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By subscribing to any American Bar Association Section of International Law (“Section”) listserve, users agree to the terms and conditions contained in these guidelines. These guidelines may be modified from time to time and such modifications shall be effective upon their posting to the Section’s website at http://www.abanet.org/intlaw/hubs/leadership/listserveAUP.html. Revisions to these guidelines will be noted in the version number and date listed above.

1. Section listserves shall not be used to advertise products or services unless such product or service is specifically sponsored by the Section or otherwise approved by the Section. This prohibition includes notices of Continuing Legal Education or related programs sponsored by any entity other than the Section. Any such announcement or advertisement, if made, should be made only by Section staff after such item has been submitted for pre-distribution review.

2. Messages posted to a Section listserve should be limited to the issues and business of the committee or entity for which the listserve was established. Do not make postings that are off-topic from the listserve's focus area. If another person posts a comment or question that is off the subject, do NOT reply to the list and keep the off- subject conversation going publicly.

3. Do not send inflammatory messages or messages containing personal invective. No profanity, vulgarity, or derogatory, defamatory, abusive, threatening, offensive, or illegal remarks are appropriate.

4. Do not post commercial messages including, but not limited to, messages offering or seeking any kind of business relationship, soliciting contributions or soliciting membership or subscription to any resource not offered by the Section. Further, the posting of materials, such as newsletters and related content, generated by a law firm, company or other for-profit entity is strongly discouraged.

5. Be extremely judicious in your use of the "reply to all" button. If you are replying with a message that just says “thanks for the information,” a request to receive a copy of what someone has offered to share, or simply to agree with someone (such as “me, too”), do not reply to the entire group. Instead, send your response directly to the e-mail address of the person who posted the message.

6. Use discretion when forwarding a long mail message to a Section listserve. It's preferable to reference the source of a document and provide instructions on how to obtain a copy. If you must post a long message, warn the readers with a statement at the top of the mail message.

7. Do not post an entire e-mail only to add a short response.

8. Do not use any Section listserve as a method of advocating a client's position.

9. Do not post the same or similar message to multiple Section listserves.

10. Do not post personal email to a Section listserve without the express permission of the original email's author.

11. Do not post to any Section listserve any message, data, information, text or other material ("Content") that is unlawful, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, harassing, harmful, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, abusive or otherwise injurious to third parties.

12. Do not distribute through any Section listserve any Content that would constitute or encourage a criminal offense, create any liability or violate any local, state, national, or international law or regulation.

13. Do not impersonate any person or entity or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity or interfere with other users of the listserve.

14. Do not distribute through any Section listserve any Content such as charity requests, petitions for signatures, other solicitations of listserve users, promotional materials, chain letters or letters relating to pyramid schemes, advertising or solicitations for funds, political campaigning, mass mailings, any form of unsolicited commercial or promotional email ("spam") or an offering of lawful or fraudulent goods, services, schemes or promotions.

15. Do not disseminate through any Section listserve harmful content including without limitation, viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, zombies, cancel bots, or any other computer programming routines that may damage, interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, program, data or personal information.

16. Do not discuss fees for any legal services or any information that might be construed as price fixing, a boycott, an illegal restriction of free trade or any other antitrust violation.

17. Any requests regarding administrative tasks such as being added or removed from a list should be made to the appropriate area, not the list itself. Visit the committee’s homepage for information on how to address administrative tasks. Visit http://www.abanet.org/intlaw/committees/roster/newroster.html for a roster of Section committees.

18. Remember that all listserve exchanges are public domain.

19. Users of a Section listserve may be held individually liable for any communications they send through the listserve, including but not limited to defamatory, discriminatory, antitrust, anti-competitive, false or unauthorized information.

20. Logos and tag lines used as part of a signature or otherwise included in an email posted to any Section listserve should be discrete and of a size, placement, and description as normally used by the sender and should not be disproportionately large.

21. If you will be out of the office for a period of time and will use an automatic “out of office” message, please configure your “out of office” message to not respond to messages from mail.abanet.org. “Out of office” messages on certain list configurations can cause mail loops between the listserve and your email server. This can lead to hundreds of messages being sent out. Refer to your email client's documentation on how to set up rules for Out of Office messages. You may also temporarily disable your listserve subscriptions by putting this command in the body of a message sent to listserv@mail.abanet.org, leaving the subject line blank: set [listserve name] NOMAIL. To re-start your listserve subscription, put this command in the body of a message sent to listserv@mail.abanet.org, leave the subject line blank: set [listserve name] MAIL. When using email this has to be done for every list that you are on.

22. Users of a Section listserve also must comply with all state and federal copyright, trademark and patent laws and regulations. By posting material on a Section listserve, the posting party warrants and represents that it owns the copyright with respect to such material or has received permission from the copyright owner. It is a violation of Section policy to post information that is not original unless it meets the ‘fair use’ guidelines of copyright law, or unless the user has received permission to reproduce such information from the original source. If there is any question as to whether a particular transmission contains information in violation of federal copyright law, the user should not post that information on any Section listserve.

23. By using a Section listserve, users agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless, Section and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, and parent from and against all loss, claims, demands, causes of action, liabilities, expenses, including reasonable attorney's fees and costs arising from any claim arising out of or resulting from in whole or part any breach of these guidelines by the user or any omission or act taken by the user. In no event will the Section be responsible to the users for any indirect, consequential, special or punitive damages or losses users may incur in connection with any Section listserve or any of the data or other materials transmitted through or residing on any Section listserve, even if the Section has been advised of the possibility of such damage or loss.

24. THE SECTION ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OPINIONS AND/OR INFORMATION POSTED ON OR THROUGH ANY SECTION LISTSERVE.

The Section may, but does not assume the obligation to, monitor discussions taking place through any of its listserves. The Section reserves the right, but does not assume the obligation, to investigate any violation of these guidelines. The Section may remove any user from any or all Section listserves for violation of these guidelines. Further, the Section reserves the right, but does not assume the obligation, to temporarily suspend a listserve in circumstances where, inter alia, a “flame war” is emerging.

 

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