and conditions in any way, The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis may take such action as The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis deems appropriate to deal with the breach, including suspending your access to the website, prohibiting you from accessing the website, blocking computers using your IP address from accessing the website, contacting your internet service provider to request that they block your access to the website and/or bringing court proceedings against you.
Changes to Our Web Site Terms of Use
We may revise these terms and conditions at any time by amending this page. Revised terms and conditions will apply to the use of this website from the date of the publication of the revised terms and conditions on this website. You are expected to check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes as they are binding on you.
Some of the provisions contained in these terms of use may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on our site.
Assignment
The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis may transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis’ rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions without notifying you or obtaining your consent.
You may not transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with your rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions.
Severability
If a provision of these terms and conditions is determined by any court or another competent authority to be unlawful and/or unenforceable, the other provisions will continue in effect. If any unlawful and/or unenforceable provision would be lawful or enforceable if part of it were deleted, that part will be deemed to be deleted, and the rest of the provision will continue in effect.
Entire Agreement
These terms and conditions constitute the entire agreement between you and The Willis Tree website administrator, Paul Willis in relation to your use of this website and supersede all previous agreements in respect of your use of this website.
Your Concerns
If you have any concerns about material which appears on our site, please use our contact form.