MERMAID TERMS OF SERVICE
These Terms of Service (or "Agreement") are between you and the operator of MERMAID, the Wildlife Conservation Society (the “Operator”). By accessing or using MERMAID, which is offered through datamermaid.org and associated websites, applications, products and/or services (collectively, the "Service"), you agree to and are bound by this Agreement.
Purpose/Goals. MERMAID is a web-based coral reef data platform. Its mission is to allow coral reef scientists to efficiently collect clean coral reef monitoring data. Users can register, create profiles and join projects with their teams as they collect field data offline through common transect methods.
MERMAID's goal is to provide users with access to clean and standardized reef monitoring data, processed quickly and stored centrally and securely, to transform and accelerate coral reef conservation. MERMAID allows users to collect, manage and export their data in secure projects.
Usage. You agree to use the Service solely for the MERMAID purpose and goals outlined above in furtherance of conservation of wildlife and environments. You agree to use the Service in compliance with all applicable laws, rules, statutes and regulations, and you acknowledge that you are solely responsible for such compliance, including with any local laws. You agree not to, and have no rights to, change, modify, alter or tamper with the Service or its underlying software, appearance or functionality, or interfere with or disrupt others’ use of the Service. You agree not to defame, harass or threaten anyone or make available any material that is obscene, pornographic or offensive; is intentionally deceptive; is discriminatory or abusive toward any individual or group; violates applicable law or promotes any such violation; contains or installs any malware, viruses or other harmful components; or infringes the proprietary or personal right of any third party. Operator reserves the right to remove any materials, information, data or other content on or in the Service at any time, in its sole discretion, including without limitation if Operator determines such content is in violation of law or Operator's policies. However, Operator does not commit (and has no obligation hereunder) to review any or all materials or content on or in the Service.
Account and API Usage. MERMAID is organized on a per-project basis. Each project will have at least one administrator who creates and manages the project as it exists on the Service. In order to use the Service, you must register for an account by creating a password-protected login, or using an authentication provider offered by the Service. When you use a MERMAID application program interface ("API"), each request to use an API must include one of your account's unique API keys. You are responsible for the security of your login and password, and for all content provided, profiles created, projects implemented and any other activity occurring thereunder, including any use of your account's API key(s). You will promptly notify the Operator if you become aware of any actual or suspected unauthorized use of or access to the Service, including the API.
Content and Intellectual Property Rights.
MERMAID Content and Rights. The Service may contain, generate or provide access to certain data, articles, publications, content, materials, reports, analyses, tools and other information, aside from Your Content and Other User Content as those terms are defined below (collectively, “MERMAID Content”). Your use of the Service does not give you any ownership rights in or to any MERMAID Content or any other intellectual property in the Service. The Operator (as, as applicable, its third party licensors) own and shall continue to own the Service (including without limitation any underlying software and other technology and any MERMAID Content) and all of the rights thereto, including without limitation all copyrights, trademarks, patents and other proprietary rights. All rights not expressly granted herein are reserved to the Operator. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, the Operator hereby grants you the limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive right to use the Service solely as permitted hereunder. You may use the "MERMAID" name and/or logo without modification solely in connection with your permitted use of the Service and solely in a manner that accurately portrays the Service and your use of the Service. Operator reserves the right to revoke the forego permissions at any time with written notice to you. Any use by you of any Operator name, logo or other mark shall be subject to the advance written consent of the Operator. The Service may use third-party providers (including but not necessarily limited to Amazon Web Services) to host and serve the Service and any data, information or content, including without limitation Your Content.
Your Content. All information, data, photos, video, graphics, materials and other content you provide to the Service (whether through submission, uploading or otherwise making available) shall be referred to herein as “Your Content”. You shall retain all of your rights to Your Content, subject to the rights and licenses expressly granted in this Agreement. You represent and warrant that you own or control all Your Content, and possess all rights, licenses and authorizations necessary to provide Your Content to the Service, for Operator to use your Content in accordance with this Agreement and to grant the rights and licenses granted hereunder. You further represent and warrant that no part of Your Content will infringe or violate any copyright, trade secret, trademark, patent, invention, or other proprietary, privacy or personal right of any third party. You represent and warrant that Your Content will be true, accurate, and complete to the best of your knowledge. You are solely responsible and liable for all Your Content. You hereby grant to the Operator the royaltyfree, fully paid-up, nonexclusive, irrevocable, sublicenseable, worldwide right and license, but not the obligation, to use, share, copy, modify, prepare derivative works of, distribute, perform, transmit, display and store Your Content in perpetuity. As applicable, portions of Your Content may be subject to the data sharing provisions and restrictions below.
Third-Party User Content. The Service incorporates content from your project and the projects of others. All information, data, photos, video, graphics, materials and other content provided to the ServicesService by other users shall be referred to herein as “Other User Content”. All Other User Content is provided “as is” without any warranty, curation or verification of any kind. Any reliance by you on Other User Content is at your own risk and you are solely responsible and liable for your use of any such Other User Content. If you wish to access or use any Other User Content, you should examine the licenses and restrictions in the per-project, per-protocol metadata pertaining to such content (see "Data Sharing" below). You must comply with the per-project, per-protocol licenses and restrictions associated with each third-party dataset and any Other User Content.
Data Sharing and Image Classification.
The Service is committed to protecting the data privacy of users with respect to their projects, and offers three privacy options for each protocol implemented in each individual project; however, photos, videos and other images you provide to the Service will be subject to separate sharing rules as specified below. Regardless of which privacy option you select, in order to maintain transparency as to who collected the original data, data is always associated with the names of, and a mechanism to contact, project administrators (but email addresses are not made public). In any event, all public data (including any data that is public under the Public summary selection below), may be modified or supplemented by Operator at any time in its discretion.
Private. If you select “Private” for your project, collected observations and site-level summary statistics you provide to or generate using the Service are kept private from other users and the public, but metadata for your project, protocol and site, including site location and type and count of sample unit at each site, are public and may be disclosed to other users and the public.
Public summary. If you select “Public summary”, collected observations you provide to the Service are kept private from other users and the public, but site-level data (but not transect-level data and observation data), along with metadata for your project, protocol and site are public and may be disclosed to other users and the public. This option is the default for all projects.
Public. If you select “Public” for your project, all collected observations (in addition to site-level summary statistics and metadata) for your project are pub lic and may be disclosed to other users and the public.
Image Classification. Regardless of which privacy option you select, photos, videos and other images you provide to the Service, along with any annotations for the foregoing (collectively, “Your Images”), will also be subject to the following disclosures. All of Your Images may be stripped of EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data and then, once so stripped, may be made public and disclosed to other users and/or the public. Without limiting any other rights or licenses granted hereunder, anyone may use the stripped version of Your Images for any legal purpose, including for example and without limitation, to train machine learning and other artificial intelligence models as well as other models and technologies, or to create labeled, annotated or modified versions of Your Images. Neither the image metadata (EXIF data) from, nor the MERMAID annotations of Your Images, in each case as made available by Operator, will contain any user-specific information, such as location or date. The only means of accessing from Operator additional user-specific information with respect to Your Images is via requests to the MERMAID API as an authenticated member of the project of which Your Image is a part (so that third party users without such access would not see on the Service any connection between Your Images and your sites, projects or transects).
APls
Access and Restrictions. Subject to these Terms of Service, you may access allowed components of the Service's APls solely for use with the Service.
You agree not to (a) sell, rent, lease, sublicense, redistribute, or syndicate access to any APls; (b) use any APls in violation of any applicable law or regulation, including privacy laws; (c) use APls in any manner that (i) compromises, breaks or circumvents the Operator's technical processes or security measures, (ii) poses a security vulnerability to the Operator or other users of the Service, or (iii) tests the vulnerability of the Operator's systems or networks; (d) modify any APls; (e) use automated systems or software to extract (i.e., "scrape") data from any APIs; or, (f) attempt to use any APls in a manner that exceeds the usage or rate limits determined by the Operator. The Operator reserves the right to audit, limit or block your use of any API at any time for any reason in its sole discretion, including without limitation if the Operator reasonably suspects any violation of the foregoing restrictions.
Attribution. Subject to these Terms of Service, you may implement allowed components of the Service's API for your site(s), application(s) or service(s).
If you use any MERMAID APls, you must credit MERMAID. The MERMAID™ attribution and/or MERMAID logo must appear reasonably prominently, in a form acceptable to Operator, in conjunction with any site, application or service that incorporates any API component or data obtained from the Service. You may not display or use the Service or MERMAID name or logo in any manner that implies a relationship or affiliation with, sponsorship, promotion or endorsement by MERMAID.
No Warranty and Disclaimers. The Service (including all data, information, materials and other content therein) is provided by Operator under this agreement "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind, either express, implied, statutory or otherwise, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of title, non infringement, merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose (all of which are hereby disclaimed). To the maximum extent permitted by law, Operator will have no liability related to any content arising under intellectual property rights, libel, privacy, publicity, obscenity or other laws. Operator also disclaims all liability with respect to the misuse, loss, modification, or unavailability of any data. Operator does not warrant that the Service will meet your requirements; that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; that the information provided through the Service is accurate, reliable or correct; that any defects or errors will be corrected; that the Service will be available at any particular time or location; or that the Service is free of viruses or other harmful components. The Operator makes no representation that the Service is appropriate or available for use at all locations, and access to the Service from territories where the service is illegal is prohibited.
Limitation of Liability. In no event shall Operator or its affiliates, or any directors, trustees, officers, employees, consultants, independent contractors, or agents of Operator or of any Operator entity or affiliate be liable to you or any third party for any special, punitive, incidental, indirect or consequential damages or losses of any kind arising out of or in connection with the Service or this Agreement, including those resulting from loss of use, data or lost profits, whether or not foreseeable, whether or not Operator has been advised of the possibility of such damages or losses, and on any theory of liability, including breach of contract or warranty, negligence or other tortious action, or any other claim arising out of or in connection with this Agreement or arising out of:
The access or use of or the inability to access or use the Service;
The statements or actions of any third party on or via the Service;
Any unauthorized access to or alteration of the data;
Any information that is sent or received or not sent or received;
Any failure to store or loss of data or other content; and
Any Service features or functionality that are delayed or interrupted.
Release and Indemnification. You hereby agree to release the Operator from any and all claims, demands, liabilities and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind and nature, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with your access to or use of the Service or any results, data or information therefrom (except to the extent arising out of the gross negligence or willful misconduct of Operator). To the fullest extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify, defend and hold the Operator, its affiliates and any directors, trustees, officers, employees, consultants, independent contractors and agents of Operator or of any Operator entity or affiliate, harmless from and against any and all third-party claims, suits, actions or proceedings (“Claims”) along with any resulting damages, liabilities, costs or expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, due to or arising from: (a) your access to or use of the Service or any results, data or information therefrom; (b) your violation of any provision of this Agreement; (c) Your Content or any other materials, information or content that you may submit, post to or transmit to the Service (including a third party's use of such content (e.g. reliance on the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of your data)); (d) your use of or access to Other User content or other content while using the Service, including your reliance on the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any data; or (d) your infringement of any third party's copyright, trademark, or other proprietary right, your violation of any privacy right or publicity right, or any libel or violation of any other law by you in connection with this Agreement.
General.
Choice of Law. Except to the extent applicable law provides otherwise, this Agreement and any access to or use of the Service are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of the State of New York, disregarding New York's choice-of-law rules. You agree and hereby submit to the exclusive personal jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in the State of New York.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Operator reserves the right to seek equitable or injunctive relief in any jurisdiction in the world.
Survival. The provisions of this Agreement that by their nature should survive termination will survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity, and limitations of liability.
Notices. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you (1) consent to receive communications from Operator in an electronic form via the email address or other contact information you have submitted or via the Service; and (2) agree that all Terms of Service, agreements, notices, disclosures, and other communications that Operator provides to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that those communications would satisfy if they were on paper. Legal notice to Operator must be made in writing to the address provided below.
Modification. The Operator may, in its sole discretion, modify all or any portions of this Agreement at any time. The Operator will notify you of any changes by posting notice of such modifications in the Service or sending notice via e-mail, or other means. Your continued use of the Service following notice of such modifications shall be deemed to be your acceptance of any such modifications to this Agreement.
Suggestions and Feedback. In the event you provide or submit any suggestions, enhancement requests, comments, recommendations, feedback or other ideas regarding the Service (collectively “Suggestions”), you hereby grant to the Operator a royalty-free, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, sub-licenseable license to such Suggestions for any and all purposes, including to use and incorporate such Suggestions for or into the Service.
Termination of Service or Access. Operator reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service, in whole or in part, or your access thereto, with or without notice. You may terminate your access to the Service at any time by contacting the Operator. You will have the choice to remove or retain any data that you have uploaded to the Service while your account is still active for use by you following termination of your account (it being understood that you have no rights to, and Operator has no obligation to provide or maintain, access to, or the ability to remove or obtain, Your Content or any other data on or in the Service following termination of your account or termination of your access to the Service). Operator has no obligation (and may choose in its discretion whether or not) to retain or, conversely, to delete or remove any of Your Content or other data or information you have uploaded to the Service after termination, subject to any obligations of Operator under applicable laws and regulations with respect to any of your personal information. In any event, any of Your Content which has been permitted to be shared with other users or the public as provided in this Agreement or otherwise made publicly available or licensed to Operator in accordance with this Agreement may be retained and used by Operator after termination of your Service account or Service access or after termination of this Agreement. Upon termination, any licenses, rights or permissions granted to you by Operator hereunder shall terminate immediately.
No Assignment By You; Operator Assignment. You may not assign or delegate any rights or obligations hereunder without the Operator's prior written consent, and any unauthorized assignment and delegation by you shall be null and void. Operator may freely assign this Agreement at any time.
Severability, No Waiver, and Survival. If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that portion of the Agreement will be construed to reflect the parties' original intent. The remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. Any failure on the part of the Operator to enforce any provision of this Agreement will not be considered a waiver of the Operator's right to enforce such provision. All waivers must be in writing signed by the waiving party to be effective hereunder. The Operator's rights under this Agreement will survive any termination or expiration of this Agreement.
Titles. Section headings within this Agreement are for convenience only.
Entire Agreement. This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between you and the Operator relating to the subject matter hereof and supersedes all prior or contemporaneous understandings, communications or agreements, written or oral, regarding such subject matter.
Questions; Operator Contact Information. If you have questions about this Agreement, please contact: contact@datamermaid.org. Direct legal notices to: Wildlife Conservation Society, Office of General Counsel, 2300 Southern Boulevard, Bronx , New York 1046G USA.
Consent. By using this Service, you hereby consent to these Terms of Service.