Pearson Acceptable Use of Conduct

You are solely responsible for your conduct, Your Ning Networks, Your Code, and Your Content on the Ning Platform. We want to keep the Ning Platform safe and fun for everyone and the use of the Ning Platform for unlawful or harmful activities is not allowed. In defining "safe and fun," you specifically agree that:

You will not post, email or make available any Content to Users or use the Ning Platform:

  • In a manner that infringes, violates or misappropriates any third party's intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights or contractual rights;
  • in a manner that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications Platform;
  • to engage in spamming, "chain letters," "pyramid schemes", advertisement of illegal or controlled products or services, or other advertising or marketing activities that violate these Terms of Service, any applicable laws, regulations or generally-accepted advertising industry guidelines, including to other Users whether on or off the Ning Platform in connection with Your Ning Network;
  • in a manner that is misleading, deceptive or fraudulent or otherwise illegal or promotes illegal activities, including engaging in phishing or otherwise obtaining financial or other personal information in a misleading manner or for fraudulent or misleading purposes;
  • in a manner that is libelous or defamatory, or in a way that is otherwise threatening, abusive, violent, harassing, malicious or harmful to any person or entity, or invasive of another's privacy;
  • in a manner that is harmful to minors in any way;
  • in a manner that is hateful or discriminatory based on race, color, sex, religion, nationality, ethnic or national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or age or is otherwise objectionable, as reasonably determined by Ning;
  • to impersonate a Ning employee, or any other person, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity, or to obtain access to a Ning Network or the Ning Platform without authorization;
  • to interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Ning Platform or prevent others from using the Ning Platform, or in a manner that disrupts the normal flow of dialogue with an excessive number of messages (flooding attack) to the Ning Platform, or that otherwise negatively affects other persons' ability to use the Ning Platform;
  • to use any manual or automated means, including agents, robots, scripts, or spiders, to access or manage any user's account or to monitor or copy the Ning Platform (including the Network Code or Platform Code) or the content contained therein;
  • to facilitate the unlawful distribution of copyrighted content;
  • in a manner that includes personal or identifying information about another person without that person's explicit consent;
  • in a manner that employs misleading email or IP addresses, or forged headers or otherwise manipulated identifiers in order to disguise the origin of Content transmitted through the Ning Platform or to Users; and
  • in a manner that constitutes or contains any form of advertising or solicitation if emailed to Users who have requested not to be contacted about other services, products or commercial interests.

Additionally, you agree not to:

  • "Stalk" or otherwise harass anyone;
  • Collect, use or disclose data, including personal information, about other Users without their consent or for unlawful purposes or in violation of applicable law or regulations;
  • Request, solicit or otherwise obtain access to usernames, passwords or other authentication credentials from any Member of the Ning Platform or to proxy authentication credentials for any Member of the Ning Platform for the purposes of automating logins to the Ning Platform;
  • Use any profanity or the description or name of any illegal activity in the name of Your Ning Network, the Network Subdomain (as defined below) for Your Ning Network;
  • Use the name "Ning" as any part of the name of Your Ning Network or the Network Subdomain;
  • Post any Content containing child pornography to any Ning Network. Ning absolutely does not tolerate this and will report any suspected instances of child pornography, including reporting any Ning Member Data, to law enforcement, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children;
  • Post any Content that Ning determines depicts or contains rape, extreme violence, murder, bestiality, incest, or other similar content;
  • Post any Content that Ning determines constitutes pornography, contains nudity, or is adult in nature. Ning’s current definition of these categories is located here and is subject to change.
  • Use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from Ning Networks and the Ning Platform - except for Internet search engines (e.g. Google) and non-commercial public archives (e.g. archive.org) that comply with our robots.txt file, or "well-behaved" web services/RSS/Atom clients. We reserve the right to define what we mean by "well-behaved";
  • Post irrelevant Content, repeatedly post the same or similar Content or otherwise impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on Ning's infrastructure;
  • Attempt to gain unauthorized access to Ning's computer systems or engage in any activity that disrupts, diminishes the quality of, interferes with the performance of, or impairs the functionality of, the Ning Platform;
  • Use the Ning Platform as a generic file hosting service;
  • Take any action that may undermine the feedback or ratings systems (such as displaying, importing or exporting feedback information off of the Ning Platform or for using it for purposes unrelated to Ning); and
  • Develop, invoke, or utilize any code to disrupt, diminish the quality of, interfere with the performance of, or impair the functionality of the Ning Platform. You agree not to authorize or encourage any third party to use the Ning Platform or any of Your Ning Networks (and Your Ning Networks will not be designed) to facilitate any of the foregoing prohibited conduct. You also agree to immediately notify Ning in the event of an actual or threatened claim that you have violated any of the covenants and agreements contained in this Agreement.