Terms of Service (Archived)

Please read the entire terms of service. You may not use our services if you have not agreed to this contract.

The primary goal of Discovery Grid is to have a safe, respectful virtual environment for our residents and visitors. By logging into the virtual world or the WEB site, or teleporting into our virtual world via hypergrid, you must agree to abide by our Terms of Service (TOS). We employ technological methods to alert you to read the TOS and for you to decide whether to agree to these terms.

We believe we comply with GDPR and CCPA data privacy regulations. Please refer to the privacy policy which clarifies how we protect your data. We claim we are a safe harbor site under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which requires that we have a repeat infringer policy. The policy is stated below. Please refer to the DMCA Notice policy for details. Along with DMCA takedowns we will comply with takedown decisions of copyright violation claims via the Copyright Small Claims and the Copyright Claims Board.

Previous TOS

We promise:

• To protect your privacy as much as legally possible (In other words, in all cases except a legal subpoena.) We will use your personal contact information only for billing, service announcements, support issues, and for other communications that you have previously agreed to. If we need to look at your personal data for any other reason, we will ask your permission first. You will be referred to by your publicly available avatar name where possible.
• To respect intellectual property by promptly taking down infringing content (via the DMCA process or CCB process) and by asking for permission before using users' content in marketing materials or in any other way other than what's required for normal grid operations.
• To lock content, brought in from known sources or virtual worlds that routinely traffick infringing content, as unmodifiable, uncopyable, non-transferrable, and not saleable. This is to comply with new laws and regulations that stipulate the duties required of content hosting sites.
• To make sure to give adequate notice if ever we were to shut down the grid permanently, so that you can make backups of all legally exportable content and get a refund of any money owed to you by the grid. Currency cash-outs or transfers are not the responsibility of the grid and would need to be undertaken with the relevant money provider – Podex or Gloebit.
• To allow you to make backups of your own creations, and of content marked exportable by its creators.

You promise:

• To not harass other users, or personally attack them based on race, gender, sexual preference, religion, or other affiliation.
• Not to harass, flame, abuse, make derogatory remarks, or engage in other methods of harassment to any other person on Discovery Grid in any way, shape, or form.
• To respect the intellectual property rights of others by uploading only appropriately licensed content, and by exporting only content that you yourself have created or have permission to export.
• To respect maturity ratings by rezzing only appropriate content and engaging in appropriate behaviors. Illegal behavior will not be tolerated and may result in being reported to appropriate authorities.
• To respect the privacy of fellow users. This means, but is not limited to, not revealing any real life information about another person.

You agree:

• That when you create an avatar account, you will provide true and accurate information asked by the registration process, that the account name is not offensive, and does not demean or infringe.
• That when you create an avatar account, the avatar name is a pseudonym and not personally identifiable as described in the GDPR, CCPA. Personal Identifiable Information is any data that can be used to clearly identify an individual.
• That you are at least 18 years of age.
• That you will provide a true and contactable email for grid communication, an email address that you monitor regularly, and that you will provide us with your country of residency.
• That when you upload your content to our grid, or when you create new content on the Discovery Grid platform, that we have your permission to distribute that content to other users per your specifications. This allows you to have other users see your content, and enables you to sell or transfer your content in-world to others.
• If you create and distribute items in any way, as freebies, by selling them, by avatar to avatar transfers or via the Hypergrid, that you have created a durable contract between yourself and others. That by doing so you understand that some of your information (such as Avatar Name, and UUID) will be stored beyond requests for avatar deletion or when you are long gone. This is in compliance with the GDPR clause enabling the system to maintain function as intended, specifically to ensure people who were given or bought your creations have proof of provenance.
• That we also have the right to showcase your content in directories and destination guides.
• That we can transfer these rights to new owners if we sell the entire grid so that the new owners can continue to offer the same services without interruption.
• That we are only asking for the rights to use your content as part of the virtual world - you retain all the copyrights to the original content.
• That we can shut down your account at any time.
• That any in-world currency is fictional, are game tokens of no value, and will be used for entertainment purposes only.
• That the virtual world platform (Opensim) is betaware, there might be outages, or content losses, or other disruptions, and that we are not liable for any damages that may result.
• That the only exportable content is content that you yourself have created or content that is marked with the "export" permission. If the "export" permission is not yet enabled, exportable content is full-perm content.
• That any legal proceedings that are instigated against Discovery Grid, or its agents must be enacted in the accused's home locale.

Acceptance of the Discovery Grid Terms of Service

When we change the terms of service, we will ask you to agree to the new terms during a grace period, and you may make your decision to agree or decline. If you do not agree to the terms of service, do not use our services. We employ technological methods to enforce improper entry.

Repeat Infringer Policy

When a person receives multiple takedowns via DMCA or copyright violation claims by way of the CCB against any avatar they have created, the person (all avatars they have created) will be prohibited from uploading any content into Discovery Grid. If the nature of the infringements are egregious, as determined by us, you may be banned from entering Discovery Grid. The duration of these actions is indefinite.

Child Avatar Policy

No child avatars are permitted. If your avatar is deemed to have an immature or otherwise under-aged appearance you may be asked to change your avatar's appearance.

Region Tier Policy

When you purchase a region from Discovery Grid you are leasing server space for a given amount of virtual space, prim equivalents, and leasing the services to support the region. Each payment (also called tier) is monthly, payable in full, is nonrefundable, and commits one month of our services to you. Presently only Paypal payments are accepted.

Your first monthly tier payment is due upon region purchase (it is part of the purchase process). Thereafter, you agree to pay a monthly tier which is due on one of four billing cycles. The billing cycles are on the 1st, 8th, 15th, and 22nd of the month.

The 2nd payment is due the next month, but it will be moved to the billing cycle on or after the date the region is created. Thereafter your tier is due the same day of each month. For example, if your region was purchased on the 5th of the month and we created it on the 7th, the next tier will be billed on the 8th of the following month. If your region was created on the 24th of the month the next tier will become due on the 1st of the following month.

The automated billing system will send your avatar a courtesy reminder instant message 4 to 7 days before the bill is due. If you are not online when the message is sent, the reminder is sent to your avatar account's email address. You always are responsible to pay your tier on time even if the reminder does not get to you.

Tier Credit

You may pay ahead by up to 3 months. These payments are applied as a credit to your avatar account. When tier is due the accounting software first draws from your avatar account credit. If insufficient credit is present, you will be billed for the remaining tier amount.

Relinquishing a Region

Should you choose to relinquish owning a region, login in to the Discovery Grid WEB site, and notify us via a support ticket. Give us the region name and the termination date. Please do so at least 7 days before the next billing cycle. There are no refunds given, partial or otherwise, for the month. Any unused prepaid region tier credits will be refunded to you. The unpaid credit refund is sent ONLY to original payment source.

Overdue Actions

If your bill is overdue by 3 days, you will be sent an overdue reminder notice daily. Your region may be shut down temporarily to alert you of its overdue status.

If the bill is overdue by 7 days, your region will be shut down and archived. It will not be accessible until the overdue tier payment has been made and a restoration fee is paid. Paying the overdue tier and restoration fee will start your region and restore your region contents if the archived contents exist in our backups. We cannot guarantee the region will be placed in the same location it used to reside if another region has been placed there in the interim.

Leavetaking Policy

Many people do not visit virtual worlds every day; they usually visit once or twice a week to attend events. Builders and other creatives visit less frequently. Sometimes people leave the virtual world without deleting their avatar; they just walk away. Still others want to keep their avatar name even if they are not present in the virtual world. The following policies address this wide range of inactivity or permanent leave-taking. These policies are are monitored by and acted upon by automatic processes to meet the requirements of data privacy regulations:

• If an avatar has not entered inworld for over 30 days, IMs and group notices to emails are turned off. This is done to avoid cluttering your email inbox. Administrative emails are always sent. Email delivery can be enabled by you at any time after the avatar goes inworld.
• Once or twice a year, we send an email verification to ensure we can reach you when necessary. This is required by regulatory agencies in most countries. If you do not respond to the email within 10 days (more or less), your account will be suspended temporarily until you do respond.
• If an administrative email sent to your avatar's email address bounces with the destination ISP indicating that the email address does not exist or that the email delivery was refused, your email verification is invalidated and your account is suspended until you correct the matter.
• If your account has been inactive (no inworld entries) for a year, a deletion warning will be sent to your avatar's email address. If you then do not go inworld within a month (more or less) or if the warnning email that was sent to you bounces, your avatar account will be deleted. All data pertaining to your avatar (inventory, group memberships, etc.) are scrubbed irrevocably to comply with privacy regulations in most countries (see TOS section for details). Some information required for business purposes is retained (see the privacy policy page for details).