Acceptable Use Policy

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) outlines the rules and standards that apply when you access or use Empathy First Media’s website, online services, and any related platforms (collectively, the “Services”). These rules are in place to ensure our Services remain safe, legal, and enjoyable for all users. By using our Services, you agree to adhere to this AUP. Any violation of this policy may result in suspension or termination of your access to the Services, as well as other legal consequences if warranted.

Prohibited Activities: You may not use our Services to engage in any activity that is unlawful, harmful, or that interferes with the normal operation of the Services or the experience of other users. This includes (but is not limited to) the following prohibitions:

• Illegal Purposes: Do not use our Services for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal activities. This includes planning or executing any crime, fraud, or violation of applicable laws or regulations (international, federal, state, or local). For example, you must not use our site to coordinate phishing schemes, distribute counterfeit materials, or support terrorist or extremist acts.

• Violation of Rights: Do not upload, post, transmit, or otherwise make available any content that infringes or misappropriates any third party’s intellectual property rights or other rights. In particular, you must not use the Services to share content that you do not have the right to share. This means no posting of copyrighted materials (text, images, software, music, videos, etc.) without permission, no trademark infringement, and no violation of privacy or publicity rights of others.

• Harassment and Hate: You may not use our platform to harass, bully, or threaten anyone. This includes sending messages or content that is abusive, intimidating, or intended to stalk someone. Hate speech – content that attacks or demeans a group based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or other such characteristics – is strictly forbidden.

• Obscene or Harmful Content: Do not distribute content that is obscene, pornographic (especially not anything involving minors, which will be reported to authorities), or excessively violent. Avoid posting anything that a reasonable person would consider extremely offensive or disturbing. Also, do not encourage self-harm or suicide – content encouraging others to harm themselves is not allowed.

• Defamation and False Information: Do not post false or defamatory information about a person or entity. You are free to express opinions, but do not make verifiably false factual claims that could harm someone’s reputation or business. Additionally, intentionally spreading misinformation (like fake news or hoaxes) in a harmful way is not allowed.

• Spam and Commercial Use: Do not spam others using our Services. This means no unsolicited or bulk messages, no repetitive posting of the same content, and no schemes to artificially boost engagement (such as like-clicking farms, link schemes, etc.). Commercial advertising or solicitation is not allowed unless it’s specifically permitted (for instance, commenting just to drop links to your product is spam). You may not use scraping or bots to collect information from our site for unsolicited marketing. Sending unwanted promotional or commercial content to other users is prohibited.

• Malware and Security Violations: Do not upload or distribute viruses, worms, Trojan horses, corrupted files, or any other malicious code intended to harm or hijack the operation of any hardware, software, or telecommunications equipment. You must not attempt to gain unauthorized access to any portion of our Services, other accounts, computer systems, or networks connected to our Services, through hacking, password mining, or any other means. Similarly, you should not attempt to probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of our system or any associated system or network.

• Disruption of Service: Any attempt to interfere with or disrupt the proper working of the Services is strictly prohibited. This includes flooding (overwhelming the system with excessive data), mailbombing, crashing, or launching denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. You may not use automated scripts or tools to send more requests to our servers than a human could reasonably send in the same time.

• Unauthorized Data Access: You must not access or attempt to access data or portions of the Services that you are not authorized to access. This includes content belonging to other users (unless it’s publicly available) and our confidential information. If you happen to find a security loophole or access data inadvertently, notify us immediately and do not exploit it.

• Impersonation and Misrepresentation: Do not impersonate any person or entity or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity when using our Services. You must not use the Services to deceive others (for example, pretending to be an Empathy First Media employee, or using a fake identity to gather information). Also, do not forge headers or manipulate identifiers to disguise the origin of any content transmitted through the Services.

• Excessive Use or Resource Abuse: Use our Services responsibly. Do not consume a disproportionate amount of resources or bandwidth or engage in behaviors that degrade the performance of the Services for others. For instance, if we provide any interactive tools or API access, do not hammer them with excessive requests beyond allowed limits.

• No Data Mining or Automated Harvesting: You are not allowed to use any data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools on our Services except as expressly permitted by us (if we provide an API or RSS feeds under certain terms, those are the methods to use). Otherwise, systematically extracting data (like scraping our entire website for content or user information) is prohibited without our consent.

• Solicitation of Personal Data: Do not solicit passwords or personal identifying information from other users for unlawful purposes. It’s fine to ask for someone’s contact to connect professionally, for example, but tricking someone into giving you their login credentials or identity information (phishing) is not only against this policy but also illegal.

User-Generated Content Standards: In addition to the above, any content you contribute (comments, posts, uploads) must comply with our standards:

• Ensure that any information you provide is truthful and accurate to the best of your knowledge. Don’t knowingly provide false info.

• Content should be appropriate for a professional audience. While we are not a children’s site, content should still be generally “family-friendly” in the sense of professionalism.

• If content is marked or intended as “NSFW” (not safe for work) or adult, it likely doesn’t belong on our platform. We do not host adult content services.

Network and System Integrity: You must not use the Services in a way that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair any of our servers or networks. Some specifics:

• Bots and Automation: Other than recognized bots (like search engine crawlers adhering to our robots.txt) or tools we authorize, you should not run automated processes on our site. If you’re not sure, ask us or check our developer guidelines (if any).

• Reverse Engineering: Do not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble any portion of the Services or code, except as allowed by law for interoperability purposes (and even then, not without contacting us first).

• Encryption Circumvention: Do not attempt to bypass any security measures or encryption that we’ve implemented. This includes not trying to decrypt any data packets without authorization.

Email and Communications: If our Services allow sending communications (like emailing an article to a friend, or messaging a user):

• You must not send unsolicited emails or messages through our systems (no “email a friend” abuse to spam strangers).

• You must not forge headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in emails sent through our system.

Copyright Complaints and Legal Requests: We respect copyright law (see our DMCA Policy in the User-Generated Content Policy). You should too. If you see someone posting infringing content, or if someone claims you infringed, follow appropriate procedures (like DMCA notices). Don’t retaliate inappropriately on our platform.

Consequences of Violation: If you violate this Acceptable Use Policy:

• We may remove or disable access to the offending content.

• We may issue a warning, or we may suspend/terminate your account or access immediately for severe or repeat violations.

• We may report you to law enforcement if your actions are suspected to be illegal (e.g., child exploitation content, threats of violence, etc.).

• You may also face civil liability or criminal penalties outside of our actions. You agree that Empathy First Media is not liable for any actions we take to enforce this policy.

We reserve the right (but assume no obligation) to actively monitor use of our Services, investigate any violation of this AUP or misuse of the Services, and cooperate with law enforcement authorities or third parties in investigating such matters.

Reporting Issues: If you become aware of any violation of this AUP or any misuse of the Services by any person, please contact us immediately at [email protected] or [email protected] (for copyright issues specifically). Provide as much detail as possible (e.g., links, descriptions, screenshots) so we can efficiently address the concern.

No Waiver: Our failure to enforce this policy in every instance doesn’t mean we waive our rights to enforce it in the future. Each situation is assessed individually.

Changes to Policy: We may update this Acceptable Use Policy from time to time as needed. Material changes will be posted on our site or communicated via email. Continued use of the Services after changes constitutes acceptance of the revised AUP.

Remember, using Empathy First Media’s Services is a privilege, and we ask all users to act responsibly and with integrity. Thank you for helping us maintain a safe and trustworthy environment.

Last Updated: April 2025