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Privacy Policy

Terms & Conditions of Use

The Royal Institution of Australia (ABN [98638459658]) operate the websites https://riaus.org.au/, https://cosmosmagazine.com/, and https://www.australiascience.tv/ (including all subdomains). Our principal place of business is The Science Exchange, 55 Exchange Place, Adelaide SA 5000.

The Royal Institution of Australia welcomes contributions that stimulate debate and discussion or that reflect the diverse range of its audience. While encouraging vigorous debate and critique, The Royal Institution of Australia expects all participants to treat each other with respect and courtesy.

While The Royal Institution of Australia aims to provide balanced coverage of scientific topics in the content it produces, commissions or acquires, user contributions to The Royal Institution of Australia online platforms reflect the views of the participants. The Royal Institution of Australia does not endorse the views or material contained in users’ contributions. From time to time, one particular side of the debate may dominate views expressed. This simply reflects the natural flow of contributions received. The Royal Institution of Australia endeavours to give all users a fair opportunity to participate.

1. These Terms of Use

You may contribute to the Website and any other platforms hosted or facilitated by The Royal Institution of Australia (Other Platforms) subject to the following terms and conditions of use (Terms of Use). These Terms of Use set out the terms and conditions on which The Royal Institution of Australia allows you to access its Website and Other Platforms. By accessing, browsing or otherwise using the Website and the Other Platforms (or any of them), you accept these Terms of Use, without limitation or qualification. If you do not accept these Terms of Use, you are not entitled to access or use the Website and the Other Platforms and you should leave the Website and / or Other Platforms immediately.

2. Our Website and Other Platforms

2.1 Our Website is made available free of charge. We do not guarantee that our Website, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. Access to our Website is permitted on a temporary basis. We may suspend, withdraw, discontinue or change all or any part of our Website without notice. We will not be liable to you if for any reason our Website is unavailable at any time or for any period.

2.2 All access to, and use of, our Website is at your own risk. You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to our Website. You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our Website through your internet connection are aware of these Terms of Use and that they comply with them.

2.3 The Website and the content on it are provided for general information and entertainment purposes only. They are not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our Website.

2.4 The Royal Institution of Australia hosts or facilitates a number of Other Platforms including https://cosmosmagazine.com/, http://uc.australiascience.tv/, http://publisher.australiascience.tv/, http://scinema.australiascience.tv/ and http://education.australiascience.tv/ and also use a number of third-party social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus and LinkedIn). These may change over time. We reserve the right to change any such Other Platforms at our discretion.

2.5 Third party social media platforms will be governed by their own terms of use and privacy policies.

2.6 The Royal Institution of Australia does not endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with any comments, opinions or statements posted by any users on the Website or on the various Other Platforms that the Royal Institution of Australia may use. Any information or material posted, uploaded, commented on or tagged by users online and/or on any social media, including advice or opinions, are the views and responsibility of those users.

2.7 You must not post, upload and/or tag any comment, content or link to the Website or the Other Platforms used by us which do not comply with these Terms of Use.

3. Submitting comments and online forms

3.1 In order to submit a comment in response to content available on the Website or Other Platforms you may be required to use a display name.

3.2 When commenting, a genuine email address must be provided. This will not be displayed publicly. This is to prevent spamming or phishing attacks. You should be aware that your posted comments or other submissions can remain online indefinitely and may be found through search engines or online archives.

3.3 The Royal Institution of Australia may refuse to publish your comments at its sole discretion. Grounds for refusal may include, but are not limited to information that is:
(i) offensive, indecent, harassing, bullying, obscene, abusive or defamatory or otherwise unlawful;
(ii) likely to infringe any intellectual property right;
(iii) inappropriate in its use of brand names, registered trade marks, company or organisation names, or names of high-profile or public figures;
(iv) inappropriate in its promotion of political, religious, social or economic issues;
(v) likely to violate any law regarding harassment, discrimination, racial vilification, privacy or contempt.

3.4 The Royal Institution of Australia may moderate any comments or submissions on the Website and Other Platforms and may remove any content that, in our opinion, is inappropriate. While we may review the content regularly, there may be times when inappropriate content is viewable before it can be removed.

3.5 The Royal Institution of Australia does not undertake to inform users when any content has been moderated or removed. We may provide warnings, or otherwise block users from posting or commenting on the Website and Other Platforms at our sole discretion.

3.6 Note that whenever you post personal information in publicly accessible areas for comments, this information becomes available to anyone with access to the internet. This information can be collected and used by others. If you publicly post personal information online it is accessible to anyone and you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return. Therefore, we recommend that you refrain from posting any information that you do not want seen in these public areas.

4. Subscription to The Royal Institution of Australia newsletters

4.1 In order to receive the latest information and news from The Royal Institution of Australia you may register your email address in The Royal Institution of Australia newsletter database. This database is hosted either by an independent email service provider or The Royal Institution of Australia. Both The Royal Institution of Australia and the independent email service provider consider your privacy and the security of your details are a priority.

4.2 The Royal Institution of Australia will not use your subscription information for any other purpose without your consent.

4.3 If you have subscribed to any of The Royal Institution of Australia newsletters, you can opt-out of receiving this information from us at any time. You can control your own mailing preferences by accessing your personal information or clicking the link “Update subscription preferences” on the top of each newsletter.

5. User Participation

5.1 Children’s contributions should be supervised by an adult.

5.2 Be advised that you may be held legally responsible for the content you submit to The Royal Institution of Australia.

5.3 All material published on the Website and Other Platforms is at the sole discretion of The Royal Institution of Australia.

5.4 Your contribution may be edited or removed by The Royal Institution of Australia at its sole discretion. Grounds for editing or removal may include, but are not limited to, where The Royal Institution of Australia considers any material to be:
(i) defamatory, or otherwise unlawful or that it violates any law regarding harassment, discrimination, racial vilification, privacy or contempt;
(ii) false or misleading;
(iii) likely to infringe any intellectual property rights (including copyright). See below for further information on copyright;
(iv)abusive, offensive or obscene;
(v) inappropriate, off-topic, repetitive or vexatious. The Royal Institution of Australia also reserves the right to reject contributions from participants who dominate the discussion;
(vi) likely to compromise your privacy or the privacy of other contributors or of The Royal Institution of Australia staff, or which contains inappropriate personal information;
(vii) seeking to endorse commercial products or activities or to unduly promote commercial products or services;
(viii) a deliberate provocation of others;
(ix) inappropriate for any other reason at the sole discretion of The Royal Institution of Australia.

5.5 The Royal Institution of Australia reserves the right to archive and republish all contributions to its online platforms.

5.6 The Royal Institution of Australia reserves the right to use contributions for internal training purposes.

5.7 Repeated breaches of these Terms of Use may cause The Royal Institution of Australia to complain to the Internet Service Provider of the person responsible, and in very serious cases may lead to legal action.

6. Linking

6.1 The Royal Institution of Australia publishes links to external sites at its sole discretion.

6.2 The Royal Institution of Australia is not responsible for, and does not endorse, the content on external sites.

6.3 The Royal Institution of Australia reserves the right to remove user-posted links for any reason, at any time, with or without notice to the user. Links may be deleted at the sole discretion of The Royal Institution of Australia.

7. Copyright

7.1 The Royal Institution of Australia operates under Creative Commons License – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND.

7.2 You are welcome to quote content from The Royal Institution of Australia websites and share it with others, however The Royal Institution of Australia asks that you attribute the URL of The Royal Institution of Australia website where you found the quote or picture, sound or video.

7.3 When you submit content, in any format, you represent and warrant that you have all necessary rights, including copyright, in the material that you are contributing to the Website and Other Platforms. You agree that The Royal Institution of Australia may use the material online and in whatever other ways The Royal Institution of Australia chooses, now and in the future.

7.4 By contributing any content and by posting any comment or material on the Website or any of the Other Platforms you agree to indemnify The Royal Institution of Australia against any actions, claims, liability or loss in respect of the use it makes of any such content, comments and other material and in respect of any third party claims that relate to that content, comments and material (or any part of it).

8. Privacy and security

8.1 The Royal Institution of Australia will not share your details with any third party unless it is part of the service you requested or we are otherwise permitted or required by law to do so.

8.2 Under no circumstance will The Royal Institution of Australia sell or receive payment for licensing or disclosing your personal information.

8.3 If you are required to make an online payment via the Website, this payment will be administered by secured payment systems. The Royal Institution of Australia will not have access to, or retain your credit card or payment details.

8.4 Ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and any personal information.

8.5 We use cookies and similar technologies such as pixels and local storage to recognize you when you return to our Services. We use them in various ways, for example to log you in, remember your preferences (such as default language), evaluate email effectiveness, show relevant ads, and personalize information.

8.6 We respect Do Not Track (“DNT”) settings in browsers. If you’re logged out of our services and have DNT enabled, we will not set cookies. By logging in you are opting to allow The Royal Institution of Australia to ignore the DNT setting and to use cookies in order to provide you a personalized experience.

8.7 Some third-party services that we use, such as Google Analytics, may place their own cookies in your browser. These Terms of Use cover use of cookies by The Royal Institution of Australia only and not the use of cookies by third parties.

9. Collection of Information

9.1 The Royal Institution of Australia collects two types of information. The first type is anonymous information. The Royal Institution of Australia automatically gathers anonymous information to monitor the use of the Website and Other Platforms (such as the numbers and frequency of visitors to the Website and Other Platforms). We only use such data in the aggregate. This collective data helps us determine how much our audiences use parts of the Website and Other Platforms, so we can improve the Website and Other Platforms and ensure their appeal to our broad range of users.

9.2 The second type of information that The Royal Institution of Australia collects is personal information. The Royal Institution of Australia will collect personal information that lets us know the specifics of who you are, such as your name, email address, or postal address, when you provide it to us. With this information, The Royal Institution of Australia can provide more personalised and enhanced services for its members, volunteers and subscribers.

9.3 You can choose not to receive information about The Royal Institution of Australia (for example in the form of newsletters) when you are filling in forms on our Website and Other Platforms.

9.4 How much of your personal information you choose to disclose to The Royal Institution of Australia is completely up to you. The only way we know something about you personally is if you provide it to us.

9.5 The Royal Institution of Australia will only use the personal information you have chosen to provide us for the purpose for which you provided it. The Royal Institution of Australia will not use it for any other purpose without your consent.

10. Disclaimers

10.1 The Royal Institution of Australia does not warrant or represent that the Website or the Other Platforms, or any content on any of them, will be free from errors or omissions. Some of the content is provided by third parties and The Royal Institution of Australia accepts no responsibility for that content. While we use reasonable efforts to check the information we include on the Website and Other Platforms, we make no representation that all or any of the information on this Website or the Other Platforms is complete, accurate or suitable for any purpose

10.2 By using this Website and the Other Platforms, you agree that The Royal Institution of Australia will not have responsibility to any person in relation to information on the Website or on any Other Platform including, without limitation, for any false, inaccurate, out-of-date, inappropriate or misleading information or for any interpretation or opinion or conclusion you may form as a result of using this Website or the Other Platforms.

10.3 This Website and the Other Platforms will be updated periodically and the information available on them will change from time to time. In no event will The Royal Institution of Australia be liable for any loss arising as a result of the inaccuracy, incompleteness or alteration of information contained on this Website or the Other Platforms.

10.4 To the extent permitted by law, The Royal Institution of Australia will not be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of in contract, in tort or under Statute arising from or in connection with the use of, or performance of, or reliance upon any information on the Website or Other Platforms.

10.5 The views expressed by The Royal Institution of Australia presenters or other content contributors are their own and The Royal Institution of Australia shall not be liable for any damages arising from use of this information.

11.General

The Royal Institution of Australia Inc is a charitable institution and is a Deductible Gift Recipient.

ABN 98 638 459 658

These Terms of Use apply only to The Royal Institution of Australia and not to other websites of companies or organisations to which The Royal Institution of Australia is linked.

For further information about this document please contact The Royal Institution of Australia at science@ riaus.org.au

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