Terms of Use

Effective November 1, 2024

Welcome to Poets & Writers Groups (“Groups”), a community-building and collaboration tool comprised of various web pages operated by Poets & Writers, Inc. (“Poets & Writers”), a nonprofit literary organization serving creative writers, devoted to fostering their professional development. Groups is offered to you conditioned on your acceptance without modification of the terms, conditions, and notices contained herein (the “Terms”). Your use of Groups constitutes your agreement to all such Terms. Please read these terms carefully and keep a copy of them for your reference. 

Purpose
The purpose of Groups is to give writers a tool (the “Service”) to connect, communicate, and collaborate with one another. Groups is intended to be used by poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, spoken word artists, translators, editors, and readers who are over eighteen years of age.

Privacy
Your use of Groups is subject to Poets & Writers’ Privacy Policy. Please review our Privacy Policy, which also governs the website pw.org and informs users of our data collection practices. 

Eligibility
To be eligible to participate in Groups, you must (1) be at least eighteen years of age and (2) maintain a current Poets & Writers membership at a level that includes access to Groups among the benefits offered. Should your membership expire due to non-payment, you will be blocked from accessing the platform including your Groups profile, the pages of groups to which you belong, and all documents or messages you may have saved to the platform. (To manage your Poets & Writers membership, please visit My P&W.)

Your Account
If you use Groups, you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account with Poets & Writers and for restricting access to your computer, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password. You may create only one account. You may not assign or otherwise transfer your account to another person or entity. You agree to provide accurate information about yourself and your work. You acknowledge that Poets & Writers is not responsible for third party access to your account that results from theft or misappropriation of your account. You agree immediately to notify Poets & Writers in writing of any unauthorized use of your password or account or other breach of security. Poets & Writers and its associates reserve the right to refuse or cancel service, terminate accounts, or remove or edit content at our sole discretion. 

Links to Third Party Websites
Groups may contain links to other websites (“Linked Sites”). The Linked Sites are not under the control of Poets & Writers and Poets & Writers is not responsible for the contents of any Linked Site, including, without limitation, any link contained in a Linked Site, or any changes or updates to a Linked Site. Poets & Writers is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement of the site or any association with its operators by Poets & Writers. Any opinion or advice offered by or on the Linked Sites is solely that of the applicable authors and you acknowledge and agree that you must assess the accuracy and completeness of such content yourself. You hereby release Poets & Writers from any liability arising from your use of the content on the Linked Sites. 

Maintenance of Poets & Writers Groups
Each group within Poets & Writers Groups consists of an organizer (“Organizer”) who is responsible for creating the writing group and inviting, blocking, and/or removing members of the group and maintaining the group’s page on the pw.org website. Each group also consists of members who can share content or otherwise communicate with each other about writing, publishing, and other literary matters.

The Organizer(s) of a group can change the status of members in the group and block or remove members from that group. Only the Organizer can delete that group.

Groups consists of writer profiles that contain information about writers who are interested in being a member of a writing group. Each writers group within Groups consists of a group profile page, which contains information about the group, including genres of interest to the group, the number of members, and other identifying details that allow writers who are not members of the group to learn about that group, as well as a group page which only members of the group can access. The group page allows writers to communicate via chat and/or links to live video conference and share documents with other members of the group who can add comments on those documents.

As a member of Groups, you are granted a non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free, revocable license to access and use Groups strictly in accordance with these Terms and Conditions. You shall not expressly or impliedly state that you are affiliated with Poets & Writers or that Poets & Writers is endorsing you or your activities. As a condition of your use of Groups, you warrant to Poets & Writers that you will not use Groups for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these Terms. You may not use Groups in any manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair Groups or interfere with any other party’s use and enjoyment of Groups. You may not obtain or attempt to obtain any materials or information through means not intentionally made available or provided through Groups. 

Without limiting the foregoing, you are responsible for all content (“User Content”) including without limitation code, videos, images, data, text, software, music, photographs, graphics, messages and other materials that you upload, post, publish or transmit (including by e-mail) or otherwise display (collectively and individually, “Upload”) to pw.org. Poets & Writers does not claim ownership of the information and/or materials you provide to Groups. You represent and warrant that you own, or otherwise have the right to use and to display on pw.org, and to authorize Groups to use and display on their pages, all User Content that you upload to Groups. You agree that Poets & Writers may require that you edit that User Content for posting on the Groups pages, that Poets & Writers has the right but not the obligation to post that User Content, to edit that Content, and that not all User Content will be posted. 

By posting, uploading, inputting, providing, or submitting User Content, you as the user hereby grant to Poets & Writers a non-exclusive, global, perpetual, royalty-free right and license to display that content. You agree that such User Content is not confidential and that Poets & Writers may disclose it to any third party at any time. You agree not to Upload any User Content that: (i) infringes or otherwise violates any trademarks, trade names, trade secrets, patents, copyrights or other proprietary rights of any third party; (ii) contains software viruses or other computer code or files or programs that has the potential to interrupt, destroy or restrict the function of computer hardware or software, or otherwise contains scrapers, crawlers, or other malicious material or code; (iii) creates a privacy or security risk to any individual; (iv) constitutes unsolicited advertising, junk mail or spam, sweepstakes, contests or any other types of solicitations; (iv) is harassing, defamatory, obscene, libelous, defamatory, slanderous, constitutes hate speech, is pornographic, or invades any individual’s privacy or right of publicity; (v) falsely impersonates any individual; (vi) violates any federal, local state, or international law or is otherwise illegal; or (vii) that Poets & Writers in its sole discretion otherwise finds objectionable. 

Poets & Writers will not pay any compensation with respect to the use of User Content as provided herein. Poets & Writers is under no obligation to post or use any information/materials you may provide and may remove any information/materials at any time in Poets & Writers’ sole discretion. 

Restrictions Regarding Content Shared by Users
Poets & Writers agrees not to distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, post, reproduce, edit, translate or reformat any User Content shared by an Organizer or member in a Group Page.

Intellectual Property
All content included as part of the Service, such as text, graphics, logos, images, as well as the compilation thereof, and any software used in Groups, is the property of Poets & Writers or its suppliers and protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws that protect intellectual property and proprietary rights. You agree to observe and abide by all copyright and other proprietary notices, legends, or other restrictions contained in any such content and will not make any changes thereto. 

You will not copy, modify, publish, transmit, reverse engineer, or otherwise attempt to discern any source code, participate in the transfer or sale, create derivative works, or in any way exploit any of the content, in whole or in part, found in Groups other than your own User Content. You may not use robots, scraping tools or other data extraction methods to access Groups. Poets & Writers content is not for resale. Your use of Groups does not entitle you to make any unauthorized use of any protected content, and in particular you will not delete or alter any proprietary rights or attribution notices in any content. You will use protected content solely for your personal and non-commercial use, and will make no other use of the content without the express written permission of Poets & Writers and the copyright owner or owner of any other proprietary rights in that content. You agree that you do not acquire any ownership rights in any protected content. We do not grant you any licenses, express or implied, to the intellectual property of Poets & Writers or our licensors except as expressly authorized by these Terms and Conditions. Without limiting the foregoing, you acknowledge and agree that Poets & Writers is the sole and exclusive owner of the trademark and service mark POETS & WRITERS, U.S. Reg. Nos. 2,570,795; 2,608,626; and 2,590,473.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Poets & Writers respects the intellectual property rights of third parties and requires others to do so also. If you, as a user or other member of the public, believe that your copyrighted work or other intellectual property right is being used on Groups in a manner that infringes your work, you must notify Poets & Writers as set forth below in this section.

Poets & Writers will investigate notices of claimed copyright infringement and other intellectual property violations that it receives and take necessary actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) regarding any asserted or actual infringement. To report such a claim, send an email message to Poets & Writers’ DMCA agent at dmca@pw.org with the subject line “Takedown Request Per DMCA”. You may also contact this DMCA agent at: Poets & Writers, Inc., 90 Broad Street Suite 2100 New York, New York 10004. This notice must be written and must contain the following information:

• An electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other intellectual property right infringed;

• A description or the copyright work or other intellectual property right that you claim has been infringed;

• A description of the material that you claim is infringing and the location where the infringing material resides in Groups (such as a link to such material in Groups);

• Your street address, telephone number, and email address;

• A statement that you have a good faith belief that the asserted infringing use is not authorized by the copyright or other intellectual property owner, its agent, or the law; and

• A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that all of this information recited above in your notice is accurate and complete and that you are the owner or authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner or other intellectual property owner. 

You may submit a “Counter-Notification” to our DMCA Agent if you believe that your User Content that was the subject of a DMCA notice, and that Poets & Writers removed, is not infringing (or is otherwise authorized by law) and was removed improperly. To submit this notice you must provide in writing:

• Your physical or electronic signature;

• Identification of the content that was removed and the location at which it appeared before its removal;

• A statement that you have a good faith belief that the content was removed as a result or a mistake or misidentification of that content;

• Your street address, telephone number, and email address; and

• A statement that you consent to jurisdiction of the federal courts within the state of New York for the litigation of any disputes involving the counter-notification and that you will accept service of process.

Poets & Writers will send a copy of any counter-notification that it receives regarding your User Content to the complainant (copyright owner or other intellectual property owner), informing the complainant that it may restore the removed content within ten (10) business days. If the complainant declines to do so, unless the complainant files an action seeking a court order against the poster, Poets & Writers may restore that content in ten (10) to fourteen (14) business days after receipt of the counter-notification.

International Users
Groups is controlled, operated, and administered by Poets & Writers from our offices in New York City. If you access this service from a location outside the USA, you are responsible for compliance with all local laws. You agree that you will not use Poets & Writers’ content accessed through Groups in any country or in any manner prohibited by any applicable laws, restrictions, or regulations. Without limiting the foregoing, the transmission of any data is subject to U.S. export control laws. You may not download any software or otherwise export such software in violation of U.S. export laws.

Indemnification
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Poets & Writers, its officers, directors, employees, agents, and other third parties for any losses, damages, costs, claims, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable attorney’s fees) relating to or arising out of your use of or inability to use Groups, any user postings of any content made by you, your violation of any terms of this Agreement or your violation of any rights of a third party, or your violation of any applicable laws, rules, or regulations. Poets & Writers reserves the right, at its own cost, to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you, in which event you will fully cooperate with Poets & Writers in asserting any available defenses. If you are a California resident, you waive California Civil Code Section 1542, which provides: “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.” If you reside in any other jurisdiction, you waive any similar statute or doctrine that may be applicable. 

Liability Disclaimer
The information, software, products, and services included in or available through Groups may include inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically added to the information herein. Poets & Writers, Inc. may make improvements and/or changes to Groups at any time.

Poets & Writers, Inc. makes no representations or warranties about the suitability, reliability, availability, timeliness, and accuracy of information, software, products, services, and related graphics contained in Groups for any purpose or about any viruses, bugs or other elements that may damage or infect your computer equipment upon using Groups. 

All such information, software, products, services and related graphics are provided “as is” without warranty or condition of any kind. Poets & Writers and/or its suppliers hereby disclaim all warranties and conditions with regard to this information, software, products, services and related graphics, including all implied warranties or conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. Poets & Writers makes no warranty that our services will meet your requirements; or that our services will be timely, uninterrupted or secure or accurate. 

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall Poets & Writers, Inc. be liable for any direct, exemplary, indirect, punitive, incidental, special, consequential damages or any damages whatsoever including, without limitation, damages for loss of use, data, or profits, arising out of or in any way connected with the use or performance of the site, with the delay or inability to use the site or related services, the provision of or failure to provide services, or for any information, software, products, services, and related graphics obtained through Groups, or otherwise arising out of the use of Groups, whether based on contract, tort, negligence, strict liability or otherwise, even if Poets & Writers, Inc. has been advised of the possibility of damages, or any damages resulting from unauthorized access to or alteration of your content or account. Because some states/jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages, the above limitation may not apply to you. If you are dissatisfied with any portion of Groups, or with any of these terms of use, your sole and exclusive remedy is to discontinue using Groups.

Modification/Termination/Access Restriction
Poets & Writers reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to modify Groups with or without notice. Poets & Writers further reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to suspend or terminate your access to Groups and the related services or any portion thereof at any time, without notice. 

You agree that no joint venture, partnership, employment, or agency relationship exists between you and Poets & Writers as a result of this agreement or use of Groups.

Entire Agreement
Unless otherwise specified herein, this agreement constitutes the entire agreement between you, i.e., the user, and Poets & Writers with respect to Groups and it supersedes all prior or contemporaneous communications and proposals, whether electronic, oral or written, between the user and Poets & Writers with respect to Groups. A printed version of this agreement and of any notice given in electronic form shall be admissible in judicial or administrative proceedings based upon or relating to this agreement to the same extent and subject to the same conditions as other business documents and records originally generated and maintained in printed form. 

Changes to Terms
Poets & Writers reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to change the Terms and Conditions under which Poets & Writers Groups is offered. If we do this, we will post the changes in these Terms and Conditions and indicate the date of the most recent revision. Your continued use of Groups after the date of such changes become effective constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms and Conditions. The most current version of the Terms and Conditions will supersede all previous versions. Poets & Writers encourages you periodically to review the Terms and Conditions to stay informed of our updates. 

Miscellaneous
To the maximum extent permitted by law, this agreement is governed by the laws of the State of New York and you hereby consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of courts in the New York in all disputes arising out of or relating to the use of Groups. 

You agree that no joint venture, partnership, employment, or agency relationship exists between you and Poets & Writers as a result of this agreement or use of Groups. Poets & Writers’ performance of this Agreement is subject to existing laws and legal process, and nothing contained in this agreement is in derogation of Poets & Writers' right to comply with governmental, court and law enforcement requests or requirements relating to your use of Groups or information provided to or gathered by Poets & Writers with respect to such use. 

If any part of this agreement is determined to be invalid or unenforceable pursuant to applicable law including, but not limited to, the warranty disclaimers and liability limitations set forth above, then the invalid or unenforceable provision will be deemed superseded by a valid, enforceable provision that most closely matches the intent of the original provision and the remainder of the agreement shall continue in effect. 

Arbitration
If the parties are not able ultimately to resolve any dispute between them arising out of or concerning these Terms and Conditions, or any provisions hereof, then such dispute shall be resolved only by final and binding arbitration pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act, conducted by a single neutral arbitrator and administered by the American Arbitration Association, in a location mutually agreed upon by the parties. The arbitrator's award shall be final and binding, and judgment may be entered upon it in any court having jurisdiction. In the event that any legal or equitable action, proceeding or arbitration arises out of or concerns these Terms and Conditions, the prevailing party shall be entitled to recover its costs and reasonable attorney's fees. The parties agree to arbitrate all disputes and claims in regards to these Terms and Conditions or any disputes arising as a result of these Terms and Conditions, whether directly or indirectly, including tort claims that are a result of these Terms and Conditions. The parties agree that the Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this provision. The entire dispute, including the scope and enforceability of this arbitration provision shall be determined by the Arbitrator. This arbitration provision shall survive the termination of these Terms and Conditions. Notwithstanding the foregoing, in the case that either party seeks preliminary injunctive relief, that party may proceed in court without first resorting to arbitration to avoid immediate irreparable harm.