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Terms of service

Welcome to the services of the Buddha Foundation

At this point you will find the General Terms of Use of our pages. These are updated regularly and apply in their current version as soon as you use our services, even without express consent.

If you wish to use services that require registration, you must also agree to special terms of use, which you will then be informed of.

Our services also collect, analyze and use profile and usage data – we explain how we protect your rights here in our privacy policy.

What you should know about copyrights and intellectual property

All contents of our services are – if they have not been posted by third parties – copyrighted and trademarked intellectual property of the Buddha Foundation.

Content posted by third parties is also not freely usable, but protected as intellectual property for the respective users or rights holders.

You may use our content (not that of third parties) posted in the service for private and educational purposes, within the framework of our Creative Commons license “Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)”. Even for permitted private and school use, copyright notices or other references to third-party rights and/or property may not be removed. For all other uses, our prior consent is required.

When we assume liability and warranty

There is no right to use our services. Maintenance work, technical failures or errors can cause them to be unavailable. In addition, despite all efforts, it cannot be ruled out one hundred percent that damage may result from the use of the services, for example if third parties attempt to misuse them to spread viruses or similar despite all security measures. For damages arising from the use of the services, we therefore assume no liability – including for our legal representatives, employees and agents – except in the case of intentional or grossly negligent acts (in the case of injury to life, limb or health, we do not categorically exclude liability even for simple negligence).

We expressly do not guarantee the correctness, completeness, reliability, suitability and topicality as well as usefulness of the contents. These serve exclusively for general information. References, recommendations and information are non-binding. Any use of the contents offered is at the user’s own risk.

As a matter of principle, we are not liable for third-party content that can be accessed via the service – for example, content of third-party websites that are referred to via links or that have been published on our website by users. It is neither possible nor intended to constantly check such external content; however, we naturally distance ourselves from all content that is relevant under criminal or liability law or that offends common decency. We will remove them from our services immediately after being notified of them at the latest.

How we handle your registration

When you register for our digital services, we store personal data in a user account, such as your name, address, e-mail address, chosen user name and password. This allows us to register you and provide you with the services you register for in the first place. You can use a pseudonym as your user name so that other readers do not find out your name.

Your right of use after registration is only valid for you personally. It is not transferable. You must provide true, accurate and complete information and keep it up to date. You are responsible for choosing a suitable secure password and keeping it secret – please do everything possible and necessary to prevent misuse of your personal access to our services. If this does occur, please inform us immediately so that we can block your user account or solve the problem in another way.

Use of the forums and communication possibilities

If you have registered and logged in to our site, you can participate in various debate formats by making contributions. In the following, we would like to explain to you which line we follow in moderation and what the legal framework is. These terms of use will be updated from time to time. In the event of significant changes, we will notify you by e-mail and/or obtain your consent the next time you register. If you do not agree then, you can no longer participate with contributions or register if necessary.

Please also note our general terms of use. They explain, among other things, that you must keep your data up to date and that we may release your data in the event of certain criminal or civil law claims, for example in the event of insults or suspected criminal offences. In your profile, you may enter a pseudonym as your user name so that other readers do not find out your name.

How we handle your contributions

You can submit your own thoughts, arguments, opinions and other content as contributions to our digital services at any time – but you have no right to have them published. In our role as facilitator, we may discard or remove individual content and entire discussion threads at any time without further justification if we deem this to be necessary in terms of content or legal considerations. After all, we want an open, friendly and respectful climate for discussion. Therefore, please make sure

– that a fair and objective tone prevails in arguments, even if differences of opinion are expressed,

– that contributions are closely related to the respective topics of discussion,

– that the same arguments are not always piled up, but that further thoughts on the topic arise,

– that applicable legal regulations and terms of use are observed – if in doubt, help us by pointing out violations,

– that identities of users are never disclosed,

– that no commercially driven contributions are published, especially no advertising for products or services.

We may edit contributions (while respecting your moral rights), e.g. add, shorten, correct and protect mentioned persons by making them unrecognizable. Please understand that we must sanction violations of these Terms of Use – from deleting individual contributions to excluding and blocking the user account without further justification. We may also suspend and delete user accounts if they have not been used for more than 6 months.

If you come across contributions whose content seems dubious to you, please notify us by email to [email protected].

Which rights of use you leave to us

Important about the rights of use: If you leave a contribution to a service of the Buddha Foundation without further ado – no matter whether text, picture, drawing, graphic, video or other – you grant us non-exclusive rights of use. This means that we may publish it free of charge and/or distribute it (or have it distributed); and this as often as we wish; without temporal or spatial restrictions within the framework of our digital services; in addition, we may digitize it, store it electronically or make it available to users for research purposes. It will not be passed on for advertising purposes. In principle, you will not receive any remuneration for the granting of the rights of use (§§ 32 ff. UrhG excluded).

Your obligation

Please respect the rights of use of other people and companies. According to the Telemedia Act and case law, you are responsible as a content provider for contributions of any kind that you publish with us. If third parties make claims on account of the contributions you have posted, you undertake to indemnify us against their claims and any associated legal costs and to support us in defending against such claims.