Terms and conditions

About the terms

Access to and use of 'ukchina.com' both within the UK and internationally is provided by the BBC (international users of the site may see some advertising on certain pages which is provided by the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide Limited ("BBCW")) on the following terms:

1. By using ukchina.com you agree to be bound by these terms, which shall take effect immediately on your first use of ukchina.com. If you do not agree to be bound by all of the following terms please do not access, use and/or contribute to ukchina.com.

2. The BBC may change these terms from time to time and so you should check these terms regularly. Your continued use of ukchina.com will be deemed acceptance of the updated or amended terms. If you do not agree to the changes, you should cease using this website. If there is any conflict between these terms and specific local terms appearing elsewhere on ukchina.com (including house rules) then the latter shall prevail.

Use of ukchina.com

3. You agree to use ukchina.com only for lawful purposes, and in a way that does not infringe the rights of, restrict or inhibit anyone else's use and enjoyment of ukchina.com. Prohibited behaviour includes harassing or causing distress or inconvenience to any person, transmitting obscene or offensive content or disrupting the normal flow of dialogue within ukchina.com.

Intellectual Property

4. All copyright, trade marks, design rights, patents and other intellectual property rights (registered and unregistered) in and on ukchina.com and all content (including all applications) located on the site shall remain vested in the BBC or its licensors (which includes other users). You may not copy, reproduce, republish, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use ukchina.com content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You also agree not to adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any ukchina.com content except for your own personal, non-commercial use. Any other use of ukchina.com content requires the prior written permission of the BBC.

5. The names, images and logos identifying the BBC, BBCW or third parties and their products and services are subject to copyright, design rights and trade marks of the BBC, BBCW and/or third parties. Nothing contained in these terms shall be construed as conferring any licence or right to use any trade mark, design right or copyright of the BBC, BBCW or any other third party.

Contributions to the BBC

6. By sharing any contribution (including any text, photographs, graphics, video or audio) with the BBC you agree to grant to the BBC, free of charge, permission to use the material in any way it wants (including modifying and adapting it for operational and editorial reasons) for BBC services in any media worldwide (including on the BBC's site accessed by international users). In certain circumstance the BBC may also share your contribution with trusted third parties*.

7. Copyright in your contribution will remain with you and this permission is not exclusive, so you can continue to use the material in any way including allowing others to use it.

8. In order that the BBC can use your contribution, you confirm that your contribution is your own original work, is not defamatory and does not infringe any UK laws, that you have the right to give the BBC permission to use it for the purposes specified above, and that you have the consent of anyone who is identifiable in your contribution or the consent of their parent / guardian if they are under 16.

9. We normally show your name with your contribution, unless you request otherwise, but for operational reasons this is not always possible. The BBC may need to contact you for administrative or verification purposes in relation to your contribution, or in relation to particular projects. For full details of when and how we may contact you please see the BBC's Privacy Policy plus any local terms where applicable.

10. Please do not endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or break any laws when creating content you may share with the BBC.

11. If you do not want to grant the BBC the permission set out above on these terms, please do not submit or share your contribution to or with ukchina.com. *In the case of news-related material please note that this may be shared with the BBC's overseas partners; these are all reputable foreign news broadcasters who are prohibited from altering the material in any way or providing it to other UK broadcasters or to the print media.

12. If you have any questions about contributing content to the BBC, please see our FAQs.

ukchina.com communities

13. In order to participate in and contribute to selected ukchina.com communities you may be required to register with ukchina.com. Any personal information supplied to ukchina.com as part of this registration process and/or any other interaction with ukchina.com will be collected, stored and used in accordance with the BBC Privacy Policy.

14. You agree to use ukchina.com communities (including message boards) in accordance with the following Community Rules. These apply across all ukchina.com community sites and services. You should, however, read the local house rules of the particular site or service you're using, as there may be some local variations to these Community Rules.

(i) About your posts:

Contributions must be civil and tasteful.

No disruptive, offensive or abusive behaviour: contributions must be constructive and polite, not mean-spirited or contributed with the intention of causing trouble.

No unlawful or objectionable content: unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable.

Be patient: users of all ages and abilities may be taking part in the relevant ukchina.com community.

No spamming or off-topic material: we don't allow the submission of the same or very similar contributions many times. Please don't re-submit your contribution to more than one discussion, or contribute off-topic material in subject-specific areas.

No advertising or promoting.

No spoilers: material which contains plot developments which haven't been transmitted on UK television will be deleted unless submitted in a designated 'spoilers' area or marked as a 'spoiler'.

Contributions containing languages other than English may be removed unless allowed in the relevant local house rules.

No impersonation.

No inappropriate (e.g. vulgar, offensive etc) user names.

URLs (web site addresses) can only be posted if allowed under any relevant local house rules.

Deliberate misuse of the complaints facility is not permitted. If you persist in doing this, action may be taken against your account.

(ii) Your BBC Account:

If you use multiple logins for the purpose of disrupting a community or annoying other users you may have action taken against all of your accounts.

All accounts must be registered with a valid personal email address that you access regularly so that moderation emails can be sent to you. Accounts registered with someone else's email address, or with temporary email addresses may be closed without notice. We may require users to re-validate their account if we believe they have been using an invalid email address.

The BBC reserves the right to close accounts if any user is seen to be using proxy IPs (Internet Protocol addresses) in order to attempt to hide the use of multiple BBC accounts, or if an non UK user pretends to be a UK user, or disrupts any of our services in any way.

(iii) Safety:

We advise that you never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example: telephone number, postal address, home address or email address or any other details that would allow you to be personally identified) in any BBC community.

(iv) Legal requirements:

You may not submit or share any defamatory or illegal material of any nature in ukchina.com communities. This includes text, graphics, video, programs or audio.

Contributing material to a ukchina.com community with the intention of committing or promoting an illegal act is strictly prohibited.

You agree to submit to or share with ukchina.com communities only contributions which are your own original work. You must not violate, plagiarise, or infringe the rights of the BBC or third parties including copyright, trade mark, trade secrets, privacy, publicity, personal or proprietary rights.

(v) If you're under 16:

Please get a parent's or guardian's permission before taking part in any ukchina.com community.

Never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example, school, telephone number, your full name, home address or email address).

(vi) If you breach these Community Rules:

If you fail to abide by these Community Rules (and/or any variations in relevant local house rules) when taking part in a ukchina.com community, you will be sent an email which informs you why your contribution has been refused or edited. This email will also include a warning that continuing to break the rules may result in action being taken against your account or accounts.

This action may include any content posted by you being checked before allowed to go on the site or a temporary or permanent suspension of your ability to participate in any or all of ukchina.com community areas.

If you submit or share offensive or inappropriate content to or with any ukchina.com communities or anywhere else on ukchina.com or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on ukchina.com, and the BBC considers such behaviour to be serious and/or repeated, the BBC may use whatever information that is available to it about you to stop any further such infringements. This may include informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school or email provider about the infringement(s).

The BBC reserves the right to delete any contribution, or take action against any BBC account, at any time, for any reason.

Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

15. The majority of content posted in ukchina.com communities is created by members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of the BBC or BBCW. Neither the BBC nor BBCW are responsible for any content posted by members of the public on ukchina.com or for the availability or content of any third party sites that are accessible through ukchina.com. Any links to third party websites from ukchina.com do not amount to any endorsement of that site by the BBC or BBCW and any use of that site by you is at your own risk.

16. ukchina.com content, including the information, names, images, pictures, logos and icons regarding or relating to the BBC and/or BBCW, its products and services (or to third party products and services), is provided "AS IS" and on an "AS AVAILABLE" basis. To the extent permitted by law, the BBC excludes all representations and warranties (whether express or implied by law), including the implied warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, security and accuracy. The BBC does not guarantee the timeliness, completeness or performance of the website or any of the content. While we try to ensure that all content provided by the BBC is correct at the time of publication no responsibility is accepted by or on behalf of the BBC for any errors, omissions or inaccurate content on the website.

17. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes the BBC's liability for death or personal injury caused by its proven negligence. Subject to the previous sentence, the BBC and/or BBCW shall not be liable for any of the following losses or damage (whether such damage or losses were foreseen, foreseeable, known or otherwise): (a) loss of data; (b) loss of revenue or anticipated profits; (c) loss of business; (d) loss of opportunity; (e) loss of goodwill or injury to reputation; (f) losses suffered by third parties; or (g) any indirect, consequential, special or exemplary damages arising from the use of ukchina.com regardless of the form of action.

18. The BBC and BBCW do not warrant that functions available on ukchina.com will be uninterrupted or error free, that defects will be corrected, or that ukchina.com or the server that makes it available are free of viruses or bugs. You acknowledge that it is your responsibility to implement sufficient procedures and virus checks (including anti-virus and other security checks) to satisfy your particular requirements for the accuracy of data input and output.

General

19. If any of these terms are determined to be illegal, invalid or otherwise unenforceable by reason of the laws of any state or country in which these terms are intended to be effective, then to the extent and within the jurisdiction in which that term is illegal, invalid or unenforceable, it shall be severed and deleted from these terms and the remaining terms shall survive and continue to be binding and enforceable.

20. The failure or delay of the BBC to exercise or enforce any right in these terms does not waive the BBC's right to enforce that right.

21. These terms shall be governed by and interpreted in accordance with the laws of England and Wales which shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any disputes.

For the full and most up-to-date BBC Terms of Use, please check the main site in English: http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/.