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Terms of Service

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Welcome to the Real & Open family. Real & Open runs the Tiro.org and GoRubigo.com websites. In order to keep our community safe, we have some guidelines for everyone to follow.

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) spell out what you can and cannot do when using Real & Open Corporation’s d/b/a Tiro (we’ll call ourselves “we,” “our,” or “us” from now on) products or services (“Site” or “Services”), and what will happen if you break these rules. Please know that in order to use Tiro and our other Services, you must agree to all the Terms below. The Terms remain in effect any time that you use our Site or Services.

These Terms are not the only important set of rules. There is also the Privacy Policy, which explains how we keep you and information about you safe. It also addresses some of the same intellectual property issues that you will read about below. These two documents work together. You can read the Privacy Policy here.

If you live in a state where you cannot enter a binding contract because of age or (dis)ability, please read this with your parent or guardian. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please reach out to us at hello@tiro.org.

On the right below is the legal text, with a brief plain-English summary on the left.

Changes to the TOS or Website
Things change – we’ll email you when they do.

We’ve got a growth mindset and we are constantly updating and improving the Services that we offer you. That means that these Terms are likely to change too, so we encourage you to review the Terms periodically. If you continue to use the Site and Services after we change the Terms, you accept all changes. When the Terms change in any significant way (for example, more than editing for grammar or punctuation), we will send out an email letting you know.

Disclaimer of Warranties

We do our best to make sure your experience is amazing, but mistakes do happen! It’s not our fault when they do. Please let us know if you find a mistake and we’ll do our best to address it.

Your use of the site and the services is at your own risk. The site and the services are provided on an “as is, as available” basis without any warranty of any kind from Real & Open. Real & Open expressly disclaims all warranties, including the warranties of merchantability, title, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Real & Open disclaims all responsibility for any loss, injury, claim, liability, or damage of any kind resulting from, arising out of or in any way related to (a) any errors in or omissions from this site and the services, including, but not limited to, technical inaccuracies and typographical errors, (b) third party communications, (c) any third party websites or content directly or indirectly accessed through links in the site, including but not limited to any errors or omissions, (d) the unavailability of all or any part of the site or the services, (e) your use of the site or the services, or (f) your use of any equipment or software in connection with the site or the services. Real & Open does not make any representations or warranties concerning any content contained in or accessing through the Services, and we will not be responsible or liable for the accuracy, copyright compliance, legality, or decency of material contained in or accessed through the Services. We make no representations or warranties regarding suggestions or recommendations of services or products or purchased through the Services.

Limitations of Liability, Indemnity, Arbitration, and Governing Law

If something goes wrong, we’ll do our best to work it out with you, but we won’t be held financially responsible in certain ways.

Except as otherwise provided by law, neither Real & Open nor any of its affiliates, parents, subsidiaries, authorized distributors, directors, shareholders, employees, clients, or agents shall be liable for any loss, injury, claim, liability, or damage of any kind resulting from your use of the site, any facts or opinions appearing thereon, or the services. Real & Open shall not be liable for any special, direct, indirect, incidental, punitive or consequential damages of any kind whatsoever (including, without limitation, attorneys’ fees, damages for lost profits, loss of goodwill, work stoppage, accuracy of results, or computer failure or malfunction in any way due to, resulting from, or arising in connection with the use of or inability to use the site or services.

You agree to indemnify and hold Real & Open, its affiliates, officers, agents, employees, contractors, and partners harmless for and against any and all claims, liabilities, damages (actual and consequential), losses, and expenses (including attorneys’ fees) arising from or in any way related to any third party claims relating to (a) your use of the Services (including any actions taken by a third party using your account), and (b) your violation of these Terms. In the event of such a claim, suit, or action (“Claim”), we will provide notice of the Claim to the contact information we have for your account (provided that failure to deliver such notice shall not eliminate or reduce your indemnification obligations hereunder).

You and Real & Open agree that any proceedings to resolve or litigate any dispute arising hereunder will be conducted solely on an individual basis, and that you will not seek to have any dispute heard as a class action, a representative action, a collective action, a private attorney-general action, or in any proceeding in which you act or propose to act in a representative capacity. You further agree that no proceeding will be joined, consolidated, or combined with another proceeding without the prior written consent of Real & Open and all parties to any such proceeding.

Any controversies or disputes arising out of or relating to these Terms shall NOT be resolved by binding arbitration. Rather, any controversies or disputes will be heard in a public court of law. The Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of New York, as applicable, without regard to conflicts of laws principles. The United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods does not apply and is expressly excluded.

Costs

Basic services, like tiro, rubigo, and tiro live, are FREE! The extra stuff costs extra.

The basic Real & Open services are free and always will be – that is, we don’t charge for signing up for a basic, individual account. However, we may offer certain premium products and services for a fee, including creating of a school or district subdomain. This means that if you’re currently using one of the basic free accounts described above, that we will never reclassify it as premium account in the future and start charging you to use it.

Intellectual Property and Content

Don’t violate copyright, trademark, or patent law while you use the site. What we create is ours and what you create is yours. What you create needs to be appropriate and educational. If someone violates your copyright, let us know so we can address it.

IP Rights
The site and its original content, features, functionality, design, and computations are owned by Real & Open and are protected by United States and international copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, and other intellectual property or proprietary rights laws.

Real & Open’s services include sharing assessments, but not the computation or analysis of those assessments. Therefore you agree not to copy, modify, create derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, or republish any of our copyrighted material, except to the extent permitted by the site itself. If you have any questions or doubts whether or how to use the material on the site, please ask us at hello@tiro.org.

All Real & Open’s design, features, original copy, and analyses are covered by copyright. Content directly produced by teachers and students are owned by the individual teachers and students who created the user content, as defined below. This is described in greater detail in the Privacy Policy and applies here. For the purposes of these Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy, the term “Content” includes, but is not limited to, assessments, questions, reading passages, images used as stimuli, information, data, text, videos, audio clips, written posts and comments, software, scripts, and interactive features generated, provided, or otherwise made accessible on or through the site. For the purposes of these Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, “Content” also includes all User Content. “User Content” includes all content added, created, uploaded, submitted, distributed, or posted to the site by users, namely educators and learners, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted. This User Content is the sole responsibility of and owned solely by the person who originated such User Content. You represent that all User Content that you provide is accurate, complete, up-to-date, and in compliance with all applicable laws, rules, and regulations. You acknowledge that all Content, including User Content, that you access using the site and services is at your own risk and you will be solely responsible for any damage or loss to you or any other party resulting therefrom. We do not guarantee that any Content you access on or through the site or services is or will continue to be accurate.

When you submit User Content through the site, you do not automatically grant Real & Open license to use, edit, modify, reproduce, distribute, display, perform, or otherwise exploit the User Content without limitation. You must explicitly grant us these rights. If you do, you shall grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, edit, modify, reproduce, distribute, display, perform, or otherwise exploit the User Content in connection with the site and our (and our successors’ and assignees’) businesses, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Website (and derivative works thereof) in any format and through any channel. Even if you do not grant us these rights explicitly, when you submit user content, you grant Real & Open license to perform analysis and produce data derived from your user content and you grant Real & Open full ownership of these data. The foregoing licenses grant to us and to our users do not affect your ownership or license rights in your User Contents, excluding the derivative data and analyses we create and including the right to grand additional licenses to your User Content, unless otherwise agreed in writing. You represent and warrant that you have all rights to grant such licenses to us without infringement or violation of third party rights, including without limitation, any privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, trademarks, contract rights, or any other intellectual property or proprietary rights.

We do not guarantee that any Content will be made available on the site. We reserve the right to, but do not have any obligation to, remove, edit or modify any Content at our sole discretion, at any time and for any reason, including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allocations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content or if we are concerned that you may have violated these Terms of Service or our Privacy Policy.

You are permitted to use the Website for your personal, non-commercial use, or legitimate business purposes, provided that your activities are lawful and in accordance with these Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy. Prohibited uses include violations of laws and regulations, hacking the site in any way, or violating the Content Standards set below. No right, title, or interest in or to the site or any content on the site is transferred to you and all rights not expressly granted are reserved. Any use of the website not expressly permitted by these Terms of Service or our Privacy Policy is considered a breach of these Terms of Service or our Privacy Policy, where appropriate, and may lead to account termination or other consequences.

If you provide feedback, suggestions, ideas, or recommendations for modification, improvements, additions, edits, or other changes to our services or our site (let’s call it “Feedback), you grant us, under all right, title, and interest in and to the Feedback, a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, transferable, sublicensable, irrevocable, perpetual license to use that Feedback or to incorporate it into the services or site or otherwise into Real & Open’s holdings.

This site may contain Content specifically provided to us, our partners, or our users and such Content is protected by copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents, trade secrets, or other proprietary rights and laws. You shall abide by and maintain all copyright notices, information, and restrictions contained in any Content accessed through the site.

Content Standards
Real & Open contains user-generated Content and may also contain for a or other interactive features that allow you to upload, post, submit, publish, display, or transmit to other users Content on or through the site. All User Content must be lawful, helpful, not marketing-related, and clear of viruses or other malware. More specifically, but without limiting the foregoing, it must comply with the following Content Standards:

  1. Not contain any material which is defamatory, obscene, indecent, abusive, offensive, harassing, violent, hateful, inflammatory or otherwise objectionable.
  2. Not promote sexually explicit or pornographic material, violence, or discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.
  3. Not infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other intellectual property rights of any other person.
  4. Not violate the legal rights (including the rights of publicity and privacy) of others or contain any material that could give rise to any civil or criminal liability under applicable laws or regulations or that otherwise may be in conflict with these Terms of Service.
  5. Not be likely or intended to deceive any person.
  6. Not promote any illegal activity, or advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act.
  7. Not cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety or be likely to upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person.
  8. Not be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person or organization.
  9. Not involve commercial activities or sales, such as contests, sweepstakes and other sales promotions, barter or advertising.
  10. Not give the impression that they emanate from us or any other person or entity, if this is not the case.

As stated above, all the user generated legal documents are in the public domain, unless otherwise specified by the author. The rest of the content (e.g. private documents, comments, description, guides, etc.) is creative work, therefore covered by copyright. We claim no intellectual property rights over the User Content. Your content remains yours. However, by setting your documents to be viewed publicly, or commenting in public, you agree to allow others to view, comment, edit and branch your content, and you grant us the right to use, copy, distribute and disclose to third parties the content for any purpose.

Note also that this license to User Content continues even if you stop using the Services, primarily because of the social nature of Content shared through the Services – when you post something publicly, others may choose to use your materials, making your Content part of other’s materials that cannot later be erased without retroactively censoring the speech of others.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act
We do not undertake to review all material before it is posted on the Website and cannot ensure prompt removal of objectionable material after it has been posted. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any action or inaction regarding transmissions, communications or content provided by any user or third party. In the event we receive a disclosure request from an authorized party, we reserve the right to disclose user identities when required to do so by the law, including in response to a law enforcement request supported by a valid court order. You waive and hold harmless the Company from any claims resulting from any action taken by the Company during or as a result of its investigations and from any actions taken as a consequence of investigations by either the Company or law enforcement authorities.
If you believe that any User Content violate your copyright, please follow the procedure set forth by article 512(c) of the DMCA and provide us a written takedown notice including the following information:

  1. A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
  2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.
  3. Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material.
  4. Information reasonably sufficient for us to contact you, such as email, address, telephone number.
  5. A statement that you a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
  6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

The notice should be addressed to hello@tiro.org.

Security and Privacy

Don’t forget about our Privacy Policy. We do our best to comply with federal, local, and international privacy standards.

We are always working to make Real & Open’s websites and services the best they can be. This means that sometimes we have to suspend your access to the site. We also reserve the right to suspend or restrict access to certain features to certain users. We are not and will not be liable if, for any reason, any part of the site is unavailable for any time or for any period of time. We are not and will not be liable for any loss of data.
Depending on the service, you may be required to log in using your Google account information, your email address, or a username. You may be required to create a password as part of our security procedures. In order to keep this information safe, we must both (you and we) keep this information confidential. Do not disclose it to any third party and always use our services yourself, not through a proxy. Please notify us if there is any type of security breach. Do not forget to log out at the end of every session.

We reserve the right to disable any user account at any time for any reason, including if, in our opinion, you have violated any provision of these Terms of Service or Privacy Policy.

Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA)
U.S. Federal law requires certain student information to be kept private. Real & Open is fully compliant with all requirements of FERPA under the “school official” exception (CFR)§99.31(a)(1), because your data is in your direct control and ownership, and used only for legitimate educational interests and functions that an educator would normally perform. FERPA does not require parental consent for such use. Real & Open does not and will not share any personally identifiable information (PII) with any third party, or use it for non-educational purposes (e.g., marketing, spam, targeted ads), except when an educator initiates or enables their own student data to be sent to a third party to integrate with other applications. Please see our Privacy Policy for more details.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
Educators may optionally use the site to collect personal information from students, such as email addresses and phone numbers. U.S. Federal law requires that educators obtain parents’ consent before collecting personal information online from students under the age of 13. (This law does not apply to student information entered by educators; it applies only when the student enters their own information online.) You agree that Real & Open will not be liable for how educators collect and use students’ personal information.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
This law applies only to the European Union. You agree that Real & Open will not be held liable for how educators collect and use personal data.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Student health records, include (dis)ability status, that are posted to our site are protected under FERPA as education records. HIPAA Privacy Rule at 45 CFR § 160.103 states “Protected health information excludes individually identifiable health information: (i) In education records covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, as amended, 20 U.S.C. 1232g.”

Termination

If you break the rules, we’ll shut down your account and do our best to delete your personal info.

On termination of your Account or upon your deletion of particular pieces of User Content from the Services, Real & Open shall make reasonable efforts to make any such non-public User Content and to remove the appropriate personal information from our servers; however, you acknowledge and agree that: (a) caching of, copies of, or references to the User Content may not be immediately removed; (b) such removed Subscriber Content may persist in backups (not available to others) for a reasonable period of time; and (c) such removed User Content may be available (and stored on our servers) through the accounts of other Subscribers, such as because of cloning documents or shared assessment questions.

Assignment

Just in case someone else owns Real & Open in the future, all this legal stuff applies to them too.

These Terms shall be binding upon and shall inure to the benefit of the parties’ heirs, executors, administrators, successors, and permitted assigns. Real & Open may assign its rights and obligations under these Terms, including without limitation, any assignment resulting from any corporate reorganization, merger, sale of substantially all the assets to which these Terms relate. Your obligations under these Terms are personal and may be assigned only with Real & Open’s prior written consent; however, your right to receive payment may be assigned without Real & Open’s prior consent.

Severability

If there’s a problem with one part of these Terms of Service, all the rest still applies. That counts even if one of these little blurbs on the left is misleading or wrong.

In the event that any provision of these Terms shall be unenforceable or invalid under any applicable law, or so held by applicable court decision, such enforceability or invalidity shall not render these Terms unenforceable or invalid as a whole, and in such event such provision shall be changed and interpreted so as to best accomplish the objectives of such provision.

Force Majeure
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Reinhold Niebuhr

Real & Open shall not be liable for any delay or failure to perform any obligation hereunder due to causes beyond its control, including without limitation, war, riot, insurrection, civil commotion, terrorist activity, fire, industrial disputes of whatever nature, acts of Nature or other higher power, computer crimes, epidemics, acts or omissions of third party vendors or suppliers, equipment failures, public enemies of government, failure of telecommunications, system malfunctions, fire, or other casualty.