The Achievement Network Terms of Use

Effective November 5, 2020

Welcome to The Achievement Network website (our “Website”).  These are our terms for you to use our Website, which is operated by The Achievement Network, Ltd. (“ANet,” “we,” “us”) .  To review the Terms of Use for our proprietary myANet platform, please click here or refer to your school or district’s program agreement with us.

If you continue to browse or use our Website, you’re agreeing to these Terms and representing that you are at least 13 years of age and have not been previously suspended or removed from use of our web service.  If you do not agree to all these Terms or cannot make those representations to us, you must stop using the Website immediately. 

All information we collect on our Website is subject to our Privacy Policy, which is where we spell out what we do with the personal information we collect when you use our Website.  Our Privacy Policy is part of these Terms.  

Ownership of Content:  Our License to You

Our Website is owned and operated by us.  The visual interfaces, graphics, design, compilation, information, content, computer code (including source code or object code), products, services, and all other elements of our Website provided by us (the “Content”) are protected by United States copyright, patent, trade secret, trade dress and trademark laws, international conventions, and all other relevant intellectual property and proprietary rights, and applicable laws and are subject to different licenses for use by you.  Unless specified otherwise, all Content contained on our Website (other than content that is linked to our Website) is our property or our third-party licensors’ property.  All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are proprietary to ANet or our third-party licensors.  

These Terms permit you to view and use our Website and the Content displayed on it and to download and make copies of the Content, and to transmit and perform Content, solely in educational settings and for your internal and non-commercial educational purposes unless specifically prohibited on a web page. You are not permitted to copy or upload Content to other websites, distribute Content for your own benefit or any commercial benefit, or to make Content publicly available unless specifically permitted in writing by us.  You may make derivative works of Content only where that permission is stated on our Website for such content.  If you do copy or download Content, you must not delete or alter any copyright, trademark or other proprietary rights notices included with the Content.

Any use of the Website or content not expressly permitted by these Terms or express permission for use of content included on our Website is a breach of these Terms and may violate copyright, trademark and other laws.

Ownership of Content:  Your License to Us

If you are able to contribute to our Website by uploading your own content, you will continue to own such content even after you upload it.  By uploading your content to our Website, you are granting us a royalty-free, non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable (through multiple tiers), worldwide license to use, host, reformat and reproduce your content and transmit and display it to others. This license will be perpetual unless you notify us that you would like your content removed.

You also grant to us and to users of our Website the right to download, transmit, reproduce and use your content and to publicly perform it (for instance, to a class or a public talk including allowing users the right to make derivative works of your content.)  You waive the right to revoke the above licenses to your content to the extent it is used in those derivative works. You also grant us a license to archive and use any content you provide for resolving disputes, legal proceedings or investigations.

Standard of Conduct

We expect you to use our Website in a respectful and legal manner and in compliance with these Terms, which includes not doing things such as: 

(a) transmitting or communicating material that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable or harmful to others in any way; 

(b) impersonating any person or entity or falsely stating or otherwise misrepresenting your affiliation with a person or entity; 

(c) forging headers or otherwise manipulating identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any content transmitted to other users; 

(d) transmitting, accessing or communicating any content that you do not have a right to transmit or infringes another person’s intellectual property rights; 

(e) introducing any material that contains software viruses, trojan horses, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious and/or designed to interrupt, destroy content or be otherwise harmful; 

(f) obtaining or accumulating personal information about individual users or collecting or storing personal data about other users; 

(g) using the Website in a way that violates any applicable federal, state, local or international law or regulation (including, without limitation, any laws regarding the export of data or software to and from the US or other countries);

(h)  using any robot, spider or other automatic device, process or means to access our Website for any purpose, including monitoring or copying any of the Content on our Website;

(i)  using any manual process to monitor or copy any of the Content on our Website or for any other unauthorized purpose without our prior written consent; 

(j)  using any device, software or routine that interferes with the proper working of our Website; 

(k)  attempting to gain unauthorized access to, interfere with, damage or disrupt any parts of our Website, the server on which the Website is stored, or any server, computer or database connected to the Website; 

(l)  attacking the Website via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack or otherwise attempting to interfere with the proper working of the Website; 

(m)  posting, uploading, or distributing marketing material, advertisements, spam, content designed to aid search engine optimization, content in HTML format with links or redirects, or other commercial content that detracts from the ANet educational experience; or 

(n)  uploading any student work product or other materials that could be considered “education records” under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”).

If we add social features to our Website, we expect you to interact with other users as respectful education professionals and to post only appropriate content. We may suspend or terminate your account for any reason, in our sole discretion, but we are particularly likely to do so if you behave unprofessionally, harass other users, make discriminatory comments or post content that is not appropriate for a K-12 educational setting.

Third Party Websites and Content That We Link in Our Website

We sometimes link to or incorporate content from third party websites.  These are provided for your convenience only.  We have no control over the content of linked Website or resources, and accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them. If you decide to access any of the third party websites linked to this Website, you do so entirely at your own risk and subject to the terms and conditions of use for such website.  We are not responsible for the content you find on third party websites that we link to our Website.  And you should not consider our linking to another website to be an endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation of their products or services.   

You May Link to Our Website and Social Media Features

You may link to our homepage, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it.  However, you may not establish a link to our Website in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part without our prior written consent.  You agree to cooperate with us in causing any unauthorized framing or linking immediately to cease. We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.

Termination

We may discontinue or suspend our Website at any time without notice. ANet may block, terminate or suspend your access to our Website at any time for any reason in its sole discretion, even if access to the  Website continues to be allowed to other users.  If your access is suspended or terminated, you must immediately discontinue using our Website.  We will not be liable to you or any third party for any termination or suspension of your access to our Website.

Copyrights and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Our Website and content included there are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws and may not be copied or imitated in whole or in part unless expressly permitted on the Website.   All trademarks, service marks, trade dress and other intellectual property rights associated with the Website and the content are the sole property of ANet or third parties. The  Website content is also protected as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and treaties.  All individual articles, columns and other elements making up the content are also protected by such copyright laws and treaties. You agree to abide by all applicable copyright and other laws, as well as any additional copyright notices or restrictions contained on the Website.   We do not convey, through allowing access to the Website, any ownership rights in the Website or in any content unless specifically provided on the Website.

You may not upload or transmit any Website content to or through the Website that violates any law or infringes the rights of any third party, and we will hold you responsible for any claims brought against us by third parties because of your content (see “Indemnification” , above).

ANet respects authors’ and content holders’ rights. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”).  If you are a copyright owner or an agent and believe that any content on our Website infringes your copyrights, you may submit your DMCA notice to our DMCA Agent with the information set forth in 17 U.S.C 512(c)(3) to:

Copyright Agent / DMCA Agent

The Achievement Network, Ltd.

One Beacon St.

Boston, MA  02108

legal@achievementnetwork.org

If you believe that your content that was removed (or to which access was disabled) is not infringing, or that you have the authorization from the copyright owner, the copyright owner's agent, or pursuant to the law, to post and use the material in your content, you may send a counter-notice to our Copyright Agent.  

No Warranties

The information presented on our website is provided “As Is” and “As Available”.  It is made available solely for general information purposes.  We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of this information. Your use of our website is at your own risk.  To the extent that we can legally do so, we don’t warrant that the Website is useful for any particular purpose, that it is non-infringing or that it meets your standards or anyone else’s standards.  We do not promise that the Website will be available at any particular time or that the Website will be error free, accurate or reliable.  We take no responsibility for any Website content provided by anyone other than us.  

You understand that we cannot and do not guarantee or warrant that files available for downloading from our website will be free of viruses or other destructive code. You are responsible for implementing sufficient procedures and checkpoints to satisfy your particular requirements for anti-virus protection and accuracy of data input and output, and for maintaining a means external to our Website for any reconstruction of any lost data. WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE CAUSED BY A DISTRIBUTED DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ATTACK, VIRUSES OR OTHER TECHNOLOGICALLY HARMFUL MATERIAL THAT MAY INFECT YOUR COMPUTER EQUIPMENT, COMPUTER PROGRAMS, DATA OR OTHER PROPRIETARY MATERIAL DUE TO YOUR USE OF OUR WEBSITE OR ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH OUR WEBSITE OR TO YOUR DOWNLOADING OF ANY MATERIAL POSTED ON IT, OR ON ANY WEBSITE LINKED TO IT.

Geographic Restrictions

We are based in the United States. We provide our Website for use only by persons located in the United States. We make no claims that our Website or any Content is accessible or appropriate outside of the United States.  Access to our Website may not be legal by certain persons or in certain countries. If you access our Website from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with your local laws.

Limitation of Liability

You are entirely responsible for any actions that are taken using your login information or credentials, even if they are obtained illegally by someone (such as a hacker) or if you unintentionally disclose them.  We are not liable for any damages related to your use, or inability to use, our Website, any Content on our  Website, any website or content linked to our Website, content that you or third parties provide to us or is displayed on our Website or our decision to stop providing a Website or the Website, other than any liability that cannot be excluded or limited by applicable law.  

If damages cannot be fully disclaimed under applicable law, our maximum aggregate liability to you for all such claims will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you have paid us in the last six months, and (b) $100.  You also agree that this limitation also applies to any claims you have against our partners or licensors (including in each case their officers, employees and agents).

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, hold harmless and defend ANet, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, co- branders or other partners, and employees, at your expense, against any and all third party claims or demands, actions, proceedings and suits and all related liabilities, damages, settlements, penalties, fines costs and expenses (including, without limitation, reasonable attorney's fees and other dispute resolution expenses) incurred by ANet, due to your breach of these Terms or arising out of your actions, your violation of these Terms, your violation of any rights of another or your use of our Website including, but not limited to, your Content, any use of content, services and products other than as expressly authorized in these Terms or your use of any information obtained from our Website.

Legal Notices and Jurisdiction

If we need to contact you in connection with these Terms or your use of the Website, we will send any notices to the email address you last provided to us. We will also post general legal notices to the Website. You can send legal notices to us at legal@achievementnetwork.org.

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without giving effect to any principles of conflicts of law. Any dispute or claims related to the Website or these Terms brought by you or by us will be resolved by binding arbitration in Boston, MA,  in accordance with the rules of the American Arbitration Association and judgment upon the award rendered by the arbitrators may be entered in any court which would have had jurisdiction but for this provision. 

ANet’s Website and MyANet are controlled and operated from within the United States.  ANet does not represent that the Website is appropriate for use outside the United States. If you access our Website from outside the United States, you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local law. Your use of our Website is governed in all respects by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA, without regard to choice of law provisions, and not by the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.  

ANY CAUSE OF ACTION OR CLAIM YOU MAY HAVE ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OF USE OR OUR WEBSITE MUST BE COMMENCED WITHIN ONE (1) YEAR AFTER THE CAUSE OF ACTION ACCRUES, OTHERWISE, SUCH CAUSE OF ACTION OR CLAIM IS PERMANENTLY BARRED.

Changes to These Terms and to Our Website

We may change these Terms from time to time.  We will post notices on the Website, but ultimately you are responsible for complying with the most recent version of these Terms, which you can find through a link on the bottom of our home page and on other pages as well.

We may change the functionality or content of our Website, or stop offering the Website altogether, at any time and without notice to you.

Termination

We may suspend or terminate your account at any time, in our sole discretion. This is especially likely if you violate these Terms or abuse the Website or other users.

General 

Our failure to exercise or enforce any right or provision of these Terms is not a waiver of such right or provision.  If any provision of these Terms is held to be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision will be limited or eliminated from these Terms to the minimum extent necessary and will not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.