Terms of Use for www.Wintergreen.Info

 As used in the Terms of Use ("TOU") " Wintergreen.Info"(sm) means all pages, files, images, information, intellectual property and interactive services offered under the internet domain URL "http://www. Wintergreen.Info" and, as used hereafter and elsewhere in this website includes, without limitation, (1) Virginia Web Resources, LLC, a Virginia limited liability company which is the owner of this site, and its members, officers, agents and employees, and (2) contributors to the editorial content of this site.

This page sets forth the basic "Terms of Use" for this Website. Terms of use for sites at external links contained in this Website are, of course, subject to and governed by the respective terms established by the owners of those sites.

 By accessing and using this Website by any means or in any manner whatsoever, or by submitting information or data for posting on our site you agree to be bound by these Terms of Use as a legal agreement.

Our Terms of Use consist of three basic parts:

Basic Terms of Use Agreement - the Agreement set forth below which applies to all portions of this site and activities relating to this Website and all material accessed, submitted or posted hereunder. By using or accessing this Website in any manner you agree to be bound by these.

Special Terms of Use - special terms or conditions which apply only to a portion of this site or specified features or to registered users of a certain class or type and which are noted by reference throughout the site in various areas (e.g. bulletin board, chat rooms, form submissions, etc).

Policies - Various policies which we establish and revise from time to time relating to Wintergreen.Info(sm). By accepting our Terms of Service, you agree to abide by our Policies as in effect from time to time.

Basic Terms of Use Agreement

 In consideration of accessing information made available by this Website, whether via the URL "http://www.Wintergreen.Info", or otherwise, by viewing, downloading, posting, subscribing to, or otherwise participating in electronic communications forums sponsored by this Website YOU hereby, with the intention, under seal, to be legally bound under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States of America, agree as follows:

• You accept and agree to be bound by this Basic Terms of Use Agreement and, to the extent applicable as a result of your accessing and using a particular feature, any Special Terms of Use and Policies.
• You represent that to the extent you register for the use of any service under this Website, you are the person named for whom the information is submitted or are acting with the authority and permission of the named person or entity and have the capacity to enter into these Terms of service as a legally binding contract on their behalf.
• You represent and warrant that all information submitted to or posted via any service offered by this Website is true and that such information is not owned by or subject to any copyright, trademark, or other rights of others (or, if so owned or subject to such other ownership or rights, that your submission or use is with permission or other legal right), and you agree to indemnify and hold Virginia Web Resources, LLC, a Virginia limited liability company (the owner of this Website) harmless from and against any liability, cost or expense whatsoever resulting from your breach of this representation.
• You grant this the owner of this Website and its successors and assigns a perpetual royalty-free nonexclusive license to use any and all such submissions or information in any form of media and subject to such edits and updates as we deem appropriate, whether electronic, paper, or otherwise, either with or without attribution to you as the author thereof.
• You agree to indemnify and hold the owner of this Website and its members, officers, agents and employees harmless against any and all loss, cost damage or expense of any kind or nature whatsoever resulting from any willful material unauthorized or false submission by you.
• You acknowledge that you are aware that the information provided on this site is general and nature and does not take into account any facts or circumstances that may be unique to your personal situation or circumstances. The owner of this Website and its members, officers, agents and employees have no liability for any false, inaccurate or improperly posted or maintained information or data whatsoever, and you waive and release the owner of this Website and its members, officers, agents and employees from any and all liability from any unintentional errors or omissions that may occur in the use and posting of submitted information. Although we have no legal obligation to do so, we will generally use good faith efforts to correct errors or remove erroneous material when notified of such.
• You agree that all activity by you relating to your use of this Website shall be deemed to occur in the Commonwealth of Virginia, that you consent to personal jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that this Terms of Use Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia (without regard to conflicts of law principles that might otherwise apply) and that the sole and exclusive venue for any disputes under this agreement or otherwise relating to your use, access to or otherwise pertaining to this Website and you shall be the Circuit Court for Fairfax County, Virginia or the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting in Alexandria, Virginia and you consent to service of process by mail or by E-mail to your last known address as provided by you to this Website.
• You agree, at the option of the owner of this Website in its sole and absolute discretion, that any disputes hereunder or otherwise arising from or related to your use of access to or submissions to this Website may, at the option of owner of this Website, be submitted for binding arbitration to any reputable arbitration sponsor selected by the owner of this Website.
• You acknowledge and agree that no duty of confidentiality arises or exist with respect to any information submitted to this Website whether by E-mail, posting, or otherwise. You acknowledge and agree that to the extent that by use of this service, you engage in a communicative dialogue with any licensed professional attorney, accountant, financial advisor or otherwise, no client relationship of any kind or nature shall arise or exist and no such professional who post information or otherwise responds to you through or by means of this Website shall have any obligation, duty or liability to you whatsoever.
• You represent that you are at least 18 years of age.

Policies - Effective January 1, 2007

Copyright

The design, format, and structure of our pages, directories, and other portion of our site, to the extent not owned by others (such as the developers of the programs we license and utilize as part of our site) are copyright by this Website and it is unlawful to reproduce such pages and formats or the information contained therein without the express written consent of this Website or the owner of such other material. Material and information linked to and within sites not within the this Website domain is and remains the property of the respective owners thereof, and any usage of such material is subject to applicable copyright and other laws and requirements of the owners of those sites.

Linking

We welcome links to our site from other sites and grant license to do so freely provided the following conditions are satisfied:

1. The link is to our home page "http://www. Wintergreen.Info" and not to a "deep link" (sub page or part of our site unless we have granted our express written permission for such a deep link).
2. The link is not placed within a frame or otherwise intended to be viewed in a manner which makes our site appear to be part of or sponsored by some other site or which does not permit the display of the entire page and contents, including navigation bars and banners.
3. By linking to our site you grant us permission to link to your site. Unless you otherwise advise us by E-mail, such permission is permission to link to you home page or any deep link within provided we also do not place such link within a frame or otherwise limit the display of the entire page and contents, including navigation bars and banners.
4. The site from which our site is linked must not be of an obscene or sexually oriented nature, one devoted to ethnic hate or religious intolerance, or one which contains graphic portrayals of violence or other acts or scenes generally considered distasteful by community standards and the usage and link to our site must be done in a tasteful manner consistent with Virginia community standards (i.e. links are not placed in the context of sexually oriented content, " ethnic hate oriented content", or other defamatory or obscene material.
5. You agree to notify us of the link via E-mail.
6. You agree that if requested, you will remove the link.

Submissions

By submitting information to our site, whether by posting to a bulletin board, participation in a chat room, subscription to a newsletter, submission of a directory listing or otherwise providing information to us or to others by means of our site you represents and warrant to the owner of this Website that (1) if made on behalf of a business entity or a person other than You, that You have legal power and authority to make such submission, (2) that the information contained in such submission is true, (3) that You own or have the right to submit such information and that such information is not the property of or subject to copyright, any other rights of others, or any other restriction or limitation upon its use, and (4) that the owner of this Website is granted a perpetual non- exclusive royalty free license to use such submitted information in any form or manner, whether electronic, digital or otherwise.

You further agree to indemnify and hold the owner of this Website and its members, officers, agents and employees harmless against any and all cost, loss or expense if any of the foregoing are not true.

Use of this Website

You agree to abide by all applicable local, state, national and international laws and regulations and are solely responsible for all acts or omissions that occur under your registered user name or password, including the content of your postings and transmissions through the features of this Website. By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree not to:

• Use this Website in connection with surveys, contests, pyramid schemes, chain letters, junk email, spamming or any duplicative or unsolicited messages (commercial or otherwise). publish, distribute or disseminate any inappropriate, profane, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent or unlawful material or information.
• Harvest or otherwise collect information about others, including email addresses, without their consent.
• Create a false identity for the purpose of misleading others as to the identity of the sender or the origin of a message. The foregoing is not intended to prohibit anonymous postings, rather if you use a name other than your true identity, it should be clear that it is an anonymous posting rather than a effort to appear as a posting under another real person or firm's name.
• Use, download or otherwise copy, or provide (whether or not for a fee) to any person or entity any directory of other registered users or other user or usage information or any portion thereof other than in the context of your use of this Website.
• Transmit or upload any material that contains viruses, trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, or any other harmful or deleterious programs.
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to this Website or any server or directory for which you do not have valid authorization.
• Interfere with another party's use and enjoyment of this Website or another individual's or entity's use and enjoyment of similar services.

About www.Wintergreen.Info

This website is based upon the "Web 2.0" model of user contributed content and interaction. The purpose of this website is to provide useful reference links, resource material and information related to the relevant topic that is the subject of this website.  Our content is based primarily on the basis of user driven contributions and submissions.  As a general matter, any user may register on this website and immediately begin to access or contribute relevant content. Individuals and organizations desiring to contribute content on a regular basis may contact us to explore other more formal levels of participation which may include the ability to publish a regular column or blog via this website, to serve as a webmaster or editor, to advertise via this website, to moderate a discussion forum topic, or to explore other means to contribute.

This website is owned and sponsored as a public service new media and information resource by Virginia Web Resources, LLC, a "new media" organization which owns and sponsors a variety of informational oriented web sites and internet web services.

You may contact the webmaster of this website via the Contact menu option of the left sidebar on our home page (note, this is preferable to email since our spam filters exclude the vast majority of emails).  Contact information for Virginia Web Resources, LLC may be found at that organization's website at www.VirginiaWebResources.com

To insure that you receive emails and notifications from this website, you should "whitelist" (in your spam software or via request to your email service/ISP] the domains Wintergreen.Info, virginiawebresources.com, and the IP address 199.237.239.242).  Please note that our website gives you the option to receive messages and notifications via email or private message notification - select your preference, but be aware that storage of private messages is limited and older messages are periodically purged without any advance notice to you.  All of our emails and notifications are "opt-in" based upon the policies indicated for the particular service, thus you should not be receiving any  unsolicited emails from us.

Copyright & Notices of Claimed Copyright Infringement - www.Wintergreen.Info

Privacy Policies - www.Wintergreen.Info

The following summarizes how we will handle information we learn about you from your visit to our website. The information we learn depends upon what you do when visiting our site. Our Home Page and the Terms of Use linked thereon provide that by accessing, retrieving files from or sending files, form submissions or E-mail to and using our site you agree to be bound by those Terms of Use as a legal agreement.

We outsource virtually all our operations, support and functions to various third parties. Although we seek to disclose the policies and contractual and legal obligations of these providers, we disclaim any and all liability for failure to accurately disclose practices of those third parties (or of their
employees or contractors) which may vary from the policies and procedures described herein. Under our Terms of Use, you waive any liability on the part of the owner of this website for actions or omissions of third parties providing software, hardware or other support or services to us. Nonetheless, if you become aware of actions of such parties which you believe are not consistent with the Privacy Policy set forth herein, please notify us and we will endeavor to correct the situation.

    Via software provided by our web host provider and via Google Analytics we collect certain information automatically when you visit any of our site web pages. This includes the placement of "cookies" upon your computer so that we may track your visits to and activity upon our site based upon your originating IP address. Generally, your originating IP address does not disclose your personal identity, but merely identifies you as a user from your internet service provider or, for visitors accessing thru a business account, the internet domain of your business. Although we do not seek to solicit or otherwise obtain further identifying information, it is possible that this information, coupled with access to the IP address logs of your internet service provider could permit the future individual identification of you as a user. Other information will only be collected if you voluntarily submit that information by entry or registration and submittal or by accepting a "cookie" designed to gather and track certain information. Information collected may be aggregated and used for our purposes, however, unless expressly otherwise noted on part of our site at this time it is our policy that individual user information is not resold or otherwise made available to any unaffiliated third parties (other than consultants working for us on the development of this site) for commercial or other purposes without your express consent and acknowledgment of that possible use. We will, however, make information, available to law enforcement personal or whenever required by order or subpoena issued by a court or other regulatory or governmental body. Although we (1) disclaim any obligation to contest the validity of any such request order or subpoena, and (2) assume no liability for failure or inability to do so or to notify you, we will use reasonable efforts to notify you by E-mail (assuming we have your E-mail address), and if you wish to contest such request order or subpoena on bona fide grounds through valid use of judicial process through legal counsel acceptable to us, we will generally cooperate in such efforts.

If you visit our site to read or download information, we utilize software programs provided by our web server hosting services provider to collect and store the following information about you: the name of the domain from which you access the Internet (for example, aol.com, if you are connecting from an America Online account, or gmu.edu if you are connecting from George Mason University's domain); the date and time you access our site; pages within our site which you access, and, if applicable, the Internet address of the website from which you linked directly to our site. In addition, for repeat users of certain features on our site, the program offers you the option of having a "cookie" placed upon your own computer so that our computers will recognize you on repeat visits without need for re-entry of a password. If you share your computer with others, you may wish to consider whether or not you desire to use this feature as it could permit those other users to make posting under your name.  We use the information we collect to measure the number of visitors to the different sections of our site, to gauge the level of interest among visitors in various topics, and to help us make our site more useful to visitors.

You may personally identify yourself by registering, sending an E-mail or by registering for and participating in one of our features. You may provide other personal information by completing an online form and submitting that form to us.  We permit registration from any valid email address, and you may chose to use an anonymous email address or hide your name. Users are cautioned to be careful not to pose queries or responses which could disclose confidential information about and company or business, particularly insider information regarding publicly traded concerns.

To the extent you provide identifying information by posting to or participating in our forum bulletin boards, visible information posted by you will be generally available to other visitors to our site. As a registered user, you are given certain options about information that you chose to make publicly
available. Our site Terms of Use provide that by using our site you (and others) agree not to exploit or utilize information or E-mail addresses posted by others for commercial use. If you become aware of a violation of this term by any third party, please advise us.

Unfortunately, some users may not honor this policy, and it is possible that providing an E-mail address may result in "spammers" obtaining and using your E-mail address.

Our policies and terms of use are subject to change from time to time and you should check this page periodically for revisions.