Terms and rules

Whether this is your first time online or you're a seasoned visitor, we've spelled out the house rules for you here. Generally speaking, we simply require that you respect others and use good manners. We also insist that you abide by the guidelines and policies detailed below.

The following User Agreement ("Agreement") governs the use of www.browncafe.com ("Website"), including without limitation participation in its bulletin boards, forums, chats, and all other areas (except to the extent stated otherwise on a specific page) as provided by Style and Design LLC ("Service Provider," "we," or "our").

Please read the rules contained in this Agreement carefully. You can access this Agreement any time at https://www.browncafe.com/community/pages/terms/. Your use of and/or registration on any aspect of the Website will constitute your agreement to comply with these rules. If you cannot agree with these rules, please do not use the Website

1.) Registration and use of our site is free. We provide no guaranties or warranties, express or implied, with regard to any content provided on this site or on any other website linked to or from BrownCafe.

2.) BrownCafe operates on an honor system. Our intention is to maintain a fair and reasonable forum and facilitate legitimate, reasoned debate about the issues raised. Registered members are offered the privilege of freely posting on this site with the understanding that they are bound by their honor to observe our House Rules and Terms of Service and will therefore not abuse the trust placed in them.

3.) Our staff does not review all of the content posted here. We rely on the members to report inappropriate content so that it can be reviewed by the moderators and appropriate action taken when necessary. Content will not be deleted or altered for the purpose of distorting the pattern of opinion in any given discussion. The sole purpose of content editing or deletion is to remove inappropriate content and enforce these Terms of Service and House Rules.

Public discussions of staff decisions are not permitted on the public forum. If you have any concerns or questions about a staff decision, please take it up in private with a member of the site administration team.

4.) You hereby acknowledge that all posts made to these forums express the contributions, views and opinions of the author and not BrownCafe or its staff (except for posts by these people) and hence BrownCafe and its owners, agents and staff will not be held liable. Although the staff of Brown Cafe will attempt to keep objectionable content off of this site, it is impossible for us to review all content or confirm or fact check any of the information posted here.

Comments made by others are not endorsed by service provider. Service Provider does not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify, or agree with the comments, opinions, or statements posted on forums, blogs or otherwise contained in the Website. Any information or material placed online, including advice and opinions, are the views and responsibility of those who post the statements and do not necessarily represent the views of Service Provider or its third party service providers. You agree that Service Provider and its third party service providers are not responsible, and shall have no liability to you, with respect to any information or materials posted by others, including defamatory, offensive or illicit material, even material that violates this Agreement.

5.) BrownCafe cannot take the place of a personal relationship with your doctor, lawyer, union representative, human resources representative, therapist or other professional adviser. Please review all questions and information with them.

The people here are your peers, not trained professionals. Information posted here is individual personal experience only, not professional, medical or legal advice. If you are in danger, call your doctor or therapist, local crisis line, 911, or a family member. BrownCafe's staff and members/posters are not qualified to diagnose or give any type of medical, legal, financial, career or other advice when it comes to your personal situation.

6.) Discussion can be animated, which is fine, but we do not welcome personal attacks, on- or off-board. Derogatory, insulting, or belittling statements, directed at other members as well as direct or indirect personal attacks are not permitted on our forum.

It is fine to disagree with a different viewpoint, but please limit this to challenging the idea and not make your comments a personal challenge or make derogatory personal comments about individuals or their choices or circumstances, which disparage their ideas, opinions, their occupation or their personal situation. These examples are not exhaustive. Insulting or disparaging another member is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done. These offensive comments are contrary to the spirit of legitimate, reasoned debate and damaging to the purpose of our community.

You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, insulting, sexually-oriented or any material that may violate any applicable laws. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned from this site. The IP address of all posts are recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions.

7.) No solicitations, donation requests or self promotional advertisements are allowed in any way shape or form. You may not post messages anywhere on this site that are primarily for the promotion or advertising of any other websites, forums, apps, legal actions, lawsuits, email campaigns, businesses, social networking campaigns, MLM activity, professional advisers or any other entities that you have an affiliation with (ie. no self-promotion). This includes links in your signature.

The use of our domain name/logo/website likeness in any print, email or virtual promotions is prohibited without written permission from Style and Design LLC.

8.) We ask you to be responsible for protecting your own personal information and respectful of the personal information of others. This means not posting your own or any other person's full name, last name, personally identifiable photos, email addresses, work or home locations, job titles, phone numbers, addresses, Social Security numbers, or any other personally identifiable or private information. Do not post screenshots or text from private conversations, text messages, email, or any other private communication. This also means your full name cannot be used as your username or posted anywhere on our site.

9.) You may not post copyrighted, proprietary or confidential information on our website. This includes material copied from UPSers.com or UPS internal communications.

10.) You agree that the webmaster, administrator and moderators of this forum have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic at any time for any reason they see fit. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that BrownCafe and its owners, agents, and staff cannot be held responsible for any hacking attempt that may lead to the data being compromised.

11.) Except as expressly provided otherwise in the Privacy Policy, you agree that by posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through the Website, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, enhance, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, display, or sublicense any such communication in any medium (now in existence or hereinafter developed) and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so. In addition, please be aware that information you disclose in publicly accessible portions of the Website will be available to all users of the Website, so you should be mindful of personal information and other content you may wish to post.

12.) We reserve the right to modify this policy at any time. However, this policy will remain in effect until a replacement policy is posted on this website.

Claims of Copyright Infringement

It is the policy of Style and Design LLC to comply with the United States Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C.), and amendments including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Any person who believes that their copyrighted material is contained on any of Style and Design LLC's web sites may file an infringement claim.

Designated Agent to Receive Notification of Infringement Claims:

How to make a claim:

The DMCA specifies that all infringement claims must be in writing (either electronic mail or letter) and must include the following:

• Your name, physical address, telephone number, facsimile number, e-mail address and name of contact person;
• A physical or electronic signature of the copyright holder or a person authorized to act on his or her behalf;
• A description of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of works at that site;
• A description of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material;
• Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact you, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address;
• A statement that you have 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; and
• A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury that you are authorized to act on behalf of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

7 Ways to Get Your Posts Edited or Deleted

1. VIOLATE COPYRIGHTS. Copying and pasting an entire article, story or any other copyrighted materials here is a no-no because that's AGAINST COPYRIGHT LAW! It's okay to post small excerpts and/or your own comments and a link to the original work. If you find copyright laws too restrictive feel free to start a thread in the Current Events forum debating the merits of Copyright laws.

2. THREATEN or HARASS OTHERS. You are free to add members to your ignore list if they annoy you. You are also free to report them if they have offended you. Threatening or harassing others is not allowed, even if you think they deserve it.

3. BE CREEPY. Protect privacy, everyone's privacy. You wouldn't like it if you discovered that someone else had posted your name, your face, or a pic of your Mom here. That's creepy, don't be creepy.

4. THWART LANGUAGE FILTERS. Using spaces between letters, strange characters or misspellings to get around the language filters to post filtered words is annoying. Your vocabulary is bigger than that. Curse words are not okay. We know you know what that means.

5. SPAM. If we wanted Spam we'd buy it in a can.

• Posting promotional content, affiliate links, or selling stuff is spam.
• Posting links to your own website, blog, or other self promotional stuff in your signature is spam.

6. CALL SOMEONE A "POOP HEAD". You may be correct about the composition of their head, but don't make disparaging remarks or derogatory comments about other members. Debate the issue; not the person. That means no name calling, okay?

7. TROLLING. What is trolling? Making extreme rude, disparaging or inflammatory comments just to get an emotional response. If you see someone "trolling" please use the report link to alert the moderators/troll catchers.