Terms of Use

Please read these Terms of Use carefully before accessing HydroLearn (https://www.hydrolearn.org) which includes the HydroLearn (HL) edX and Studio websites and utilizing the services of the HL website (“Services”). The HL site is operated by a community of researchers and hosted by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Your access to HL is subject to your agreement to these Terms of Use. By accessing HL, you accept, without limitation or qualification, these Terms of Use.

Modification of the Agreement

We maintain the right to modify these Terms of Use and may do so by posting modifications on this page. Any modification is effective immediately upon posting the modification unless otherwise stated. Your continued use of https://www.hydrolearn.org following the posting of any modification signifies your acceptance of that modification. You should regularly visit this page to review the current Terms of Use.


Eligibility, Registration, Access, and Termination

The https://www.hydrolearn.org/ site is limited to non-commercial educational and research activities. Posting of spam messages or other commercial advertisements is a violation of these terms and may result in termination of your account.  Although our Services are currently free to users, HL reserves the right to amend or withdraw such free Services at any time.  HL reserves the right to institute charges at any time, upon notice to you, which may be sent by email or posted on the Site.  Your continuing use of the Services following such notification constitutes your acceptance of any new or increased charges.  Any fees paid thereunder are non-refundable.

Certain portions of https://www.hydrolearn.org are limited to registered users and/or allow a user to participate in Services by entering personal information. You agree that any information provided to https://www.hydrolearn.org in these areas will be complete and accurate and that you will neither register under the name of nor attempt to enter https://www.hydrolearn.org under the name of another person or entity.

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your user ID and password, if any, and for restricting access to your computer, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password. https://www.hydrolearn.org does not authorize use of your User ID by third-parties.

We may, in our sole discretion, terminate or suspend your access to and use of https://www.hydrolearn.org without notice and for any reason, including for violation of these Terms of Use or for other conduct that we, in our sole discretion, believe to be unlawful or harmful to others. In the event of termination, you are no longer authorized to access https://www.hydrolearn.org.

Disclaimers

This site and any information, products, or services on it are provided “as is” without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The owners and administrators of this site do not warrant, and hereby disclaim any warranties, either express or implied, with respect to the accuracy, adequacy or completeness of any good, service, or information obtained from HL (https://www.hydrolearn.org). The owners and administrators of this site do not warrant that HL will operate in an uninterrupted or error-free manner or that HL is free of viruses or other harmful components. Use of HL is at your own risk.

You agree that HL and its owners and administrators shall have no liability for any consequential, indirect, punitive, special or incidental damages, whether foreseeable or unforeseeable (including, but not limited to, claims for defamation, errors, loss of data, or interruption in availability of data), arising out of or relating to your use of HL or any resource that you access through HL.

The HL site hosts content from a number of authors. The statements and views of these authors are theirs alone, and do not reflect the stances or policies of HL or their sponsors, nor does their posting imply the endorsement of HL or their sponsors.

Choice of Law

You agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to HL, whether based in contract, tort, statutory or other law, will be governed by federal law and by the laws of the State of Louisiana, excluding its conflicts of law provisions. You further consent to the personal jurisdiction of and exclusive venue in the federal and state courts located in the State of Louisiana as the exclusive legal forums for any such dispute.

Code of Conduct

You are responsible at all times for using HL in a manner that is legal, ethical, and not to the detriment of others. Once you have created an account, you are allowed to post materials and participate in other social networking features available on this site. All users are encouraged to help moderate content and click on “report abuse” links to report any material deemed offensive or inappropriate, as set out in the Copyright and Abuse Notification Section below. If your posted material is reported as abusive, it will be immediately withdrawn and subsequently reviewed by a site administrator. If the material is judged to be appropriate, it will be restored. Otherwise, it will be removed from the site, and depending on the inappropriate nature of the content, your account may be terminated.

All users must recognize that system resources on HL are limited. Quotas for disk storage, job submissions, and other limited resources are strictly enforced. By using HL, you agree to delete unused files and acknowledge that if you fail to do so, the files may be deleted for you. You may request an increase in system quotas, but you may not circumvent the policies put in place to manage resources.

Creating multiple accounts or otherwise gaming the system in order to earn extra points, to increase your disk quota, or to gain an unfair share of other system resources is strictly prohibited and may lead to termination of your account.

The Services are intended to support a variety of data and modeling activities, with a focus on water data and hydrologic models.  You are responsible at all times for using the Services in a manner that is legal, ethical, and not to the detriment of others. You agree that you will not in your use of the Services:​

  • Violate any applicable law, commit a criminal offense or perform actions that might encourage others to commit a criminal offense or give rise to a civil liability;

  • Post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, libelous, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, profane, or otherwise objectionable content;

  • Use the Services to impersonate other parties or entities;

  • Use the Services to upload any content that contains a software virus, “Trojan Horse” or any other computer code, files, or programs that may alter, damage, or interrupt the functionality of the Services or the hardware or software of any other person who accesses the Services;

  • Upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit any materials that you do not have a right to transmit under any law or under a contractual relationship;

  • Alter, damage, or delete any content posted on the Services, except where such alterations or deletions are consistent with the access control settings of that content in the Services;

  • Disrupt the normal flow of communication in any way;

  • Claim a relationship with or speak for any business, association, or other organization for which you are not authorized to claim such a relationship;

  • Post or transmit any unsolicited advertising, promotional materials, or other forms of solicitation;

  • Post any material that infringes or violates the intellectual property rights of another.

​Certain portions of the Services are limited to registered users and/or allow a user to participate in online services by entering personal information. You agree that any information that you provide to the Services in these areas will be complete and accurate, and that you will neither register under the name of nor attempt to enter the Services under the name of another person or entity.

​You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your user ID and password, if any, and for restricting access to your computer, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password. The Services do not authorize use of your User ID by third-parties.

​By using the Services, you affirm that you are at least 18 years of age or have the consent of your parent or legal guardian who is at least 18 years of age.  If you are using the Services on behalf of an entity, organization, or company, then you represent and warrant that you have the authority to bind that organization to these Terms of Use and you agree to be bound by these Terms of Use on behalf of that organization.

Privacy Policy

We respect your privacy. We will never sell your e-mail address or other personally identifiable information to third parties, or make that information publicly available without your permission.

We are a scientific project and we provide a free service, so we do track your activities on this site. We combine your usage metrics with others to create an aggregate picture of how the site is being used, and we report that usage publicly on our site and send similar quarterly reports to our program sponsors. However, such usage reports never contain detailed information about your activities as an individual without your prior consent.

From time to time, we work with other projects that seek to study social interactions on the site. We may share your activities with those groups, but they are bound by a Memorandum of Understanding to follow our policies and respect your privacy in the same way that we do. We may contact you on their behalf and ask you to participate in their study, but your participation is voluntary, and your information will not be publicly released without your prior consent.

We reserve the right to contact you to request additional information or to keep you updated on changes to HydroLearn.

All resources, wiki articles, blogs, questions, answers, or other information posted or stored on HL is potentially available to all other users of HL. We do our best to restrict access to source code and to other private materials shared within groups. However, we are a research project and our software is constantly changing. We disclaim any responsibility or capability for the preservation of confidentiality of any information posted on this site. Do not post or store information on HydroLearn if you expect to or are obligated to protect the confidentiality of that information, including but not limited to student information.

Changes to policy

We may occasionally update our Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices and services. If we make material changes in the way we collect, use, or share your personal information, we will notify you and/or prominently post notices of the changes on our website.

​Copyright and Abuse Notification:

​Copyright and Abuse Notification Policy. HL has adopted the following general policy toward copyright and/or abusive material. The address of HL’s Designated Agent to Receive Notification under this policy (“Designated Agent”) is listed at the end of this Section. It is HL’s policy to (1) block access to or remove material that it believes in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our advertisers, affiliates, content providers, or users; (2) block abusive material; and (3) remove and discontinue service to repeat offenders.

​Procedure for Reporting Copyright and/or Abusive Material

​(1) Identify the copyrighted work that allegedly has been infringed. If multiple copyrighted works at a single Web site are involved, please provide a representative list of such works on that site. HL Copyright/DMCA Agent shall receive all claims of infringement

(2) Describe the material that is claimed to be infringing and provide sufficient information to permit HL to locate that material.

(3) Provide your contact information, including an address, telephone number, and, if available, an e-mail address.

(4) Certify or include a statement that you have a good faith belief that the use of the copyright-protected material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, the owner’s agent, or law.

(5) Certify that the information that you have provided HL is accurate.

(6) Include your physical or electronic signature.

​HL may not be able to act on your complaint promptly or at all if you do not provide this information.

​COPYRIGHT AND ABUSE NOTIFICATION AGENT:

Emad Habib, Ph.D., PE

Professor, Department of Civil Engineering

University of Louisiana at Lafayette

PO Box 42291, Lafayette LA, USA

Phone: 337-482-6513 (office)

Email: emad.habib@louisiana.edu

Submitting Content to the HydroLearn Resource System

Educational Materials and User Content

If you wish to contribute educational materials to HL, such as an instructional text, resource, lesson, module, or other educational work (collectively, “Educational Material”), you may do so via our contribution pipeline (“Contribution Pipeline”,i.e., Studio use or participation in an HL fellowship program). 

With regard to any Educational Materials that you contribute to HL, or by any other means, you represent and warrant that you have the full legal right to post the Educational Material and that use of the Educational Material by us and all other persons and entities as set forth in its license will not (i) infringe the trademark, copyright, privacy, or publicity rights of any person or entity; (ii) violate any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or agreement; or (iii) disclose any confidential or private information of any third party. If you are authoring or contributing Educational Material to HL, you must select one of the Creative Commons Standard Licenses which is applicable to your Educational Material via the HL Contribution Pipeline. Educational Materials uploaded to the HL are perpetually licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Licensing option selected.

The HL is a platform for open educational resources. Accordingly, you represent and warrant that your Educational Material you submit to the Contribution Pipeline does not contain any license restrictions and/or prohibitions that are incompatible with the licensing options under the Creative Common License you have selected.

​If you contribute any metadata – such as author name, title of work, year of completion of the work, and the like – in connection with contributing Educational Material to HL or otherwise, you grant to HL a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable non-exclusive license to reproduce, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, create derivative works of, transfer, sublicense, and make any other use in any form or medium of such metadata, without restriction of any kind.

Display of Licenses

HydroLearn endeavors to provide basic information about the Creative Commons Licenses which are available for selection; nevertheless, you are responsible for compliance with all terms and conditions of any applicable Creative Commons License for use by you of any User Content, defined below. HL offers no guarantee or assurance that all pertinent information is provided or that the information provided is correct in each circumstance. In all cases, it is your sole responsibility to determine what permission(s) you may need in order to use materials available from the HL and, if necessary, to obtain such permission(s).

​Certain features of the HL may allow you to contribute content that is not itself either Educational Material or metadata, for example in the form of comments, ratings, reviews, feedback, evaluations, or other content for access, use, viewing, and downloading by us and by other users of the HL (“User Content”). When you post User Content, you represent and warrant that you have the full legal right to post the User Content and that use of the User Content by us and all other persons and entities will not (i) infringe the trademark, copyright, privacy, or publicity rights of any person or entity; (ii) violate any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or agreement; or (iii) disclose any confidential or private information of any third party. Upon your submission of User Content, you grant us a fully-paid, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, non-exclusive license to access via the Publishing Agreement you submit, available at this link hydrolearn.org/…..  This Publishing Agreement allows use, distribution, reproduction, display, modification, creation of derivative works based upon, and sublicense the User Content for the purposes of providing and promoting the HL, all without any additional compensation to you whatsoever. Please note that Educational Materials and metadata are not considered User Content, but rather are discussed above, in the section titled Educational Materials.

HL endeavors to provide basic information about the Creative Commons Licenses which are available for selection; nevertheless, you are responsible for compliance with all terms and conditions of any applicable Creative Commons License for use by you of any User Content, defined below.  HL offers no guarantee or assurances that all pertinent information is provided or that the information provided is correct in each circumstance.  In all cases, it is your sole responsibility to determine what permission(s) you may need in order to use materials available from HL and, if necessary, to obtain such permission(s).

Removal of User Content or Educational Material

We make User Content and Educational Material (including its metadata) available at our sole discretion and may disable access to any User Content or Educational Material at any time and for any reason. By using HL, you acknowledge and agree that we do not guarantee access to and/or hosting of User Content or Educational Material that is published through HL. For example, if Educational Material or User Content violates this Agreement, access to it may be disabled.

If you believe that a user of HL has violated your intellectual property rights – for example by improperly posting your trademarks or copyrighted content to the HL – please contact us, as noted in the Copyright and Abuse Notification Procedure Section above

If we receive notice that User Content or Educational Material posted to or through the HL may infringe the rights of thirds parties, including their intellectual property rights, we reserve the right (in our sole discretion) to disclose information, about the poster of such material to those third parties, so that they can contact the poster directly regarding their concerns.

HydroLearn Content

Except for Educational Materials (which are made available by HL and its users pursuant to the Creative Commons Licenses associated therewith), all text, metadata, user interfaces and visual interfaces (including graphics, photographs, sounds, music, and artwork), trademarks, logos, computer code, and any and all compilations thereof (collectively, “HydroLearn Content”), including but not limited to the design, structure, selection, coordination, expression, “look and feel,” and arrangement of HL Content, is owned, controlled, or licensed by or to HL, and is protected by trade dress, copyright, and trademark laws, and is subject to various other intellectual property rights. Except as expressly provided in this Agreement, you are prohibited from copying, reproducing, modifying, distributing, displaying, performing, or transmitting any of the HL Content for any purpose, and nothing otherwise stated or implied in the HL confers on you any license or right to do so.


Links

To Third Party Sites

The HL may link to third party sites that are not under the control of HL. Links from the HL are provided as a convenience and for informational purposes only; they do not indicate endorsement, sponsorship of, or affiliation with the third party or content of the linked website, including any advertisements that may be posted. HL has no control over and bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality, or content of the externally linked sites. Privacy policies and practices for such linked sites may differ from our Privacy Policy and practices. You access and use such linked sites entirely and solely at your own risk. We urge you to read the privacy policies of such linked sites before disclosing your personal information on such sites.

From Third Party Sites

If you present a link to any portion of the HL from any third party site, you agree to present the link in a manner that does not convey the impression that HL endorses, whether expressly or implicitly, any products, services, or opinions provided on your website. Any link to HL must provide a clearly written notice that the user is leaving your website to access another.


General Terms

Disclaimer of Warranties

You expressly understand and agree that your use of HL, the edX and Studio websites is at your sole risk. HL, and any good or service downloaded or used through or in connection with HL, is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We and our parents, subsidiaries, directors, officers, employees, stockholders, licensors, and any party under our common ownership or common corporate control (collectively, “our affiliates”), expressly disclaim all representations, warranties, and conditions of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, merchantable quality, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, title, or any warranty or condition arising by usage of trade, course of dealing, or course of performance. We and our affiliates make no warranty that (a) HL will meet your requirements; (b) HL will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; (c) content and material will be hosted and/or transmitted without interruption or cessation; (d) any products, sites, information, or other material, whether in tangible or intangible form, downloaded or obtained by you through HL, will meet your expectations or any standard of quality; and (e) any defects in the operation or functionality of HL or related software will be corrected. Any material, information, or data downloaded, viewed, shared, or otherwise accessed on or through HL is accessed at your own discretion and risk; you will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or loss of data that result from the downloading, viewing, sharing, or otherwise accessing of such material. No advice, representation, or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you either from us or through HL shall create any warranty not expressly stated in this agreement.

Limitation of Liability

You expressly understand and agree that we and our affiliates will not be liable to you for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages that may be incurred by you, however caused and under any theory of liability. This includes, but is not limited to, any loss of profits, goodwill, or business reputation; any loss of data; any cost of procurement of substitute goods or services; or any other intangible losses. This also includes any loss or damages that may be incurred by you as a result of (a) any changes that we may make to HL; (b) any permanent or temporary cessation of HL; (c) the deletion or corruption of, or failure to store, any content or data (including without limitation user content, educational material, and metadata) maintained through HL; or (d) your failure to keep your password or registered user account details secure. The limitations and exclusions of liability above shall apply irrespective of the theory of liability, including contract (including fundamental breach), warranty, product liability, strict liability, tort (including negligence), or other theory, even if we (or our affiliates) have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

You specifically acknowledge that we and our affiliates shall not be liable for user content, educational material, and/or metadata, or for the infringing, defamatory, offensive, or illegal conduct of any third party, and that the risk of harm or damage from the foregoing rests entirely with you.

Exclusions and Limitations

Some jurisdictions do not permit the exclusion of certain warranties or conditions, or the limitation or exclusion of liability for certain damages. Accordingly, only the limitations that are lawful in your jurisdiction will apply to you and, in such instances, our liability and that of our affiliates will be limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold HL and Our Affiliates harmless from and against any and all liabilities and costs (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) we may incur in connection with any claim arising out of your breach of this Agreement or your use of HL. We reserve the right, but have no obligation, to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you.

Entire Agreement

These Terms of Use contain the entire agreement between you and HL regarding the use of HL, and supersede any prior agreement between you and HL on such subject matter. The parties acknowledge that no reliance is placed on any representation made but not expressly contained in these Terms of Use. You may also be subject to additional terms and conditions that may apply when you use or purchase other goods or services from us, our affiliates, or our parents or subsidiary entities.