Acceptable Use Policy

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") applies to your use of the restricted areas of this website and is incorporated into the terms of use for our site, which you should read before using our site. Your use of any restricted areas on our site indicates your acceptance to both our terms of use and the terms of this AUP. If there is any conflict between this AUP and the terms of use, the terms of this AUP shall prevail.

Although we may from time to time monitor or review the content of the restricted areas of our site, we are under no obligation to do so and assume no responsibility or liability arising from any material or content posted by you or any third party.

The list of behaviours below is not exhaustive. What we generally require of our users is considerate behaviour, which does not abuse the facilities we have made available to you. We will not permit behaviour that damages our reputation or that of any other member of the business support network, or behaviour that has a negative impact on our (or our suppliers’) equipment or network, or on other users.

1.     Legality

You will be responsible for your own use of the restricted areas of our site and with all applicable laws and regulations, codes, policies and Internet etiquette, and must not use our site for any illegal purpose. Here are some examples of what we require.

• You must be over 18 years of age. 
• When you register with us to use a restricted area, you must not use a false identity or pseudonym, to give the impression that the message or posting originated from someone other than you.
• You must not post content or use the restricted areas in a way that infringes others’ intellectual property rights. You must have relevant permissions to use others’ intellectual property, for example, a report written by a third party where the third party has not given permission for its reproduction. 
• Any content you post on our site must be accurate and, where necessary, up-to-date.
• You must not post content or other materials in breach of contract.
• You must not post confidential information or trade secrets.
• You must not use our site to advertise your goods or services or promote your organisation’s aims and ideals.
• Any content you post on the restricted areas of our site (including without limitation, text, images, sound, video or other electronic files or material) must be legal, decent and honest. You must not use content which is illegal or indecent, for example of a pornographic, obscene, indecent, defamatory, racist, abusive, offensive, menacing or extremist political nature or which may incite violence, sadism, cruelty or racial hatred, or which may facilitate prostitution or paedophilia.
• You must not post defamatory materials in the discussion forums. You agree that we may, without liability to you,  disclose your identity to any third party with a legitimate interest in knowing that information, such as law enforcement agencies, or a third party which is the subject of your comments.
• You must not collect or store personal information of other users of the restricted area.
• You must not use our site (whether intentionally or otherwise) to send or forward spam (unsolicited email), chain letters, pyramid schemes, mail bombs, to launch denial of service attacks, to plant or send viruses or other disruptive programs or devices, or to engage or enable others to engage in unauthorised decryption of protected material.
• You must not interfere with or disrupt the site or servers or networks connected to it.  
• You must not pirate or illegally copy software or other proprietary material or enabling such copying through a peer-to-peer service. Any file exchange service we may provide from time to time is provided on the clear understanding that it is not used for any illegal purpose.

2.     Security

You will be responsible for any losses of data, breaches of security, viruses and disabling or harmful devices that you download or which infect our site as a result of your error or omission or other precaution you fail to take in relation to your use of our site and for the avoidance of doubt, we shall have no responsibility or liability to you or any third party in respect of the same.

3.     Contacts

If we need to contact you we will use the email address you give us when you register. You must ensure the email address is live. We will assume you have read all email addressed to that email address. We may take action (including legal action) on the basis of this assumption.

4.     Breach of this AUP

 We will endeavour to act fairly and reasonably if we suspect or discover a breach of our AUP, or if you breach, or we have grounds to suspect you have breached, any applicable law, code, policy or regulation.

However we do reserve the right to take whatever action we consider appropriate and proportionate in the circumstances. This may mean we send you a formal notice requiring you to desist from such behaviour. It may be suspension or termination of your access to our site without notice to you. It may mean we inspect or permit a police or other relevant authority to inspect any content and material posted by you or on our website and remove any content or material which we, in our absolute discretion, consider to be unacceptable or undesirable.

We will be entitled to co-operate fully with a police or other relevant authority or any court order requesting or directing us to disclose your identity where you have posted such content or material on our site.

Because it is impossible to create an exhaustive list of unacceptable behaviour, we may conclude that some behaviour is unacceptable, and therefore suspend or terminate your access, even if it does not match exactly the examples set out in this AUP.