Rights & Use Policy

Our Account and Responsibilities

The individual user is responsible for their use of We Speak Culture (WSC) services and any content they provide. This includes, but is not limited to, applicable local, state, and federal laws. Content through our services may be protected as intellectual property rights. Copying, downloading, and sharing content is strictly prohibited unless you have permission to do so. To use our services, you must be at least 18 years of age.

If you use our services to access, collect, or otherwise use the personal information of another WSC user, you hereby agree to do so in compliance with applicable local, state, and federal laws. You further agree that you will not sell any personal information of any WSC user. The term “sell” is defined and given meaning by and according to local, state, and federal laws and legal statutes.

User Content on the Services

WSC will review your conduct and content for compliance with these Terms & Conditions, our Rules, and with local, state, and federal laws and legal statutes. WSC reserves the right to remove or modify any content deemed to be in violation of the aforementioned policy and legal standards.

WSC reserves the right to delete and/or disable content alleged to be infringing upon the intellectual property rights of others/other WSC users. WSC reserves the right to terminate the accounts of those who engage in repeated violations. WSC responds to notices of alleged copyright infringement as it applies under the law. These violations can be reported in accordance with our Copyright Policy.

Rights and Ownership

The individual WSC user retains the rights to any content submitted, posted, or displayed through the use of our services.

By posting, submitting, or displaying content on or through our services, you grant WSC a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid, and sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform, and display your content and any name, username, or likeness provided in connection with your content in all media formats and distribution methods now known or later developed by/through our services, unless otherwise specified in writing.

This license is necessary for WSC because the individual user owns their own content, and therefore WSC cannot display this content across various sources (i.e. mobile, web, etc.) without your permission and acceptance of these Terms & Conditions.

This type of license is also necessary in order to distribute your content across our services. Content posted to WSC is reproduced across our platform, and distributed to multiple places within WSC on different pages within the site. A modification may be that we show a snippet of your work (and not the full post) in a preview, with an attribution to you. A derivative work might be a list of our contributors or quoted portions of your content with full attribution. This license applies to our Services only, and does not grant us any permissions outside of our Services.

So long as you comply with these Terms, WSC gives you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, and non-assignable license to access and use our Services.
Separate and apart from the content you submit, post or display on our Services, we welcome feedback, including any comments, ideas and suggestions you have about our Services. We may use this feedback for any purpose, in our sole discretion, without any obligation to you. We may treat feedback as non-confidential.

We may stop providing the Services or any of its features within our sole discretion. We also retain the right to create limits on use and storage and may remove or limit content distribution on the Services.

Termination

The individual user is free to stop using our Services at any time. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access to the Services with or without notice.

Transfer and Processing Data

In order for us to provide our Services, you agree that we may process, transfer and store information about you in the US and other countries, where you may not have the same rights and protections as you do under local law.

Amendments

We may make changes to these Terms from time to time. If changes are made, we will provide you with notice of them by sending an email to the email address associated with your account, offering an in-product notification, or updating the date at the top of these Terms. Unless otherwise stated in our notice, the amended Terms will be effective immediately, and your continued use of our Services after we provide such notice will confirm your acceptance of the changes. If you don’t agree to the amended Terms, you must stop using our Services.

We Speak Culture Rules

WSC is an open platform that exists to share ideas and perspectives from insightful writers, thinkers, and storytellers.

We welcome thoughtful and civil discussion from a broad spectrum of viewpoints. Nevertheless, to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for a wide range of people to engage in meaningful conversations, we prohibit certain conduct. Each participant in our community is responsible for maintaining these standards.

In deciding whether someone has violated the rules, we will take into account things like newsworthiness, the context and nature of the posted information, the likelihood and severity of actual or potential harms, and applicable laws
If you find a post or account on WSC that you believe violates these rules, please report it. You can use this form to provide more detail or to report other conduct you believe violates our rules. Additionally, you can send an email to nelliana@gmail.com.

Threats of violence and incitement

We do not allow content or actions that threaten, encourage, or incite violence against anyone, directly or indirectly.

Hateful content

We do not allow content that constitutes or promotes violence, harassment, or hatred against people based on characteristics like race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, disability, disease, age, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity.

We do not allow posts or accounts that glorify, celebrate, downplay, or trivialize violence, suffering, abuse, or deaths of individuals or groups. This includes the use of scientific or pseudoscientific claims or misleading statistics to pathologize, dehumanize, or disempower others. We do not allow calls for intolerance, exclusion, or segregation based on protected characteristics, nor do we allow the glorification of groups which do any of the above.

We do not allow hateful text, images, symbols, or other content, including in your username, profile, or bio.

Harassment

• Bullying, threatening, mocking, or shaming someone, or posting things likely to encourage others to do so
• Engaging in a repetitive or targeted campaign of harassment against someone or a group of people
• Using derogatory language, racial slurs, or obscenities to disparage or attack someone or a group of people
• Using WSC features like responses, private notes, mentions, follows, story requests, or writer requests in a way that attempts to or does annoy or harass someone, or to draw inorganic attention to your content on WSC.
• Reviewing businesses or products in a gratuitously harmful or abusive manner.

We do not allow the following:
Posting images of, transcripts of, copies of, or links to private communications between private individuals without the explicit consent of all parties to the communication. Redacting names or other information does not supplant the need to secure permissions.

Duplicate Content

We do not allow posting duplicate copies of the same content to WSC, whether from a single account or across multiple accounts, either publicly or as an unlisted story. (You are allowed to cross-post content from your blog to WSC, provided you own the rights for the content.)
Copyright and trademark infringement
Respect the copyrights and trademarks of others.

How to report a violation

If you find a post or account on WSC that violates these rules, please report it in-product. You can use this form to provide more detail or to report other conduct you believe violates our rules. Additionally, you can send us an email to nelliana@gmail.com.

If you break the rules

We strive to be fair, but we reserve the right to suspend accounts or remove content, without notice, for any reason, particularly to protect our services, infrastructure, users, or community. If you attempt to evade suspension by creating new accounts or posts, we will suspend your new accounts and posts.

Usernames

WSC usernames and publication slugs are claimed on a first-come, first-served basis. A username or publication slug can only be attached to one account or publication at a time.