Last Modified April 30, 2019
In addition to our Terms of Service, we provide the following guidelines for our community. These guidelines fall under a common sense philosophy and apply to all user(s) generated content and activity on our services. This is considered a living document that we regularly update based on the evolution of the GPN community and service. To protect the integrity of our community, as the provider of the service, we reserve the right to suspend any account(s) at any time for any conduct that we determine to be inappropriate or harmful. Such actions may include: removal of content, a strike on the account, and/or suspension of account(s).
A strict enforcement of regulations and bans against undesirable behaviors. Undesirable behavior is when a user tries to start arguments by upset other users, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, foul language, or off topic messages on all our service,. with the intent of provoking a negative response or disrupting conversation(s). Posting content such as promotional, spam, racism, pornographic, sexual, illegal, or hate content is not allowed on all our services. All content uploaded or provided to the GP | Networking Services must be family friendly. This is including but is not limited to: Avatars, Signatures, Attachments, embeds, posts, as well as messages towards other users. Harassing of Users and/or Staff through private messages and/or public services or any other form of communication is not tolerated, and in any kind unacceptable. Impersonating administrators, moderators, or staff in any way, shape or form via our services is not allowed.
Applicable to all our services
· Respect all users
Please be respectful and kind to others while using our services, or lounging in our lobbies. Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It's important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one.
· Enforcing the Law
You must enforce all applicable international laws while using our services. Any activity featuring, encouraging, offering, or soliciting illegal activity is prohibited.
· Age Requirement
You must be 13 years or older to use GPN it's services.
· Usernames/URL Abuse or Squatting.
GPN's usernames/URLs are meant for the use and enjoyment of all of our users. Don't squat, hoard, amass, accumulate, accrue, stockpile, rack up, buy, trade, sell, launder, invest in, ingest, get drunk on, cyber with, grope, or jealously guard GPN's usernames/URLs.
· Disruptions, Exploits, or Resource Abuse.
Our servers, and the valiant engineers behind them, work hard for you. Don't attempt unauthorized use, disruption, or exploitation of gfx-pro.net or our other products and services, or otherwise abuse GPN's resources.
· Intellectual Property Rights
You should only share content on GPN that you own, or that you are otherwise authorized to share on GPN. If you share content that you do not own or otherwise do not have the rights to share on GPN, you may be infringing another person's intellectual property rights. This includes any third party content included in your content, derivative creations, or performances of others' copyrighted content.
· Inappropriate Content
We are committed to maintaining a community where users are free to express themselves and challenge one another's ideas, both technical and otherwise. Such discussions, however, are unlikely to foster fruitful dialog when ideas are silenced because community members are being shouted down or are afraid to speak up. That means you should be respectful and civil at all times, and refrain from attacking others on the basis of who they are. We do not tolerate behavior that crosses the line into the following:
· Threats of violence - You may not threaten violence towards others or use the site to organize, promote, or incite acts of real-world violence or terrorism. Think carefully about the words you use, the images you post, and even the software you write, and how they may be interpreted by others. Even if you mean something as a joke, it might not be received that way. If you think that someone else might interpret the content you post as a threat, or as promoting violence or terrorism, stop. Don't post it on GPN. In extraordinary cases, we may report threats of violence to law enforcement if we think there may be a genuine risk of physical harm or a threat to public safety.
· Hate speech and discrimination - While it is not forbidden to broach topics such as age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of experience, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation, we do not tolerate speech that attacks a person or group of people on the basis of who they are. Just realize that when approached in an aggressive or insulting manner, these (and other) sensitive topics can make others feel unwelcome, or perhaps even unsafe. While there's always the potential for misunderstandings, we expect our community members to remain respectful and civil when discussing sensitive topics.
· Bullying and harassment - We do not tolerate bullying or harassment. This means any habitual badgering or intimidation targeted at a specific person or group of people. In general, if your actions are unwanted and you continue to engage in them, there's a good chance you are headed into bullying or harassment territory.
· Impersonation - You may not seek to mislead others as to your identity by copying another person's avatar, posting content under their email address, using a similar username or otherwise posing as someone else. Impersonation is a form of harassment.
· Doxxing and invasion of privacy - Don't post other people's personal information, such as phone numbers, private email addresses, physical addresses, credit card numbers, Social Security/National Identity numbers, or passwords. Depending on the context, such as in the case of intimidation or harassment, we may consider other information, such as photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject's consent, to be an invasion of privacy, especially when such material presents a safety risk to the subject.
· Sexually obscene content - Don't post content that is pornographic. This does not mean that all nudity, or all code and content related to sexuality, is prohibited. We recognize that sexuality is a part of life and non-pornographic sexual content may be a part of your project, or may be presented for educational or artistic purposes. We do not allow obscene sexual content or content that may involve the exploitation or sexualization of minors.
· Gratuitously violent content - Don't post violent images, text, or other content without reasonable context or warnings. While it's often okay to include violent content in video games, news reports, and descriptions of historical events, we do not allow violent content that is posted indiscriminately, or that is posted in a way that makes it difficult for other users to avoid (such as a profile avatar or an issue comment). A clear warning or disclaimer in other contexts helps users make an educated decision as to whether or not they want to engage with such content.
· Active malware or exploits - Being part of a community includes not taking advantage of other members of the community. We do not allow anyone to use our platform for exploit delivery, such as using GPN as a means to deliver malicious executables, or as attack infrastructure, for example by organizing denial of service attacks or managing command and control servers. Note, however, that we do not prohibit the posting of source code which could be used to develop malware or exploits, as the publication and distribution of such source code has educational value and provides a net benefit to the security community.
· Copyright or Trademark Infringement.
Respect the copyrights and trademarks of others. If you aren't allowed to use someone else's copyrighted or trademarked work (either by license or by legal exceptions and limitations such as fair use), don't post it.
Intellectual property is a tricky issue, so now is as good a time as any to explain some aspects of the process we use for handling copyright and trademark complaints. We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement as per our Terms of Service and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; please see our DMCA notification form to file a copyright claim online. Please note that we require a valid DMCA notice before removing content. Parties asserting a trademark infringement claim should identify the allegedly infringing work and the legal basis for their claim, and include the registration and/or application number(s) pertaining to their trademark. Each claim is reviewed by a trained member of our Trust and Safety team.
If we remove material in response to a copyright or trademark claim, the user who posted the allegedly infringing material will be provided with information from the complainant's notice (like identification of the rightsholder and the allegedly infringed work) so they can determine the basis of the claim.
We always want to make sure there is room in any copyright or trademark complaint for both parties to make their case. With regard to copyright claims, the posting user can file a DMCA counter-notification with us, as described in our Terms of Service. Counter-notifications that we determine to be valid will result in restoration of the content at issue following the required waiting period prescribed by the DMCA. With regard to trademark claims, the posting user can send us an appeal explaining their side of the situation, along with any relevant materials we should look at. A successful trademark appeal will also result in restoration of the content at issue.
With regard to repeat copyright infringement, we use a three-strike system to evaluate the standing of a user's account, where, generally, each valid copyright infringement notice constitutes a strike, and three strikes results in the termination of a user's account. When a user submits a valid DMCA counter-notification, we remove the associated strike from their record.
We encourage users to be helpful and remind others of the terms when they see that things aren't going according. However, users should not take over the role of a moderator. These policies are promoted as preventing abuse and/or violating our terms of services. If you have any problems or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at our Help Center
If we conclude that you are violating these guidelines, you may receive a notice via email. If you don't explain or correct your behavior, we may take action against your account. We do our best to ensure fair outcomes, but in all cases we reserve the right to suspend accounts, or remove content, without notice, for any reason, but particularly to protect our services, infrastructure, users, and community. We reserve the right to enforce, or not enforce, these guidelines in our sole discretion, and these guidelines don't create a duty or contractual obligation for us to act in any particular manner.
