Welcome to the COVID-19 Irish Citizens’ Online Forum. Thank you for agreeing to join us in the Covid-19 Irish Online Public Forum. The forum will be facilitated via the COVID-19 Irish Citizens’ Online Forum platform. COVID-19 Irish Citizens’ Online Forum was devised by researchers at DCU’s ADAPT Centre to provide an opportunity for citizens to discuss their ideas with each other and with policymakers. By participating in these conversations, you will be able to have your say regarding our shared future. We hope that you will find your participation constructive.

The rules set out below have been put in place to ensure that all participants may freely engage in a conversation in a constructive, civil, friendly and non-threatening environment.

In order to gain access to the platform and start contributing to the conversation, you are required to register. You need to register filling in some basic information and using your email. A verification link will be sent to your email account in order to activate your registration. By registering with the platform, you are subject to this Code of Conduct. Content that does not comply with these rules or that is deemed inappropriate by the research team and project moderators will be deleted and may result in your removal from the platform.

This Research project has received approval from the Research Ethics Committee of DCU (DCUREC/2020/183)

Code of Conduct

  1. COVID-19 Irish Citizens’ Online Forum is a public platform and all content posted to the platform will be in the public domain. Please do not contribute any information or ideas of a confidential nature. Please do not disclose personal, health-related or other sensitive information about you or people known to you.

  2. Content posted to the platform should be factual or must be clearly identifiable as opinion.

  3. Personal attacks on others, publication of defamatory statements or material, posting personal information about others, and inappropriate language or behaviours are unacceptable. Such content will be removed and may result in the poster being permanently removed from the platform.

  4. Inappropriate, illegal or offensive materials (videos, documents, pictures) that are posted to the platform will be removed and may result in the poster being permanently removed from the platform.

  5. The platform does allow you to highlight (flag) content posted by another participant. However, participants are not permitted to copy and post comments from other participants without citing the original source of the comment. This includes content that is posted from other social media channels.

In order to assist us in maintaining a respectful dialogue, please flag any comments that you believe to be in breach of these rules using the Flag Icon ( )

By registering with the COVID-19 Irish Citizens’ Online Forum platform, you are confirming that you have read and agree to these rules and that you take full responsibility for observing them.

Important Terms

These terms include a number of important provisions that affect your rights and responsibilities, such as the disclaimers in Disclaimers, limits on ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University’s liability to you in Limits on Liability, your agreement to cover ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University for damages caused by your misuse of the forum in Responsibility for Your Use, and an agreement to arbitrate disputes in Disputes.

Your Permission to Use the Forum

Subject to these terms, ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University gives you permission to use the forum. Everyone needs to agree to these terms to use the forum.

Conditions for Use of the Forum

Your permission to use the forum is subject to the following conditions:

  1. You must be at least sixteen years old.
  2. You may no longer use the forum if ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University contacts you directly to say that you may not.
  3. You must use the forum in accordance with Acceptable Use and Content Standards.

Acceptable Use

  1. You may not break the law using the forum.
  2. You may not use or try to use another’s account on the forum without their specific permission.
  3. You may not buy, sell, or otherwise trade in user names or other unique identifiers on the forum.
  4. You may not send advertisements, chain letters, or other solicitations through the forum, or use the forum to gather addresses or other personal data for commercial mailing lists or databases.
  5. You may not automate access to the forum, or monitor the forum, such as with a web crawler, browser plug-in or add-on, or other computer program that is not a web browser. You may crawl the forum to index it for a publicly available search engine, if you run one.
  6. You may not use the forum to send email to distribution lists, newsgroups, or group mail aliases.
  7. You may not falsely imply that you’re affiliated with or endorsed by ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University.
  8. You may not hyperlink to images or other non-hypertext content on the forum on other webpages.
  9. You may not remove any marks showing proprietary ownership from materials you download from the forum.
  10. You may not show any part of the forum on other websites within an iframe.
  11. You may not disable, avoid, or circumvent any security or access restrictions of the forum.
  12. You may not strain infrastructure of the forum with an unreasonable volume of requests, or requests designed to impose an unreasonable load on information systems underlying the forum.
  13. You may not impersonate others through the forum.
  14. You may not encourage or help anyone in violation of these terms.

Content Standards

  1. You may not submit content to the forum that is illegal, offensive, or otherwise harmful to others. This includes content that is harassing, inappropriate, or abusive.
  2. You may not submit content to the forum that violates the law, infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights, violates anyone’s privacy, or breaches agreements you have with others.
  3. You may not submit content to the forum containing malicious computer code, such as computer viruses or spyware.
  4. You may not submit content to the forum as a mere placeholder, to hold a particular address, user name, or other unique identifier.
  5. You may not use the forum to disclose information that you don’t have the right to disclose, like others’ confidential or personal information.

Enforcement

ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University may investigate and prosecute violations of these terms to the fullest legal extent. ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University may notify and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting violations of the law and these terms.

ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University reserves the right to change, redact, and delete content on the forum for any reason. If you believe someone has submitted content to the forum in violation of these terms, contact us immediately.

Your Account

You must create and log into an account to use some features of the forum.

To create an account, you must provide some information about yourself. If you create an account, you agree to provide, at a minimum, a valid email address, and to keep that address up-to-date. You may close your account at any time by emailing cof-info@adaptcentre.ie.

You agree to be responsible for all action taken using your account, whether authorised by you or not, until you either close your account or notify ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University that your account has been compromised. You agree to notify ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University immediately if you suspect your account has been compromised. You agree to select a secure password for your account, and keep it secret.

ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University may restrict, suspend, or close your account on the forum according to its policy for handling copyright-related takedown requests, or if ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University reasonably believes that you’ve broken any rule in these terms.

Your Content

Nothing in these terms gives ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University any ownership rights in intellectual property that you share with the forum, such as your account information, posts, or other content you submit to the forum. Nothing in these terms gives you any ownership rights in ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University’s intellectual property, either.

Between you and ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University, you remain solely responsible for content you submit to the forum. You agree not to wrongly imply that content you submit to the forum is sponsored or approved by ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University. These terms do not obligate ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University to store, maintain, or provide copies of content you submit, and to change it, according to these terms.

Content you submit to the forum belongs to you, and you decide what permission to give others for it. But at a minimum, you license ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University to provide content that you submit to the forum to other users of the forum. That special license allows ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University to copy, publish, and analyze content you submit to the forum.

When content you submit is removed from the forum, whether by you or by ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University, ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University’s special license ends when the last copy disappears from ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University’s backups, caches, and other systems. Other licenses you apply to content you submit, such as Creative Commons licenses, may continue after your content is removed. Those licenses may give others, or ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University itself, the right to share your content through the forum again.

Others who receive content you submit to the forum may violate the terms on which you license your content. You agree that ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University will not be liable to you for those violations or their consequences.

Your Responsibility

You agree to indemnify ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University from legal claims by others related to your breach of these terms, or breach of these terms by others using your account on the forum. Both you and ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University agree to notify the other side of any legal claims for which you might have to indemnify ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University as soon as possible. If ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University fails to notify you of a legal claim promptly, you won’t have to indemnify ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University for damages that you could have defended against or mitigated with prompt notice. You agree to allow ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University to control investigation, defence, and settlement of legal claims for which you would have to indemnify ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University, and to cooperate with those efforts. ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University agrees not to agree to any settlement that admits fault for you or imposes obligations on you without your prior agreement.

Disclaimers

You accept all risk of using the forum and content on the forum. As far as the law allows, ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University and its suppliers provide the forum as is, without any warranty whatsoever.

The forum may hyperlink to and integrate forums and services run by others. ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University does not make any warranty about services run by others, or content they may provide. Use of services run by others may be governed by other terms between you and the one running service.

Limits on Liability

Neither ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University nor its suppliers will be liable to you for breach-of-contract damages their personnel could not have reasonably foreseen when you agreed to these terms.

As far as the law allows, the total liability to you for claims of any kind that are related to the forum or content on the forum will be limited to $50.

Feedback

ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University welcomes your feedback and suggestions for the forum. See the Contact section below for ways to get in touch with us.

You agree that ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University will be free to act on feedback and suggestions you provide, and that ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University won’t have to notify you that your feedback was used, get your permission to use it, or pay you. You agree not to submit feedback or suggestions that you believe might be confidential or proprietary, to you or others.

Termination

Either you or ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University may end the agreement written out in these terms at any time. When our agreement ends, your permission to use the forum also ends.

The following provisions survive the end of our agreement: Your Content, Feedback, Your Responsibility, Disclaimers, Limits on Liability, and General Terms.

Disputes

Irish Law will govern any dispute related to these terms or your use of the forum.

You and ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University agree to seek injunctions related to these terms only in state or federal court in Dublin, Ireland. Neither you nor ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University will object to jurisdiction, forum, or venue in those courts.

Other than to seek an injunction or for claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, you and ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University will resolve any dispute by binding American Arbitration Association arbitration. Arbitration will follow the AAA’s Commercial Arbitration Rules and Supplementary Procedures for Consumer Related Disputes. Arbitration will happen in Dublin, Ireland. You will settle any dispute as an individual, and not as part of a class action or other representative proceeding, whether as the plaintiff or a class member. No arbitrator will consolidate any dispute with any other arbitration without ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University’s permission.

Any arbitration award will include costs of the arbitration, reasonable attorneys’ fees, and reasonable costs for witnesses. You and ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University may enter arbitration awards in any court with jurisdiction.

General Terms

If a provision of these terms is unenforceable as written, but could be changed to make it enforceable, that provision should be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. Otherwise, that provision should be removed.

You may not assign your agreement with ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University. ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University may assign your agreement to any affiliate of ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University, any other company that obtains control of ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University, or any other company that buys assets of ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University related to the forum. Any attempted assignment against these terms has no legal effect.

Neither the exercise of any right under this Agreement, nor waiver of any breach of this Agreement, waives any other breach of this Agreement.

These terms embody all the terms of agreement between you and ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University about use of the forum. These terms entirely replace any other agreements about your use of the forum, written or not.

Contact

You may notify ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University under these terms, and send questions to ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University, at cof-info@adaptcentre.ie.

ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University may notify you under these terms using the email address you provide for your account on the forum, or by posting a message to the homepage of the forum or your account page.

Changes

ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University last updated these terms on 3 November 2020, and may update these terms again. ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University will post all updates to the forum. For updates that contain substantial changes, ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University agrees to email you, if you’ve created an account and provided a valid email address. ADAPT Centre - Dublin City University may also announce updates with special messages or alerts on the forum.

Once you get notice of an update to these terms, you must agree to the new terms in order to keep using the forum.