The main purpose of the Computing at School (CAS) Online Discussions is to provide a safe place where teachers can ask questions, receive help, tips and guidance, and discuss with their peers. These terms govern use of the (CAS) Online Discussions forum. To use the forum, you must agree to these terms with BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, the company that runs the forum.

BCS offer other products and services under different terms. These terms apply only to use of the forum.

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Important Terms

These terms include a number of important provisions that affect your rights and responsibilities, such as the disclaimers in Disclaimers, your agreement to cover the company for damages caused by your misuse of the forum in Responsibility for Your Use, and an agreement to arbitrate disputes in Disputes.

Your Permission to Use the Forum

Subject to these terms, BCS gives you permission to use the forum. By accessing and using this forum, you agree to be bound by these terms.

Conditions for Use of the Forum

Your permission to use the forum is subject to the following conditions:

  1. You must be at least eighteen years old.

  2. You may no longer use the forum if BCS contacts you directly to say that you may not.

  3. You must use the forum in accordance with Acceptable Use and Content Standards.

Acceptable Use

  1. You may not break the law using the forum.

  2. You may not use or try to use another’s account on the forum without their specific permission.

  3. You may not buy, sell, or otherwise trade in user names or other unique identifiers on the forum.

  4. You may not send advertisements, chain letters, or other solicitations through the forum, or use the forum to gather addresses or other personal data for commercial mailing lists or databases.

  5. You may not automate access to the forum, or monitor the forum, such as with a web crawler, browser plug-in or add-on, or other computer program that is not a web browser. You may crawl the forum to index it for a publicly available search engine, if you run one.

  6. You may not use the forum to send e-mail to distribution lists, newsgroups, or group mail aliases.

  7. You may not falsely imply that you’re affiliated with or endorsed by BCS or CAS.

  8. You may not hyperlink to images or other non-hypertext content on the forum on webpages other than the CAS website.

  9. You may not remove any marks showing proprietary ownership from materials you download from the forum.

  10. You may not show any part of the forum on other websites with <iframe>.

  11. You may not disable, avoid, or circumvent any security or access restrictions of the forum.

  12. You may not strain infrastructure of the forum with an unreasonable volume of requests, or requests designed to impose an unreasonable load on information systems underlying the forum.

  13. You may not impersonate others through the forum.

  14. You may not encourage or help anyone in violation of these terms.

Content Standards

  1. You may not submit content to the forum that is illegal, offensive, or otherwise harmful to others. This includes content that is harassing, inappropriate, or abusive.

  2. You may not submit content to the forum that violates the law, infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights, violates anyone’s privacy, or breaches agreements you have with others.

  3. You may not submit content to the forum containing malicious computer code, such as computer viruses or spyware.

  4. You may not submit content to the forum as a mere placeholder, to hold a particular address, user name, or other unique identifier.

  5. You may not use the forum to disclose information that you don’t have the right to disclose, like others’ confidential or personal information.

Enforcement

BCS may investigate and prosecute violations of these terms to the fullest legal extent. BCS may notify and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting violations of the law and these terms.

BCS reserves the right to change, redact, and delete content on the forum for any reason. If you believe someone has submitted content to the forum in violation of these terms, contact us immediately.

Your Account

You must create and log into an account to use some features of the forum. Your login details will be the same as the ones used to access your CAS website account.

To create an account, some information about yourself is shared between the CAS website and this platform. Please ensure that your details, particularly your contact email address, are kept up-to-date on your CAS profile. You may close your account at any time by e-mailing <compatsch@bcs.uk>.

You agree to be responsible for all action taken using your account, whether authorised by you or not, until you either close your account or notify BCS that your account has been compromised. You agree to notify BCS immediately if you suspect your account has been compromised. You agree to select a secure password for your account, and keep it secret.

BCS may restrict, suspend, or close your account on the forum according to the CAS Website: Terms of Use, or if BCS reasonably believes that you’ve broken any rule in these terms.

Your Content

Nothing in these terms gives BCS any ownership rights in intellectual property that you share with the forum, such as your account information, posts, or other content you submit to the forum. Nothing in these terms gives you any ownership rights in BCS’s intellectual property, either.

Between you and BCS, you remain solely responsible for content you submit to the forum. You agree not to wrongly imply that content you submit to the forum is sponsored or approved by BCS. These terms do not obligate BCS to store, maintain, or provide copies of content you submit, and to change it, according to these terms.

Content you submit to the forum belongs to you, and you decide what permission to give others for it. But at a minimum, you license BCS to provide content that you submit to the forum to other users of the forum. That special license allows BCS to copy, publish, and analyse content you submit to the forum.

When content you submit is removed from the forum, whether by you or by BCS, their special license ends when the last copy disappears from the BCS’s backups, caches, and other systems. Other licenses you apply to content you submit, such as Creative Commons licenses, may continue after your content is removed. Those licenses may give others, or BCS itself, the right to share your content through the forum again.

Others who receive content you submit to the forum may violate the terms on which you license your content. You agree that the company will not be liable to you for those violations or their consequences.

Your Responsibility

You agree to indemnify BCS from legal claims by others related to your breach of these terms, or breach of these terms by others using your account on the forum. Both you and BCS agree to notify the other side of any legal claims for which you might have to indemnify BCS as soon as possible. If BCS fails to notify you of a legal claim promptly, you won’t have to indemnify BCS for damages that you could have defended against or mitigated with prompt notice. You agree to allow BCS to control investigation, defense, and settlement of legal claims for which you would have to indemnify BCS, and to cooperate with those efforts. BCS agrees not to agree to any settlement that admits fault for you or imposes obligations on you without your prior agreement.

Disclaimers

You accept all risk of using the forum and content on the forum. As far as the law allows, BCS and its suppliers provide the forum as is, without any warranty whatsoever.

The forum may hyperlink to and integrate forums and services run by others. BCS does not make any warranty about services run by others, or content they may provide. Use of services run by others may be governed by other terms between you and the person(s) running the service.

You can read BCS’ full Disclaimer of Liability on their website: www.bcs.org.uk.

Feedback

BCS welcomes your feedback and suggestions for the forum. See the Contact section below for ways to get in touch with us.

You agree that BCS will be free to act on feedback and suggestions you provide, and that BCS won’t have to notify you that your feedback was used, get your permission to use it, or pay you. You agree not to submit feedback or suggestions that you believe might be confidential or proprietary, to you or others.

Termination

Either you or BCS may end the agreement written out in these terms at any time. When our agreement ends, your permission to use the forum also ends.

The following provisions survive the end of our agreement: Your Content, Feedback, Your Responsibility, Disclaimers, and General Terms.

Disputes

Any disputes will be handled in line with the BCS Code of Conduct. In the first instance, please raise any issues with our site moderators or administrators. Alternatively, you can email us at compatsch@bcs.uk. You can review BCS’ Complaints Policy here: https://www.bcs.org/media/2533/complaints-policy.pdf.

General Terms

If a provision of these terms is unenforceable as written, but could be changed to make it enforceable, that provision should be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. Otherwise, that provision should be removed.

You may not assign your agreement with BCS. BCS may assign your agreement to any affiliate of BCS, any other company that obtains control of BCS, or any other company that buys assets of BCS related to the forum. Any attempted assignment against these terms has no legal effect.

Neither the exercise of any right under this Agreement, nor waiver of any breach of this Agreement, waives any other breach of this Agreement.

These terms embody all the terms of agreement between you and BCS about use of the forum. These terms entirely replace any other agreements about your use of the forum, written or not.

Contact

You may notify BCS under these terms, and send questions to the CAS Community Support Team at BCS, at compatsch@bcs.uk.

The company may notify you under these terms using the e-mail address you provide for your account on the forum, or by posting a message to the homepage of the forum or your account page.

Changes

BCS last updated these terms on 14 December 2021, and may update these terms again. BCS will post all updates to the forum. For updates that contain substantial changes, BCS agrees to e-mail you, if you’ve created an account and provided a valid e-mail address. BCS may also announce updates with special messages or alerts on the forum.

Once you get notice of an update to these terms, you must agree to the new terms in order to keep using the forum.