Version 1.00 March 2024

PLEASE READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS SITE

Who we are and how to contact us

This website is owned and operated by South West News Service Ltd (“We”/”SWNS”). We are registered in England and Wales under company number 06561578 and have our registered office at Media Centre Unit A, Abbey Wood Business Park, Emma Chris Way, Filton, Bristol, BS34 7JU, United Kingdom. Our VAT number is  476060879.

To contact us, please email news@swns.com.

By using our site you accept these terms

By using our site, you confirm that you are over the age of majority in your location, that you accept these terms of use, and that you agree to comply with them.

If you do not agree to these terms, you must not use our site.

If you, or the organisation under which you are registered have a written agreement with us covering use of this site, in any conflict between these terms and conditions and the written agreement, the written agreement shall prevail.

Content

Our site hosts a collection of digital assets in the form of text, video, audio, and images (“Content”) made available to users subject to licence in accordance with our standard terms and conditions.

Collaborative email sharing

Our site is an organisation based collaborative site. This means that all users registered under the auspices of as particular organisation are able to see the email addresses of all other registered users from the same organisation. For example a user registered by or through SWNS Newspapers Ltd, will be able to see all other users from SWNS Newspapers Ltd., and share Content with them

In registering to use our site you expressly agree to your email address being shared with others in your organisation. If you do not agree with this sharing of your email address, you must not register an account, or if already registered you must request closure of your account by emailing us at licensing@swns.com.

Provisions concerning collaborative email sharing are in addition to, and not in substitute for our general privacy policy.

Registration

In registering to use our site you unequivocally agree to be bound by these terms and conditions.

During registration you will need to select a user name (usually your email address), and password (“Credentials”), and provide some additional information. You must ensure the Credentials are kept secure, and not disclosed to anyone else. You must use your Credentials only in accordance with these terms and conditions are the specific contract between you/your organisation and SWNS®. You must immediately forthwith report the loss, unauthorized disclosure, or unauthorised use of your Credentials, which remain the property of SWNS ® at all times.

We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms of use.

We will not be liable for any loss suffered by you as a result of unauthorised use of your Credentials.

If you know or suspect that anyone other than you knows your Credentials, you must promptly notify us at news@swns.com.

Copyright and unauthorised use

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our site, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.

This site, and all text, audio, and images on this site, including but not limited to these terms of use, are copyright of SWNS® and may not be reproduced without our express written consent.

This website, and all Content is copyright of or licensed to SWNS®, and may be used in accordance with a licence granted by us upon payment of the relevant fee.  Use of Content or any part thereof without a licence is a breach of copyright and is expressly prohibited. This prohibition extends to copying, rewriting, re-imagining or otherwise recreating or publishing Content; including Content in any publication, or passing off Content as being the original work of a person other than the copyright holder.  In using or permitting or causing the use of Content without a Licence you expressly agree to pay SWNS® an “Retrospective Licence Fee” of £500 for each piece of Content used. Without prejudice to any other right or remedy available to it SWNS® shall, upon receipt of the Retrospective Licence Fee, grant a licence to use the Content in accordance with and subject to our standard terms and conditions.

SWNS® is a registered trademark of South West News Service Limited.

There are other terms that may apply to you

These terms of use refer to the following additional terms, which also apply to your use of our site:

  • Our Privacy Policy
  • Our Cookie Policy which sets out information about the cookies on our site.
  • Unless otherwise agreed in writing between us, assets are supplied subject to our standard conditions of sale which apply to any purchase of goods or services from our site to the exclusion of any other terms and conditions.
  • If you are a contributor uploading assets to our website you must adhere to our contributor acceptable use policy or your access to the website may be suspended or permanently revoked.

Charges

When you download an asset you will be charged at the previously agreed rate for that asset. If you have a contracted asset quota, the asset will be set against your quota.

If an asset is downloaded in error you may you will be charged for that download unless you contact licensing@swns.com as soon as possible, and in any event within 24 hours of the download having commenced.

We may make changes to these terms

We amend these terms from time to time. Every time you wish to use our site, please check these terms to ensure you understand the terms that apply at that time. These terms were most recently updated as set out at the top of this page.

We may make changes to our site

We may update and change our site from time to time to reflect changes to our products, services, our users’ needs and our business priorities.

We may suspend or withdraw our site

Our site is made available free of charge.

We do not guarantee that our site, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our site for business and operational reasons. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any suspension or withdrawal.

You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our site through your internet connection are aware of these terms of use and other applicable terms and conditions, and that they comply with them.

We may transfer this agreement to someone else

We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation. We will always tell you in writing if this happens and we will ensure that the transfer will not affect your rights under the contract.

Suitability of content

We do not represent that content available on or through our site is appropriate for use or available in locations outside the United Kingdom.

Misuse of the site, no text or data mining, or web scraping

You shall not do or attempt to do anything likely to interrupt the proper operation of this site, block any advertisement, or introduce any virus, malware, ransomware or similar device or code to the site.

You shall not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble any part of this site.

You shall not conduct, facilitate, authorise or permit any text or data mining or web scraping in relation to our site or any services provided via, or in relation to, our site. This includes using (or permitting, authorising or attempting the use of):

  • Any “robot”, “bot”, “spider”, “scraper” or other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, code, process or methodology to access, obtain, copy, monitor or republish any portion of the site or any data, content, information or services accessed via the same.
  • Any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form to generate information which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends and correlations.

The provisions in this clause should be treated as an express reservation of our rights in this regard, including for the purposes of Article 4(3) of Digital Copyright Directive ((EU) 2019/790).

This clause shall not apply insofar as (but only to the extent that) we are unable to exclude or limit text or data mining or web scraping activity by contract under the laws which are applicable to us.

Do not rely on information on this site

The content on our site is provided for general information only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.

Contributors

If you are a person providing Content to SWNS® (a “Contributor”), and you are paid through this site all payments for contributions must be made within six (6) months of it being added to your SWNS.rocks account. Any payment not claimed in that time will expire. If you have entered into a contributor contract with SWNS® your payment terms are as set out in that contract.  As a Contributor, your relationship with SWNS® is that of an independent contractor, and you must account for any payment made by SWNS®, whether in cash or kind, to the relevant authorities in your jurisdiction. Nothing in these or any other terms and conditions shall be construed as creating an employer employee relationship between you and us.   The Contributor shall be fully responsible for and shall indemnify SWNS® for and in respect of the following:

(a) any income tax, National Insurance and social security contributions (or any similar levy in any jurisdiction) and any other liability, deduction, contribution, assessment or claim arising from a determination that the Contributor is deemed an employee of SWNS®, or made in connection with either the provision of Content to SWNS® or any payment or benefit received by the Contributor in respect of the provision of Content, where such recovery is not prohibited by law. The Contributor shall further indemnify SWNS® against all reasonable costs, expenses and any penalty, fine or interest incurred or payable by SWNS®  in connection with or in consequence of any such liability, deduction, contribution, assessment or claim other than where the latter arise out of SWNS®’s negligence or wilful default; and

(b) any liability arising from any employment-related claim or any claim based on worker status (including reasonable costs and expenses) brought by the Contributor against SWNS® arising out of or in connection with the provision of Content.

We are not responsible for websites we link to

Where our site contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Such links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them.

We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources.

User-generated content is not approved by us

This website may include information and materials uploaded by other users of the site, including to social media pages, video-sharing sites, bulletin boards and chat rooms. The views expressed by other users on our site do not represent our views or values.

By accessing the Services, you agree to comply with these community guidelines (the “Community Guidelines”) and that:

In using our site, you agree that you will comply with all applicable laws in your location, and will not access or use this site for any unlawful purpose.

You will not access or use the Services to collect any market research for a competing business;

You will not use any robot, spider, scraper, or other automated means to access the Services for any purpose without our express, written permission; provided, however, we grant the operators of public search engines permission to use spiders to copy materials from the public portions of the Services for the sole purpose of, and solely to the extent necessary for, creating publicly-available searchable indices of the materials, but not caches or archives of such materials;

You will not take any action that imposes or may impose (in our sole discretion) an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our technical infrastructure; and

You will not distort the meaning or cause otherwise non-defamatory, non-infringing content to defame or infringe the intellectual property rights of any person or violate any person’s personal proprietary or privacy rights.

If you find something that violates our Community Guidelines, please let us know, and we’ll review it.

How to complain about or report content

If you become aware of any material that is illegal or could comprise or be connected to child sexual abuse or exploitation or could comprise terrorist content or be connected to terrorism, or if you wish to complain about content, please contact us immediately at news@swns.com.

Our responsibility for loss or damage suffered by you

Whether you are a consumer or a business user:

  • We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
  • Different limitations and exclusions of liability will apply to liability arising as a result of the supply of any products or services to you. Unless otherwise agreed in writing between us, our standard conditions of sale apply to any purchase of goods or services from our site to the exclusion of any other terms and conditions.

If you are a business user:

  • We exclude all implied conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that may apply to our site or any content on it.
  • We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, even if foreseeable, arising under or in connection with:
  • use of, or inability to use, our site; or
  • use of or reliance on any content displayed on our site.
  • In particular, we will not be liable for:
  • loss of profits, sales, business, or revenue;
  • business interruption;
  • loss of anticipated savings;
  • loss of business opportunity, goodwill or reputation; or
  • any indirect or consequential loss or damage.

If you are a consumer user:

  • Please note that we only provide our site for domestic and private use. You agree not to use our site for any commercial or business purposes, and we have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.
  • If defective digital content that we have supplied, damages a device or digital content belonging to you and this is caused by our failure to use reasonable care and skill, we will either repair the damage or pay you compensation. However, we will not be liable for damage that you could have avoided by following our advice to apply an update offered to you free of charge or for damage that was caused by you failing to correctly follow installation instructions or to have in place the minimum system requirements advised by us.

How we may use your personal information

We will only use your personal information as set out in our privacy policy

We are not responsible for viruses and you must not introduce them

We do not guarantee that our site will be secure or free from bugs or viruses.

You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our site. You should use your own virus protection software.

You must not misuse our site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our site will cease immediately.

Which country’s laws apply to any disputes?

If you are a consumer, please note that these terms of use, their subject matter and their formation, are governed by English law. You and we both agree that the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction except that if you are a resident of Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in Northern Ireland, and if you are resident of Scotland, you may also bring proceedings in Scotland.

If you are a business, these terms of use, their subject matter and their formation (and any non-contractual disputes or claims) are governed by English law. We both agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

 

© South West News Service Ltd 2024

SWNS® is a registered trade mark of South West News Service Ltd