Terms of Use

1. Introduction

For both your protection and ours, we have established the following Terms of Use which constitute a contractual agreement between you and Health Sciences South Carolina, a South Carolina nonprofit corporation (hereinafter "HSSC"). All visitors to this Web site, whether registered or not, must follow these Terms of Use while on our Web site.

Your use of any of the following HSSC websites,

and any other HSSC-related websites created by the organization or its members in the future means that you acknowledge these Terms of Use and agree to abide by and to be legally bound by them at all times. Because we reserve the right to modify these Terms of Use at any time without notice to you, please check them and any linked information regularly for changes. Please note that from time to time in this agreement we will refer to (i) ourselves as "HSSC" and/or "we"; (ii) visitors of the Site as "you" and or a "Member" (as applicable); and (iii) any of the foregoing Web sites as the "the Site" or the "the HSSC Site".

2. Purpose and Authorized Use of the Site; Limited License

Purpose. Each HSSC Site is intended to be used for lawful purposes only. The purpose of the Site is: to enable persons (i) to obtain information about HSSC and its supported organizations or affiliates (the "HSSC Community"), (ii) to facilitate communication between and among Members regarding healthcare issues and specific research studies underway within or in connection with the HSSC Community, (iii) to provide social networking information about and interaction with researchers within the HSSC Community as well as (iv) links to sites sponsored by the supported organizations and affiliates of HSSC.

Children. The Site is intended for the use of adults 18 years or older. Children are requested to refrain from using this Site or from providing personally identifying information through this Site.

Members and visitors. Registered Members will be granted access to certain registered, password protected areas of the Site or Sites. Non-Members who visit any Site will not be granted any such access. Both the Members and the visitors of any of the foregoing HSSC Sites will be bound by these Terms of Use.

Limited License. For the purposes set forth above, HSSC grants you a limited personal, non-exclusive, non-assignable and non-transferable license to use and display the contents of and services on each HSSC Site. Unauthorized copying or duplication of the content, including but not limited to text, graphics, sounds, images, logos, button icons and software that has been modified, merged and/or included on the Site and/or any compilation thereof (the "Content") in any manner is expressly forbidden. You acknowledge that you may not sublicense, transfer, sell or assign this license or the services received thereunder. Any attempt to sublicense, transfer, sell or assign this license is null and void.

3. Restrictions

Restricted Areas. Unauthorized access to registered areas of the Site by non-registered Members is prohibited. If you have a password allowing access to a non-public area of the Site, you may not disclose or share your password with any third parties or use your password for any unauthorized purpose.

No Illegal Use of the Site. Members or visitors may not use any HSSC Site to transmit, distribute, store or destroy Content (a) in violation of any applicable law or regulation, (b) in a manner that will infringe the copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property rights of others or violate the privacy, publicity or other personal rights of others, or (c) that is defamatory, obscene, threatening, abusive or hateful.

No Interference with Security. Members and visitors are prohibited from violating or attempting to violate the security of the Site, including, without limitation, (a) accessing data not intended for such Member or logging into a server or account that the Member is not authorized to access, (b) attempting to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of a system or network or to breach security or authentication measures without proper authorization, (c) attempting to interfere with service to any Member, host or network, including, without limitation, via means of submitting a virus to the Site, overloading, "flooding", "spamming", "mailbombing" or "crashing", (d) sending unsolicited e-mail, including promotions and/or advertising of products or services, or (e) forging any TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in any e-mail or posting. Violations of system or network security may result in civil or criminal liability. HSSC will investigate occurrences that may involve such violations and may involve, and cooperate with, law enforcement authorities in prosecuting Members who are involved in such violations.

Disclosure of Other's Personal Member Information. Members are prohibited from disclosing to any third party any "personal Member information" regarding any other Member that he, she or it has acquired through HSSC. For this purpose, "personal Member information" includes, in conjunction with an individual's first name or initial and last name, that individual's Social Security number, driver's license number or government-issued identification card number, financial account information such as credit card or bank account number, and medical history and information. Each member consents and agrees to hold HSSC harmless and to indemnify HSSC from any and all liability, cost and expenses in connection with that member's actual or alleged improper, unauthorized or unlawful disclosure of another member's personal information.

4. Specific Prohibited Uses

HSSC specifically prohibits any use of the Site (and all Members and visitors agree not to use the Site) for any of the following:

  • Deleting or revising any content posted by any other person or entity without permission from the Member who posted such content.
  • Taking any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on this Site's infrastructure.
  • Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained herein, using or attempting to use any engine, software, tool, agent or other device or mechanism (including without limitation browsers, spiders, robots, avatars or intelligent agents) to navigate or search this Site other than the search engine and search agents available from HSSC on this Site and other than generally available third party Web browsers (e.g., Netscape Navigator®, Microsoft Internet Explorer®).
  • Attempting to decipher, decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer any of the software comprising or in any way making up a part of the Site.
  • Aggregating, copying or duplicating in any manner any of the Content or information available from this Site.
  • Framing of or linking to any of the Content or information available from this Site.

5. Member Information

When you register for the Site to be a

Member, you will be asked to provide HSSC with certain information including, without limitation, a valid email address and other information that might be defined additionally as personal Member information (your "Member Information"). Please see HSSC's Privacy Policy for further details regarding your Member Information. You acceptance of these Terms of Use shall include your acceptance of HSSC"s Privacy Policy.

6. Member Submissions

Responsible Posting. As a member, you are responsible for your own communications and are responsible for the consequences of their posting. You must not, and by using this Site you agree not to, do the following things:

  • Post any communication or information that is misleading, false or inaccurate, or for any reason.
  • Post any franchise, pyramid scheme, "club membership", distributorship or sales representative agency arrangement or other business opportunity, which requires an up front or periodic payment, pays commissions only requires recruitment of other members, sub-distributors or sub-agents.
  • Post Content that is copyrighted, unless you are the copyright owner or have the permission of the copyright owner to post it.
  • Post Content that reveals trade secrets, unless you own them or have the permission of the owner.
  • Post Content that infringes on any intellectual property rights of others or on the privacy or publicity rights of others.
  • Post Content that is obscene, defamatory, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, or embarrassing to another Member or any other person or entity.
  • Post any type of inappropriate and/or sexually-explicit language statement.
  • Post solicitations of business unrelated to the healthcare industry, post chain letters or pyramid schemes; impersonate another person; or post Content that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines or engines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or information.

While HSSC will permit Members to post hyperlinks to pages off of the HSSC Site, as long as any such hyperlinks are directly related to activities with the HSSC Community, or its staff or individual Members in activities related to HSSC, HSSC reserves the right, in its absolute discretion to disable any hyperlinks contained in a posted communication or otherwise posted on the HSSC Site.

License from Member. Subject to our Privacy Policy, the terms of which are incorporated into and made a part of these Terms of Use, by submitting any form of content (graphic, text, audiovisual, sound, etc.) to any public or non-public area of any HSSC Site, you grant HSSC and its affiliates the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, sub-licensable (through multiple tiers), non-exclusive right (including any moral rights) and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, communicate to the public, perform and display the content (in whole or in part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, for the full term of any rights that may exist in such content. You also warrant that the holder of any rights, including moral rights in such content, has completely and effectively waived all such rights and validly and irrevocably granted to you the right to grant the license stated above. You also permit any Member to access, display, view, store and reproduce such content for personal use. Subject to the foregoing, the owner of such content placed on any HSSC Site retains any and all rights that may exist in such content.

7. Registration and Password

You will create a password during the registration process. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of the password and your HSSC IT application-related username, and you are fully responsible for all activities that occur under the auspices of your account. You are to (a) immediately notify us of any unauthorized use of your password or e-mail address or any other breach of security, and (b) ensure that you exit from your account at the end of each session.

8. Ownership

The Content on the HSSC Site is protected under United States copyright, trademark and/or other laws and is the property of HSSC and/or its content suppliers, supported organizations, affiliates, Members, or advertisers. Unauthorized use of the Content may violate copyright, trademark, and other laws. You may not sell or modify the Content or reproduce, display, distribute, or otherwise use the Content in any way for any public or commercial purpose, including but not restricted to the adaptation of the HTML code that HSSC creates to generate its pages. You shall not display, disparage, dilute, or taint our trademarks or use any confusingly similar marks or use our mark in such a way that would misrepresent who the proper owner of such mark is. Any permitted use of our trademarks by you shall inure to our benefit.

9. HSSC's Liability

HSSC Is Only A Venue. Each Site acts as a venue for Members to (i) gather, query, post, display, modify, and view public information pertaining to HSSC Community activities and (ii) gather and display publicly available information, individual Member profile information, news releases, details of research studies, publications and grant aware data associated with individual Members within the HSSC Community. HSSC has no control over the quality, safety or legality of the institutional, staff, and researcher-specific information posted, the truth or accuracy of the institutional, staff, and researcher-specific information posted by any Member. In addition, please note that there are risks, including but not limited to the risk of physical harm, of dealing with strangers, foreign nationals, underage persons or people acting under false pretenses. You assume all risks associated with dealing with other Members with whom you come in contact through any HSSC Site.

Release from Member -to- Member Dealings. Because Member authentication on the Internet is difficult, HSSC cannot and does not confirm that each Member is who they claim to be or that their personal information is truthful or complete. HSSC facilitates an exchange of information; it does not supervise, verify or regulate the content of that information. It is the responsibility of each Member to take the precautions that member deems suitable to assure the identity of any other Member with whom he, she or it deals and to assure the accuracy of information provided by other Member on which he, she or it intends to rely. Because we do not and cannot be involved in Member-to-Member dealings or control the behavior of participants on any HSSC Site, in the event that you have a dispute with one or more Members, you agree to release HSSC (and our agents and employees) from claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential, direct and indirect) of every kind and nature, known and unknown, suspected and unsuspected, disclosed and undisclosed, arising out of or in any way connected with such disputes. If you are a California resident, you waive California Civil Code 1542, which says: "A general release does not extend to claims which the creditor does not know or suspect to exist in his favor at the time of executing the release, which if known by him must have materially affected his settlement with the debtor." We are under no legal obligation to, and generally do not, control the information provided by other Members which is made available through any HSSC Site. By its very nature, other people's information may be offensive, harmful or inaccurate, and in some cases will be mislabeled or deceptively labeled. We expect that you will use caution and common sense when using any HSSC Site.

Not Responsible For Member Conduct or Postings. HSSC acts as a passive conduit for the online distribution and publication of Member-submitted information and has no obligation to screen communications or information in advance and is not responsible for screening or monitoring Content posted by any Member. If notified by a Member of communications which allegedly do not conform to these Terms of Use, HSSC may investigate the allegation and determine in good faith and its sole discretion whether to remove or request the removal of the communication. HSSC has no liability or responsibility to Members for performance or nonperformance of such activities. HSSC reserves the right to expel Members and prevent their further access to any HSSC Site for violating the Terms of Use or the law and the right to remove communications which are abusive, illegal, or disruptive. HSSC may take any action at any time with respect to member-submitted information that it deems necessary or appropriate in its sole discretion if it believes it may create liability for HSSC, harm other Member or may cause HSSC to lose (in whole or in part) the services of its ISPs or other suppliers.

Inaccuracies. The Content may contain inaccuracies or typographical errors. HSSC makes no representations about the accuracy, reliability, completeness, or timeliness of this Site or the Content. The use of any HSSC Site and the Content is at your own risk. Changes are periodically made to each Site by HSSC at any time for any reasons as deemed appropriate by HSSC. You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for the form, content and accuracy of any Content placed by you on any HSSC Site.

10. Limitation of Liability and Warranty

You agree that use of this Site is entirely at your own risk. Each HSSC Site and the services provided therein are provided "as is," without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including without limitation any warranty for information, services, uninterrupted or error free access, or products provided through or in connection with the service, including without limitation our software or services licensed to you and the results obtained through the service (unless such warranties are legally incapable of exclusion). Specifically, we disclaim any and all warranties, including without limitation: 1) any warranties concerning the availability, accuracy or content of information, products or services; and 2) any warranties of title or warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This disclaimer of liability applies to any damages or injury caused by any failure of performance, error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay, inoperability or transmission, computer virus, communication line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to, alteration of, or use of record, whether for breach of contract, tortuous behavior, negligence, or under any other cause of action. You specifically acknowledge that we are not liable for the defamatory, offensive or illegal conduct of other Members, visitors or third-parties and that the risk of injury from the foregoing rests entirely with you. Our entire liability and your exclusive remedy with respect to the use of our services is the cancellation of your registration or one month paid subscription with us. Neither we nor any of our agents, affiliates, co-branders, partners or content providers shall be liable for any direct, indirect or incidental damages, lost profits, or special or consequential damages arising out of use of any HSSC Site or inability to gain access to or use any HSSC Site whether based on breach of warranty, contract, tort, or any other legal theory, and whether or not the company is advised of the possibility of such damages. You hereby acknowledge that the provisions of this section shall apply to all content and services on each HSSC Site.

11. Links to Other Web Sites

Each HSSC Site provides links to third party World Wide Web Sites. Because we have no control over such third party Web sites, you acknowledge and agree that HSSC is not responsible for the availability of such external sites or resources, and does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for any content, advertising, products, or other materials on or available from such Web sites or resources. You further acknowledge and agree that HSSC is not responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with your use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such Web site.

12. No Resale or Unauthorized Commercial Use

You agree not to resell or assign your rights or obligations under these Terms of Use. You also agree not to make any unauthorized commercial use of any HSSC Site, without the express written approval of HSSC. HSSC reserves the right to immediately remove from any Site any other postings or Content without prior notice or notification.

13. Termination

HSSC reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to pursue all of its legal remedies, including but not limited to deletion of your postings from any HSSC Site and immediate termination of your registration with or ability to access any or all HSSC Sites and/or any other service provided to you by HSSC, upon any breach by you of these Terms of Use. In addition, HSSC reserves the right, at its sole discretion, for any reason or for no reason, to suspend or terminate your account with and access to HSSC and in such event will have no responsibility or liability to you; and HSSC will not be responsible for any lost opportunities or other damages or loss that you may incur as a result of such suspension or termination.

14. Indemnity

You agree to hold us and our affiliates, employees, contractors, officers, directors, co-branders, partners and content providers harmless from any and all claims, disputes and expenses, including attorney's fees and court costs, related to your violation of this agreement, including the rules of conduct, or any information, software, files, messages or other content placed on any HSSC Site by you. We reserve the right, at our own expense, to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you. In that event, you shall have no further obligation to provide indemnification to us in that matter.

15. Your Obligation Not To Transfer In Violation Of Any Law and Transfer to the United States

If you are located outside of the United States, you are notified and aware that the personal data you provide to us is anticipated to be transferred to the United States. Whenever you submit any personal data to us, you consent to this transfer and all related transfers (e.g. to state registration boards, etc. as envisaged in this Agreement and the Site), and you promise and agree not to make any transfer (including without limitation, transfers to us) except as permitted by applicable law. We make no representation that the Site, Content or services provided on the Site are appropriate or available for use in locations outside the United States. Access to this Site from jurisdictions where the Site, Content, services or envisioned communications or content of the communications, are or may be illegal, is prohibited. If you are an international visitor (a) you are responsible for compliance with all local laws, (b) you represent and warrant that you are authorized to release to us the information contemplated in this Agreement, and (c) you forever release HSSC (and our agents and employees) from claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential, direct and indirect) of every kind and nature, known and unknown, suspected and unsuspected, disclosed and undisclosed, arising out of or in any way connected with any violation of such local laws, and whether or not you may have made us aware of any such matters.

16. Additional Terms of Use

Certain areas of each Site are subject to additional Terms of Use or other requirements stated in such other areas. By using such areas, or any part thereof, you agree to be bound by the additional Terms of Use applicable to such areas.

17. Termination of Service

You may terminate your right to use any HSSC Site and services at any time by notification to us as set forth above. We may terminate your account or access rights to any or all HSSC Sites at any time, without notice, in our sole discretion.

18. General Provisions

These Terms of Use are governed by the substantive laws of the State of South Carolina, without respect to its conflict of laws principles. Jurisdiction for any claims arising under These Terms of Use shall lie exclusively with the state or federal courts within South Carolina. If any provision of these Terms of Use is found to be invalid by any court having competent jurisdiction, the invalidity of such provision shall not affect the validity of the remaining provisions of these Terms of Use, which shall remain in full force and effect. No waiver of any term or condition of these Terms of Use shall be deemed a further or continuing waiver of such term or any other term. Except as expressly provided in additional Terms of Use for areas of any Site, a particular "Legal Notice," or software license or Content on particular Web pages, these Terms of Use constitutes the entire agreement between you and HSSC with respect to the use of any or all HSSC Sites. No changes to these Terms of Use shall be made except by a revised posting by HSSC on this page.

19. Your Acceptance of these Terms

By using any HSSC Site, you signify your assent to the HSSC Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with these Terms of Use and/or our Privacy Policy, please refrain from using this Site. Your continued use of any HSSC Site following changes to these Terms of Use and/or our Privacy Policy will mean that you also accept the changes.