Copyright, Disclaimer, Cookies and Privacy Policy

The following information is a tedious rendition of all you will ever wish to know about the following matters on iomfats.org:

These things are important, of course they are, but they are also pretty boring. We've tried to make them palatable, but some stuff just tastes of cardboard anyway. The "Cookies" part is particularly cardboard flavoured. It's here because legislators have decided that every gosh-darned website that uses cookies has to give you the chance to know that they use cookies, to know what they do and to choose not to give consent to cookies being set for you.

We've chosen the order of topics on this page carefully. The most useful stuff is at the top. As you go lower it gets more like legalistic mumbo jumbo.

Copyright

There are two elements to the copyright on iomfats.org. One is the material submitted by others, perhaps by you, and the other is the site itself with information contributed by the owner(s)

Stories, poems and other submissions

Any submission you make to this site is made by you as owner of the copyright. By submitting an item you assert that you own or have the rights to submit it to the site. By submitting it you grant the site an irrevocable licence to publish it, but do not assign the site any other rights. Specifically, there is no assignment of copyright of the item submitted to the site.

Examples of submissions include stories, poems, haikus, posts to forums.

Submission of an item is simply that, a submission. We may or may not publish that item, and may or may not continue to publish that item, at our sole discretion

The site itself

The entire site, the stories, the layout, the ideas (except where explicit copyright of another is stated and acknowledged, including being acknowledged as a submission [above]) are the intelectual property and copyright of "Tom Lane" also known as "It's Only Me from Across the Sea" or "IOMfAtS" (in any style of capitalisation), all of which are pen names of the copyright owner. No material from this site maybe reproduced without written express permission from the copyright owner.

This site contains many things including some pictures and some sound files which others may own the copyright to. It is our intent to acknowledge all copyrights or to remove copyright material where permission is not given. If you have an item that you can prove the copyright to that we have placed on this site without your prior permission, simply get in touch with us enclosing that proof and tell us whether you would prefer us to remove it, or to acknowledge your copyright to it. This does not include items that we and the copyright owner have agreed should be published, which will remain at our sole discretion once initial permission has been given. A posting on a forum or a message in a guestbook remains the copyright of the author, but is not generally removable from the site unless offensive to others. Any such removal is at our sole and arbitrary discretion, and reasons will not necessarily be given.

Doctrine of 'Fair Use'

Any picture, video, text item, or other element where copyright ownership is not stated or where prior approval has not been given is provided here under the doctrine of 'fair use' which is believed to apply. It is not the site's intent to infringe copyright. Copyright owners considering that this does not apply to their work should enter into dialogue with the webmaster by email. Items where copyright is asserted will either be taken down, or attribution made, at the copyright holder's choice.

Disclaimer

The owner of this web site and any people contributing to it cannot be made responsible for injuries or other harm resulting from following the advice or information found on this web site or any web sites it links to. The reader (you) is solely responsible for using the information found on the website. Therefore, it is in the reader's best interest to use the information as advice, not as a manual. Where any medical, psychological or apparent medical or psychological advice is given it is the reader's responsibility to check the advice and to take competent qualified medical or other advice before taking any action. Further, nothing on this site may be construed as encouraging those under the age of consent to engage in sexual activities. This site does not condone nor encourage sexual relations between those over the age of sexual consent with those younger.

Age of the Visitor

There are no age checks on this site nor on its forum. If the law says you need (eg) parental consent to post here, or to read the site, or to join the mailing list, then you need that consent. Frankly, we think such laws are silly. They do young people more harm than good. How can you possibly ask questions on a gay forum without coming out to your parents if you need consent? So it is up to you. If you participate here we assume that you are of legal age to do so or have consent if not, and we do not want to know any different. We treat everyone as having good sense and mature judgement.

The site does not set out to attract nor does it set out to market to those under any relevant legal age in any legislature.

Privacy Policy

This statement covers all parts of the site now and in the future under the main domain name of iomfats.org. This includes the forum.

There are several places on this site where you may choose to give personal information. We do not make commercial use of such information, nor do we pass such data to any other party. Mailing lists are private, and their privacy policy is declared when you subscribe. Forums are as private as the poster chooses to make them. Any services used from external service providers are protected by the privacy policy of the service provider. If you are under a certain age (country or state or region dependent) then please do not lodge personal details on this site or any allied site. And if you want to protect your anonymity, then use a pseudonym, and an anonymous email address. These are freely available from many providers.

If you are concerned about your IP address being revealed by your browser, there are free and also commercial services which allow you to manage this. We make no recommendation of any particular service. Sometimes you may discover you are using an IP range which we have blocked, and thus cannot access any services. Shit, as they say, happens.

The site is hosted on servers which may be located anywhere in the world. Those giving their personal details are expected to be fully aware of this fact.

Anonymity

There is no requirement to waive your anonymity on this site, even when subscribing to email lists, joining the forum, submitting items for publication or any other area where an email address and/or a user name may be required. This is not a "Real Name" site. You must use your own discretion at all times about the information you provide. We recommend the use of pseudonyms for name and for email address if you feel that you wish to preserve your anonymity. Some services will require you to respond to a token sent to you by email, so an email address which is valid is essential if you wish to participate in those services. Clearly it just has to work and you have to have access to it. It may be an anonymous email address.

Cookies

Statistics

When you visit our site, our computers may automatically collect statistics about your visit. This information does not identify you personally, but rather identifies information about your visit to our site. We may monitor statistics such as how many people visit our site, the user's IP address, which pages people visit, from which domains our visitors come and which browsers people use. We use these statistics about your visit for aggregation purposes only. These statistics are used to help us improve the performance of our website.

We collect anonymous statistics about your visit, like which of our pages you viewed.

Some 3rd parties like Facebook and Twitter may know you visited this website, if you use their services. We can't control them but we don't believe this knowledge poses any threat to you.

If you sign up with us we take great care to keep your information safe and we'll never share it with others without your express permission.

We never share your data with 3rd parties except to help us deliver our own services.

These are just the key points. If you need detail, keep reading.

Measuring our visitors

We measure visitors to our website using Google Analytics. This records what pages you view within our site, how you arrived at our site and some basic information about your computer. All of that information is anonymous – so we don't know who you are, just that somebody visited our site.

The information we collect from analytics helps us understand what parts of our sites are doing well, how people arrive at our site and so on. Like most websites, we use this information to make our website better.

You can learn more about Google Analytics or opt out if you wish. You should also read How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps

Participation

Certain site services including the forum and polls require cookies to be set. In a poll this is one of the several parallel mechanisms that prevent multiple voting. On the forum this is part of the mechanism that keeps you logged in.

Facebook, Twitter and other social networks

These services, if implemented here (and not all are), provide social buttons and similar features which we may use on our website – such as the "Like" and "Tweet" buttons.

To do so we embed code that they provide and we do not control ourselves. To function their buttons generally know if you're logged in; for example Facebook use this to say "x of your friends like this". We do not have any access to that information, nor can we control how those networks use it.

Social networks therefore could know that you're viewing this website, if you use their services (that isn't to say they do, but their policies may change). As our website is mainstream we imagine this is not a concern for most users. If it is a concern for you then do not click the social network buttons or links.

How We Use and With Whom We Share the Personal Information We Gather

The personal information we gather from you is used by us only as explained below.

Sending you responses and updates
We generally respond to any e-mail questions, requests for product or service information and other inquiries that we receive. We may also retain this correspondence to improve our products, services and website and for other disclosed purposes. Frequently we retain contact information so that we can send individuals updates or other important information about our services and products.

Disclosure by Law and Protection of iomfats.org and Others
If we are required by law to disclose certain information to local, state, federal, national or international government or law enforcement authorities, we will do so. We will also disclose information to third parties as necessary in order to comply with applicable laws and regulations. In addition, iomfats.org may share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities or suspected fraud, or enforce or apply iomfats.org's agreements.

Surveys
From time to time, we may request information from visitors via surveys. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use of and satisfaction with this website, and improving our customer service and product offerings.

Automatic email services
We maintain a confirmed opt in email notification list. This is under total software control and you may join and leave at any time. We also operate some systems which require an email address in order to send some form of token that you need to handle in order to join or use some of our services, such as the forum.

Authors
We request that an author provides an email address and a name, which may or may not be a pseudonym, for publication with their work. We publish this information, thus making it publicly available. We only publish it with the permission of the author.

Your Ability to Opt Out of Further Notifications

At any time you may alter your registration on this site. This affects any future communications from us with the specific exception of a very short "work in progress" period during which you may still receive information from us that differs from your registration period

Changes to this Privacy Statement

If a material change is made to this Privacy Statement, we will post this change on our website in this page. We will not highlight what has changed.

[Last updated 30 May 2016]