TERMS OF USE

Copyright on materials contributed by the Akron Beacon Journal and Ohio.com readers and/or members is held by the individual creators. All postings, messages, text, files, images, graphics, photos, audio clips, sounds, video or other materials (the "Content") posted on, transmitted through, or linked from the Site, are the sole responsibility of the person from whom such Content originated. You are entirely responsible for all Content that you post, email or otherwise make available through the Site. For all Content provided by you, you agree to indemnify Provider as provided below. By uploading or otherwise posting any Content on the Site, you represent and warrant: (i) you own or otherwise have all necessary rights, including but not limited to copyrights, to the content you provide and the rights to use it as provided in this Terms of Service; (ii) all information you provide is true, accurate, current and complete, and does not violate these Terms of Service; and, (iii) the content will not cause injury to any person or entity. You agree not to upload, transmit, distribute or otherwise publish in these or any other Forums connected with the Company any Materials which are:

• libelous, defamatory, obscene, abusive, pornographic, threatening, or an invasion of privacy;
• an infringement of the intellectual property rights, including, but not limited to, copyrights and trademarks, of any person or entity;
• illegal in any way or which advocate illegal activity;
• an advertisement or solicitation of funds, goods, or services.

LICENSE

For all such information and material, you grant the Beacon Journal Publishing Co, Inc., its affiliates and related entities, and its affiliated newspaper, a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, copy, modify, display, archive, store, distribute, reproduce and create derivative works from such information, in any form, media, software or technology of any kind now existing or developed in the future.

NO PRE-SCREENING OR EDITING

This site offers weblogs, story commenting, photo galleries and other interactive areas where users can express opinions and share ideas and information. Ohio.com cannot and does not monitor all of the material posted or transmitted to the Site. Additionally, the Company does not control, and is not responsible for, Content made available through the Site by members.

By using the Site, you may be exposed to Content that you may find offensive, indecent, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise objectionable. You agree that you must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with, the use of the Site and any of its Content, including but not limited to whether you should rely on said Content.

You also agree that under no circumstances will the Beacon Journal Publishing Company, Inc. or its affiliates be liable in any way for any Content or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Content posted, emailed or otherwise made available via the Site. You acknowledge that Ohio.com does not pre-screen or approve Content, but that the Company shall have the right (but not the obligation) in its sole discretion to refuse, delete or move any Content that is available via the Site, for violating the letter or spirit of the Terms or for any other reason. The Company reserves the right to delete any posting, message or photograph at any time, for any reason or no reason.

MATERIALS SUBMITTED BY OTHER USERS

We cannot and do not review every posting made in our areas available for public postings. You may well read any given posting before anyone on our staff does. Take what you find with a grain of salt. You can expect these areas to include information and opinions from a variety of individuals and organizations other than us. We do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of any posting, regardless of whether the posting comes from a user, from a celebrity or "expert" guest, or from a member of our staff. There is no substitute for healthy skepticism and your own good judgment.

TERMINATION

The Company may, in its sole discretion, terminate or suspend your access to all or part of the site, including, but not limited to, any bulletin boards on its site, for any reason, including without limitation, breach of this agreement. In the event this agreement is terminated, the restrictions regarding Materials appearing on the site, and the representations and warranties, indemnities, and limitations of liabilities set forth in this agreement shall survive any such termination.

JURISDICTION

This site is controlled and operated by the Company from the Companys headquarters in Akron, Ohio. The Company does not represent or warrant that Materials on the site are appropriate or available for use in other locations. If you choose to access this site from other locations, you do so at your own risk and are responsible for compliance with any and all local laws.

This agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Ohio, as it is applied to agreements entered into and performed within that State. Any action brought to enforce this agreement or matters related to the site shall be brought in either the State or Federal Courts of Ohio. If any provision of this agreement is deemed void, unlawful or otherwise unenforceable for any reason, that provision shall be severed from this agreement and the remaining provisions of this agreement shall remain in force. This contains the entire agreement between you and the Company concerning your use of the site.

PRIVACY POLICY

Effective June 27, 2006

This Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. site, Ohio.com , is covered by the policies herein.

When does Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. collect my personally identifiable information?

When you register for one of Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc.'s sites, or for services on any of our sites, we collect personally identifying information from you. During registration you are asked to provide your email address and some demographic information including such items as your gender, year of birth, and address. The more information you provide, the better we are able to customize our services and your experience to suit your needs and preferences. In addition to registration, we may collect personally identifiable information from you when you enter contests and sweepstakes (which may be done in conjunction with site registration), participate in promotions and special programs, register for premium or customized services, make a purchase at one of our merchants or partners, subscribe to one of our print publications, or download a software product or plug-in.

If you are making a purchase or enrolling in a premium service for which there is a fee, we, or a 3rd party working in partnership with us, will collect your credit card, billing address, and other verifying information. In addition, we may collect personally identifiable information from you when you provide content to us for display or use on one or more Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites, including but not limited to, when you participate in user surveys, post messages to bulletin boards or chat areas, submit personals or other classified listings, build a home page, report a problem with one of our sites or services, or submit a letter to the editor.

If you use our referral service ("Email an Article to a Friend") to tell a friend about our site, we will ask for your email address and theirs. We automatically send a one-time email to the address you provided. Neither your email address nor the email address you provide is stored or used for any other purpose.

How is my personally identifiable information used?

Our main goal is to provide you with a customized and more relevant experience on Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites. We review our users' preferences, demographics, traffic patterns, and other information in aggregate so that we can better understand who our audience is and what it is you want. Tracking user preferences also helps us serve you more relevant advertising. Please note that we do not share your personally identifying information with the advertiser.

We use a third party to serve ads when you visit our site. This third party ad server may use certain information about your visit to our site in order to provide advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you, but they are not allowed to collect or use personally identifiable information about you for their own purposes.

Yahoo! is an ad network partner that displays ads on our Web Site. To improve your ad experience on our Web Site and elsewhere on the Internet, we may send non-personal information to Yahoo! based on your browser's activities, such as type of pages viewed and categories of interests, so that the advertising you see is relevant to you. Yahoo! also may use information regarding its own users to select which ads to display. Click here to learn more about Yahoo!'s ad practices, including how to opt out of using anonymous information to select which ads to show you.

All credit card information is transmitted in an encrypted form, using SSL (secure socket layer) encryption, the industry-standard. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. assumes no liability for disclosure of data due to errors in transmission or unauthorized third parties. If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can contact us at: Ohio.com Feedback

The email address provided by you at registration, or as updated, may be used by Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. and its affiliated entities, including Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc., to contact you for any reason, including: (1) Your account status (including an email confirmation of registration), (2) Major changes to the website, the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, (3) Participation in user surveys, asking for feedback on the website and (4) notifying you of existing or prospective products and services offered by us or our advertisers and partners. This information helps us to improve our website. The information provided by you at registration may be used by Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. to contact you with special offers and promotions.

To update your personal information such as name, or mailing address, you can sign into your account and visit the Update Account page. To update your newsletter subscriptions you either a) visit your newsletter subscription page in your account, or b) unsubscribe by following the instructions within the email newsletter.

If you opt-in to a third party offer on this site then your relationship with the third party will be governed by their respective Privacy Policies. If you no longer wish to receive communication from the third party, then you will need to contact them directly to opt-out. When you sign up for some third-party services on this site, such as free coupons or look up Yellow Pages, you will be taken to a co-branded site which may appear to be that of Ohio.com, however if the third party is collecting information from you, the use of this information is governed by the co-branded partner's privacy policy.

What other information does Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. collect and how is it used?

Cookies. Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. uses cookies to store and track your preferences to provide you with a more personalized user experience. A cookie is a message that is sent to your browser from a Web server and stored on your computer's hard drive. Most Internet sites use cookies. You can set your browser preferences to reject all cookies but then you will not be able to participate in most customized services, and you may be required to repeatedly log in to participate in various services, promotions, or product offerings. Cookies make your experience easier by saving your preferences and passwords.

We also use cookies that contain no personal information at all. These cookies help us estimate our audience size, determine which areas of Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites are the most popular, and serve targeted advertising. Third party advertisers and our ad server may set and access their cookies on your computer in accordance with their own privacy policies. If you would like more information about the use of cookies by our third party ad server and your ability to opt out of receiving cookies from this third party, please click here: http://www.doubleclick.net/us/corporate/privacy

Some parts of Ohio.com site use cookies to collect information about visitors' use of the Web site and to facilitate return visits. Information collected about user activity may be done in partnership using a 3rd party tracking tool. The information collected from cookies is tracked to enhance security and to improve the functionality of the Web site by avoiding duplicate data entry, facilitating navigation, and increasing the relevance of content. Cookies on the site may collect the following information: a unique identifier, user preferences and profile information used to personalize the content that is shown, and membership information to access Ohio,com's services. Some cookies used by Ohio.com may remain on the user's computer after they leave the Web site.

Most browsers can be configured to reject cookies or alert you when cookies are being sent. Keep in mind that if you refuse cookies, it is possible that some portions of Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites may not function exactly as intended.

IP Address. Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. may also collect IP addresses for the purposes of systems administration or to report information in aggregate form to our advertisers (e.g. how many visitors logged in to a Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. site). An IP address is a number that is assigned to your computer automatically when you use the Internet. When you visit a particular Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. web page, our servers log your IP address. Your IP address is not linked to anything personally identifiable.

Who does Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. share information with?

User information is shared within Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. in order to provide you with a more integrated and customized user experience. We will not disclose your personally identifiable information to third parties except (1) to the extent necessary to provide you with a requested product or service, or (2) in order to provide targeted promotional offers during the registration process. If you do not accept any of the offers, your information will not be retained by our registration offers partner.

To the extent you are notified of uses of your personal information which are different from those described in this Policy Statement during your enrollment in any particular service, sweepstakes, contest or promotion, the uses of which you are specifically notified will govern that service, sweepstakes, contest or promotion. We may co-sponsor some contests on our site with other companies. If you enter one of these contests, our co-sponsor may receive the information collected. In such cases, we will tell you who the co-sponsor is and notify you if the use of this information is governed by the co-sponsor's privacy policy.

We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web site.

What else should I know about my privacy?

You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose personal information online in a public area, that information may be collected and used by others. We do not control the actions of our visitors and registered users. If you disclose personal information in a chat room, forum, on your home page, or any other publicly accessible place on Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites, you do so at your own risk and you understand that your submitted information may be collected and used by others to send you unsolicited messages, advertisements, or for other purposes.

Please remember that protection of your privacy begins with you. You are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any password you use to register, and you should always be careful and responsible whenever disclosing information online.

This Web site contains links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc.. Please be aware that we, Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc., are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites.

We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information.

This privacy statement applies only to information collected by this Web site.

Privacy Protection For Children

In compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), we will not knowingly provide access to Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites to persons under the age of thirteen (13). If Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. later learns that any registered user is under the age of thirteen (13), we will take appropriate steps to remove the member's information from the database and we will restrict this individual from future access to Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites. We feel strongly about protecting the privacy of children. We encourage kids to involve their parents in any interactive activity they participate in online. Except where otherwise disclosed, we will not collect or use any personal information from children we know to be under the age of thirteen without obtaining express parental consent. All general information collected from users under the age of thirteen is used only for aggregate statistical analysis.

Acceptance of Privacy Policy.

By using Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites and services, you signify your acceptance of this Privacy Statement. If you do not agree or are not comfortable with any policy described in this Privacy statement, your only remedy is to discontinue use of Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites. We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Statement at any time. If we materially change how we use your personal information we will notify you either by email or through a prominent notice on the web site. Your continued use of any portion of Beacon Journal Publishing Co., Inc. sites following notification or posting of such changes will constitute your acceptance of those changes. If you have questions or concerns about our specific policies, please contact us through our feedback form at: Ohio.com Feedback.

Want more information? Check out these helpful links...

Electronic Frontier Foundation - a civil liberties organization working to protect your rights online.

Electronic Privacy Information Center - established to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues relating to the National Information Infrastructure.

Privacy Issues Page - from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).

Cookie Central -- dedicated to provide full information upon Internet Cookies.