Website Terms and Conditions

Certain areas of the NEASC website are accessible only to users that have a username and password.  If you obtain a username and password, please keep in mind that we will treat anyone who uses your username and password as "you."  We will provide this user with all of the rights and privileges that we provide to you, and we will hold you responsible for user activities associated with your username and password.  We therefore recommend that you maintain your username and password in confidence, and that you refrain from disclosing this information to anyone who might "pretend" to be you with respect to your use of the NEASC website.  We also recommend that you notify us immediately if you suspect that someone is using your username and password in this manner.

All information, software, artwork, trademarks, text, video, audio, pictures, logos, and other content on the NEASC website or embodied in our services, including all associated intellectual property rights (collectively, the "Website Content"), is the property of NEASC and its licensors, or is used under principles of fair use.  NEASC retains all rights with respect to the NEASC website and Website Content except those expressly granted to you in these Terms and Conditions. 

Based on your agreement to comply with these Terms and Conditions, we grant you the right to access and use all publicly available portions of our NEASC Website and Website Content and, if expressly authorized, password-protected areas of the NEASC website and Website Content in order to: (i) learn more about NEASC and the services we offer; (ii) download and print pages from the NEASC website onto one (1) computer hard drive; and (iii) make payments to NEASC (via a third party vendor) (collectively, the “Permitted Purposes”). You may only participate in the Permitted Purposes for your noncommercial use.

You shall not: (i) license, sublicense, sell, resell, distribute or otherwise commercially exploit the NEASC website or Website Content to any third party; (ii) modify or make derivative works based upon the NEASC website and Website Content; or (iii) reverse engineer, reverse compile, or access the NEASC website and Website Content in order to build a competitive product or service. As a condition to your continued use of the NEASC website, you warrant to NEASC that you will not use the NEASC website for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these Terms and Conditions.

If you submit content (other than Feedback) to us via surveys or by email, we will use the information and any content you provide to us for the purpose for which the content and information was collected. For example, if you send us an email, we will use the information you provide for purposes of responding to your email.  If you participate in a survey, we will use the survey responses to provide a report to you and we will aggregate your responses with the responses of other members to help improve our Services and to otherwise further our accreditation work.  Additional terms may apply to any surveys we may conduct and in the event of a conflict between these terms and the survey terms, the survey terms will control. 

Other areas of the website, such as the Bank of Representative Practices, allow you to submit content in the nature of education-related articles, documents and other materials (“User Content”). The purpose of the Bank of Representative Practices is to provide users access to education-related materials generated by peers.  Accordingly, by submitting User Content for inclusion in the Bank of Representative Practices, you grant NEASC a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicenseable, and transferable right and license to use, copy, reformat, index, modify, display and distribute your User Content for the purposes of providing our website, services and the Bank of Representative Practices. No compensation will be paid with respect to NEASC’s use of your User Content.  By posting User Content, you agree to allow the User Content, or any part of it, to be searched, displayed, accessed, downloaded, copied, modified and otherwise used by users of the NEASC site and Bank of Representative Practices.  NEASC shall have the sole authority to choose the manner in which any User Content will be searched, displayed, accessed, downloaded, copied, and otherwise used on the NEASC website and shall have the right to modify the User Content solely as necessary to its provision of the NEASC site and services in the exercise of its rights under these Terms.  Additionally, you understand and agree that your User Content that is displayed on the NEASC website may continue to appear on the NEASC website even after you have deactivated your NEASC account.  While we have no and assume no obligations or responsibility for User Content, we expressly reserve the right to refuse to use, remove, or disable User Content that we conclude, in our sole discretion, violates these Terms or our Privacy Policy, or is incompatible with the purposes of the NEASC website.

To the extent you do submit content (including, but not limited to, Feedback or User Content), you represent and warrant that you own the submitted content (including intellectual property rights therein (if any)) or that you have obtained sufficient authority and right in and to the submitted content in order to allow NEASC to use the submitted content. You further agree to hold us harmless if you violate this representation and warranty.

By providing feedback, comments, ideas or suggestions about the NEASC website and services (collectively, "Feedback"), you authorize us to use and exploit your Feedback in any manner, and without compensation to you, for as long as we deem warranted.  You acknowledge and agree that (i) that you have no expectation of review, compensation or consideration of any type for the Feedback, and (ii) we will be free to use and exploit such Feedback in our discretion and without compensation or obligation to you.

In addition to your other obligations under these Terms and Conditions, you agree that you shall not do any of the following:

• Upload, email, or otherwise transmit any images or other content that are unlawful, obscene, harmful, hateful, invade the privacy of any third party, contain nudity or pornography, or are otherwise objectionable.
• Disseminate materials that impact or invade the privacy of others, such as photographs, video clips, sound recordings, personally identifiable information, or other materials that reveal personal, private, or sensitive information about another person, without that person’s consent.
• Submit material that is intentionally false, defamatory, unlawfully threatening, or unlawfully harassing.
• Infringe any third party’s copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, or other proprietary rights or rights of publicity or privacy. Electronic materials - such as music, videos, games, images, and text in electronic form - can easily be copied, modified, and sent over networks (such as the Internet). These electronic materials are thus extremely vulnerable to unauthorized distribution and copyright infringement. These materials may not be transmitted over the NEASC website without the copyright owner’s permission, or without a legitimate “fair use” justification for the transmittal.
• Use the NEASC website in a manner that could disable, overburden or impair the NEASC website or interfere with any other parties' use and enjoyment of the NEASC Website.
• Seek to obtain access to material or information that we have not intentionally made available to you on the NEASC website through "hacking," "scraping," or other means.
• Transmit material through the NEASC website that you know or should know contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, or other computer-programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or Personally Identifiable Information (as that term is defined in the NEASC Privacy Policy).
• Use the NEASC website to artificially generate traffic or page links to a website or for any other purpose not expressly allowed under these Terms and Conditions.
• Use the NEASC website for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these Terms and Conditions. For example, you will not use the NEASC website or Website Content to violate any law, statute, or regulation (including, without limitation, those governing securities regulation, consumer protection, unfair competition, anti-discrimination, or false advertising).

The foregoing prohibited actions constitute NEASC’s website Code of Conduct. We reserve the right at any time to terminate or suspend your use of some or all of the NEASC website if you engage in activities that we conclude, in our sole discretion, breach our Code of Conduct or otherwise violate these Terms and Conditions or our Privacy Policy.

The NEASC website may contain hyperlinks to Web sites offered by parties other than NEASC. Such hyperlinks are provided for your reference and convenience only. NEASC does not control such other Web sites and is not responsible for their content, nor does NEASC’s inclusion of hyperlinks to such Web sites imply any endorsement of the material on such Web sites or any association with their operators. Moreover, we do not warrant that a third-party site will be free of computer viruses or other harmful code that can impact your computer or other web-access device.  If you link to any third-party site through the NEASC website or Website Content, please be aware that you are doing so at your own risk.  These Terms and Conditions apply solely to the NEASC website and you should review the terms and conditions of any site that you access through a hyperlink from the NEASC website. 

NEASC respects the intellectual property rights of others and requires that its users do the same. If you believe that any content on the NEASC website or other activity taking place on the website constitutes infringement of a work protected by copyright, please notify our agent, designated under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §512) (the "DMCA") to respond to such concerns, as follows:

Attention:  COO
Mailing address:  NEASC, 1115 Westford Street, Third Floor, Lowell, MA, 01851 USA

Your notice must comply with the DMCA. Upon receipt of a compliant notice, we will respond and proceed in accordance with the DMCA.

NEASC DOES NOT PROMISE THAT THE NEASC WEBSITE OR WEBSITE CONTENT WILL BE ERROR-FREE, UNINTERRUPTED, OR WITHOUT INACCURACIES, OR THAT THE NEASC WEBSITE WILL PROVIDE SPECIFIC RESULTS FROM YOUR USE OF THE NEASC WEBSITE OR YOUR USE OF ANY CONTENT, SEARCH, OR LINK ON IT.  THE NEASC WEBSITE AND WEBSITE CONTENT, ARE ALL PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS.  WE DO NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT THE NEASC WEBSITE, WEBSITE CONTENT, OR FILES YOU MAY DOWNLOAD FROM THE NEASC WEBSITE WILL BE FREE OF VIRUSES, INACCURACIES, OR OTHER HARMFUL FEATURES. 

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, NEASC DISCLAIMS: (i) ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT; (ii) ANY RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR THE ACCURACY, CONTENT, COMPLETENESS, OR LEGALITY OF INFORMATION OR CONTENT AVAILABLE THROUGH THE NEASC WEBSITE; AND (iii) ANY RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR HARM RESULTING FROM DOWNLOADING OR ACCESSING INFORMATION OR CONTENT THROUGH THE NEASC WEBSITE, INCLUDING HARM CAUSED BY VIRUSES OR SIMILAR DESTRUCTIVE FEATURES.

WHILE NEASC WILL REVIEW USER CONTENT FOR ADHERENCE TO NEASC ACCREDITATION STANDARDS, NEASC IS NOT RESPONSIBLE OR LIABLE FOR THE CONTENT OF ANY USER CONTENT.  IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE USER CONTENT, YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

YOU EXPRESSLY AGREE THAT USE OF THE NEASC WEBSITE AND RELATED CONTENT IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO BREACH OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR NEGLIGENCE, WILL NEASC BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING LOST PROFITS) THAT ARISE OUT OF, OR ARE RELATED TO, YOUR USE OF THE NEASC WEBSITE OR WEBSITE CONTENT.  

Additional Terms for Certain Services.  We may offer certain products, services and memberships on the NEASC website that are subject to additional or different terms and conditions.  We will notify you if the service you are using on the NEASC website is subject to terms and conditions that differ from these Terms and Conditions.

Monitoring Website Use.  You agree that we have the right and discretion to monitor any activity and content associated with the NEASC website and Website Content.  We may investigate any reported violation of these Terms and Conditions, and may take any action that we believe is appropriate including, but not limited to, removing materials from the NEASC website and terminating/suspending your access to the NEASC website. 

Modifications to These Terms and Conditions.  If we modify these Terms and Conditions, then such modifications shall take effect proactively, upon your subsequent access to the NEASC website. 

Assignment.  These Terms and Conditions shall not be assignable by you, either in whole or in part.  We reserve the right to assign the rights and obligations under these Terms and Conditions for any reason and in our sole discretion.

General.  These Terms and Conditions shall be governed in all respects by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without giving effect to its conflicts of law provisions.  Both parties submit to the personal jurisdiction of and venue in, the state and federal courts sitting in the judicial district that includes Suffolk County, Massachusetts.  The parties further agree that any cause of action arising under these Terms and Conditions shall exclusively be brought in such courts.  If any provision of these Terms and Conditions is held to be invalid or unenforceable, such provision shall be struck and the remaining provisions shall be enforced. Our failure to act with respect to a breach by you or others does not waive our right to act with respect to subsequent or similar breaches.  These Terms and Conditions set forth the entire understanding and agreement between you and us with respect to the subject matter hereof and supersede any prior or contemporaneous understanding, whether written or oral.

Claims Against Other Users.  You agree that in the event that you have any right, claim or action against visitors or other users of the NEASC website arising out of that person's use of the NEASC website, then you will pursue such right, claim or action independently of and without recourse to us.