Disclaimer
Terms & Conditions
Etc...

Last updated 13th July 2014

 

 

Introduction

With everybody covering themselves legally for unforseen events and some people who seem to make a living out of perverting the course of sanity and holding people accountable for minutae, I think it's reasonable to have a set of disclaimers and such for access to this site.

If your country, state, or local law does not permit liability to be disclaimed, then you should not access this site. It's a very quirky situation in to the level of expectation placed on something that you do not pay for, but there you go...

 

Acceptance

Your access to this site, and your use of this site ( http://www.heyrick.co.uk/ ) is subject to the following conditions. By making use of this site, you indicate that you have read and understood the following conditions, and you agree to be bound by them.

If you do not agree to the conditions, and to be bound by them, please do not use this site. Note that these conditions may, in time, be altered to reflect the current state of world sanity.

Please note also that these conditions relate only to the live site at the URL given above. I have no control over cloned/cached copies, mirrors, or access via munging (automatic translation, for example). Complaints about any access that was not via the direct URL will be ignored.

 

Changes

I reserve the right to alter these conditions as necessary, without notice.

 

Intellectual property

You acknowlege that all content available from this site is protected by copyright, trademarks, or other similar laws. The majority of the content is my own work, some is not.

No content shall be copied for public use without my express written permission. If you want to download a section (say, /econet) for personal reading offline, that's fine with me. Placing it on another site and/or placing it on a commercial CD-ROM or other such media is not fine with me. Ask about it first.

Provided you keep intact the relevant copyright notices (usually at the bottom of each page), you may print materials from this site for your personal use.

If you wish to print material for educational use, that is fine too but I request that you email me first. It is nice to know where my work is being used, and in some cases the information may exist in a more suitable format.

It is not my intention to infringe copyrights or upset people. If you discover something on this site that should not be there, please simply contact me. I'm not out to prove a point by abusing copyright laws - chances are I was unaware and will happily remove any offending material.

Please be aware that while most of this site is copyright Richard Murray, there are some things hosted here either according to licence conditions, or with permission, which is the intellectual property of somebody else. An example is the server software provided by Alan Williams in the Econet area. Such content ought to be marked.

Specific exemption - ARMwiki (in the /aw directory or /armwiki virtual directory). That's CC-BY-SA. More about it at http://www.heyrick.co.uk/armwiki/Main_Page.

 

DMCA

It is an interesting quandry. I am a French resident Brit and my site is hosted in the United Kingdom. For the purposes of fairness, I will work on the assumption that French law applies, as all of the content since 2002 has been created in French territory and uploaded from there. To work on "where the server is" and "where the user is" would make things pretty messy and complicated.

However, since certain American companies seem to be found of waving the DCMA stick, I shall choose to respect the provisions of the DCMA. If, therefore, you discover information which you believe to be infringing, please contact me at my usual email address (look at the index page), providing the following:

 

Governing law

In recent times, there have been some bizarre overreaches of law. Earlier in the year (2014), Chief Judge Kozinski of the 9th Circuit made a ruling that implies that American copyright law applies everywhere; and the case of Kernel v. Mosley found that "a work created outside of the United States, uploaded in Australia and owned by a company registered in Finland was nonetheless a U.S. work by virtue of its being published online".
Personally, I think this is a very dangerous state of affairs.
Firstly, it implies that the author of a document is going to need to know the peculiarities and quirks of all of the world's legal systems - something that is utterly infeasible.
Secondly, it is reaching to apply the legal process of one country in preference to the one applicable where the citizen lives and created the document.
Thirdy, if the US can 'claim' a work to be American, does it hold equally that a Sharia Law country can claim a work that they can access to be judged under Sharia Law - which I don't imagine would take too kindly to religions that are not Islamic. What happens then? Can they request a citizen to be extradited to be punished under Sharia? What does this mean for an American's rights to freedom of speech?
To put it bluntly, trying to smash together multiple legal jurisdictions is ultimately doomed to failure.

With this in mind, a condition of your access to HeyRick is that - despite what American judges may say - you accept that this site was created by a European, is hosted in Europe, and is covered by the relevant European (specifically, French) laws. If you do not agree to this, or if your legal system will not permit you to agree to this, then you should not visit this site.
Your continued access will be at your own discretion, by your own choice, and ultimately therefore it will be you that bears the consequences.
(for those that have difficulty understanding this - if you are an American and you want to sue me in America, I'll point to this and say "sue yourself, dumbass")

Let's leave it at that, shall we? A semi-sensible compromise for a complicated situation. It is surely better than IP-blocking entire countries... that would, ultimately, lead to a sterilisation of the Internet because people would block "hostile" countries, or they would cease to have opinions.

 

Forced content

There are a few subtle redirections on this site to cater for site administration. For example, trying to fetch /digibox.html will redirect you to the correct URL which is /ricksworld/digibox/index.html...

That aside, there is no 'forced' content on this site. You won't find a pop-up window giving advertising, nor five minutes later naked children doing disgusting things and willing to do more if you have your credit card handy... what you ask for is what you'll get (404s excepting!). Nothing else.

 

Site auto-munging

Permission is ONLY granted for the content of this site to be automatically altered under the following explicit conditions: Those are the ONLY four conditions where altering the content is acceptable. Under no other circumstances is it permitted to alter the behaviour of the hyperlinks (either for taking the user someplace else, or for tracking users activities).

It is EXPRESSLY forbidden to arbitrarily replace content (graphics, audio) with something else for whatever reason. I once encountered an agent that replaced MP3s with a short recording saying (in an American accent) "downloading music MP3s is illegal". Yes, in the majority of cases this is correct, however you'll find most of the MP3s on my site are spoken form ('podcast'), which are my own, and replacing this content is actually contrary to my wishes hence such activity would in itself be unlawful.

...note the use of the word unlawful. Most computer piracy and stupidity is not illegal, it is unlawful. Might seem like the same thing, but there is actually a difference.

 

Passwords and restricted downloads

You have permission to access restricted content when I say you can access it. Simply knowing the password and/or the URL is not sufficient. Please be aware that restricted things log when access, and by who, and also some may refuse to give it to you unless you are 'known' to the system.
By restricted, I mean commercial software, beta test software, pre-release content, and the like. If you need a URL that isn't readily available, or if you need a name/password, then chances are the content you are looking for is classed as 'restricted'.
By the same token - your visit to this site is a privilege, not a right. Likewise, your access to things not made publicly available is a privilege, not a right. I, Rick Murray, decide who gets access to what. My decision is final.

 

Links

The links provided on this site are not constantly reviewed. The content of such sites is the responsibility of the owner/creator of that site, of which I have no control over. If you find a site is potentially unsuitable, then please contact me to warn me of this.

You do not need to obtain permission to link to a document/page/software held at this site, however it is nice if you ask first as I like the idea of reciprocal links (you link to me, I link back to you) as if you feel my content is useful to your readers, then your content may well be of use to my readers.

Please, if you link to me, test it well. I've seen some horrid things with frames in the past. I do not set any frame targets on my site as frames are not used.

Sometimes I ask Google to provide me with a list of people linking to outdated URLs. When I find one, I send off an email to let the site maintainer know the new URL. Sometimes the maintainer thanks me for the update and is happy to change the URL. But, sadly, by and large my emails go ignored. Which seems silly, but there you go...
Please help me. If you find an outdated link, email the maintainer of the site. Maybe they'll pay attention to you? If enough people complain... :-)

 

Accuracy

This site contains data and other such information (code, tables, etc) that may be of use to you.
Such information is provided as guidance, and is given in good faith. It is not, however, to be taken as The Truth, The Authority, or a substitute for your own judgement or advice given to you by competent third parties.
I suggest that you use no information provided until you have evaluated it and concluded it makes sense in your particular circumstances.
While I have made an effort to provide accurate and reliable information, I do not provide any warranty as to its accuracy, adequacy, or usefulness. In some cases, I am literally working blind and trying to make sense of conflicting information. I try my best, but please don't just assume that what I've written is correct. Indeed, it would be wise to assume that nothing on the Internet is valid and correct until you can cross-reference it from two or more separate locations. Anybody can make a web page and purport to 'know' something. :-)

 

Downtime

This site may not be continuously available. While reasonable efforts are made by my host, it is impossible to guarantee every piece of equipment between your modem and my host's machine will be in full and total operational condition, forever.
We are already talking something like twelve different companies, dozens of bits of kit, and more copper wire than you can easily imagine... Rather than complain if something is 'down', you should every time you connect your computer to another, thank the designers and implementors that such a thing is even possible. That you can wander to some obscure website and download, across telephone lines, an entire episode of Buffy in quality that may be superior to your broadcast television reception, before the episode has even aired, from across the Atlantic ocean, to watch on your computer, with sound, and colour, and in only a few hours. I have not personally done this as my machine isn't up to full-screen video streams, but I know of those who have. Tell me that the ability to do such a thing isn't just purely amazing?
So don't complain when it sometimes doesn't work. Simply remain in a state of awe that it does work at all!

 

Attacks, malware, etc

It is my policy to respect your computer. It is my policy, furthermore, to use only the minimum of 'fancy' stuff for clarification, rather than hitting you with Flash after Flash because "it looks good". So not only do I respect your computer, I respect your patience. For me, content is king. Pictures help, but pictures alone only go so far...

Sadly, there are people out there who have a lot less respect. They look for problems in the server software (which I have no control over) and ways to exploit such problems to alter this site in a way that is intended to compromise your computer in order to try to learn important information about you... mainly for the purpose of robbing you blind.

Therefore, I wish to explicitly deny ALL liability for content that I did not put on the site. When I am made aware of such problems, I will seek to resolve them in the quickest possible way that I can (for the June '09 attack, the end result was erasing ALL of the HTML documents and starting again). However, I won't be held responsible for what I didn't put there!

The moral of this is to ensure that your anti-virus and anti-malware/spyware software is always kept up to date, and that you use a decent browser. If you are using a Windows XP/Vista computer, it is strongly recommended that you create a limited user account which you can use for when you want to go on the internet. It is also recommended that you buy an inexpensive router to sit between your computer(s) and the Internet especially if you are using an ADSL 'modem' which connects directly to your machine (as opposed to something such as the LiveBox which includes some measure of access control). Why a router? To act as an additional firewall. So you can control what ports are opened and when. It is not 100% secure, but it's a good start...
...the closer you live to a big city, the more locks you'll want on your door. Well, the Internet really took off in the last decade and now there's an awful lot of criminal activity going on. You'll want locks. Lots of locks.

The final benefit of a router, it may well have ports for the local computers and a WLAN port for the Internet box. If you are not going to be around your computer (going to work, going to sleep...) and your machine doesn't need to be on-line 24/7, then the wisest thing you can do is UNPLUG the WLAN lead. This will take your router off the internet, and there's no way short of breaking into your house that any disreputable types can mess with your computer.

Oh, and please tell me...

If you have oodles of money (unlike me...), it is strongly recommended that your Internet account is a separate account to your main one. Perhaps even with a different bank. Transfer money to keep a reasonable balance for the things you wish to purchase online, but no so much that if your details are stolen, you lose a lot. Indeed, given that fraud exists in the world of credit cards as well as online purchase, people with money may well distribute their money around a number of unrelated accounts, so one being compromised doesn't spell disaster.

 

Providers

My web site hosting is provided by Rob O'Donnell. He is somebody that I trust.

However, please be well aware that he is NOT responsible for the data held on my site, the data coming to and from my site or my email mailbox, and and other transient data.

My domain name is registered in the name of 'Richard Goodwin' (last I checked). This is due to historical reasons and the fact that nobody ever got around to altering it (I once asked Glenn who asked the registration people, who were told by Richard Goodwin himself that the site is not 'his'... but it never got changed). With due consideration to this fact, you agree also that Mr. Goodwin is simply not involved in any aspect of the running or use of this site.

 

Contact email

My HeyRick mailbox appears to be 'broken' and does not permit mail in or out. Given the ridiculous levels of spam I was getting in the end (circa 2006, hundreds a day), I have no immediate intention to get this fixed. This means, however, that the webmaster and postmaster accounts for my domain are not operational. My email address is stated on the main index, plus various other places around the site.

 

No warranty

You use this site at your own risk (that sounds ominous, doesn't it?). Everything is provided 'as is', without any warranties of any kind express or implied. While we would appreciate it if you do not use anything provided here for illegal or immoral purposes, you should appreciate that once it has left the server and made its way to your computer, I no longer have any control over what happens with the information.
Under no circumstances (including but not limited to negligence) shall I be liable for losses or other damages for your relying on any of the information provided. This includes if I have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

 

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify Richard Murray (who may be known on this site as "Rick Murray", or just "Rick"), and the assisters and providers; and to keep 'us' all full indemnified against all actions, proceedings, losses, liabilities, damages, claims, demands, costs, expenses, and psychiatric therapy suffered or incurred by 'us' as a result of or in connection with any negligence on your part, an omission, a breach of these conditions, or a breach of the law by yourself.
'us' refers to myself, Rob, anybody mentioned on my site, the server host, and anybody else who provides help and/or materials used on or provided by this site.

 

That 'Article 19'

With regard to written content, please note that if you ask me to remove an opinion I have made simply because you disagree with it, then the chances are that I will provide a note, somewhere around the offending opinion, referring to you and your disagreement.
I do NOT take well to censorship for censorship's sake.
We all have opinions, right or wrong, and in a democratic society we all have the right to express our opinions (yes, even the likes of the British National Party). It is up to the listener to weigh up each opinion and point of view on its merits, and decide if it is just and valid. Simply requesting that which you do not like to be silenced is not in the spirit of democracy.

The best way to answer a bad argument or a fallacy of some sort is a better argument.

I make points, I have thoughts, I write those thoughts and opinions. Just to make life interesting, I sometimes play Devil's Advocate in order to look at something from a different perspective. What I think and feel is written here.

 

Bearing this in mind, please consider Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

The declaration makes interesting reading.
You'll find it at http://www.unhchr.ch/

 

Therefore...

If you agree, then welcome to HeyRick.

If you disagree, then it hurts me to ask you not to access any more of this site; but I would appreciate an email telling me why you disagree.
PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS - if I can help, I would be happy to do so!

 

Phew!


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