Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of these terms

This Terms of Service document, including the binding arbitration provision in Section 12 (the “Terms”), is an agreement between you and the people who run ConferenceRooms.org (“we”, “us”). You must accept it to use our chat rooms, nicknames, web chat, services and website (together, the “Service”). By creating an account, registering a nickname, opening a room, or simply using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms, including the Privacy Policy, which is part of them.

If you accept on behalf of a company, team or community, you represent that you have the authority to bind it, and “you” then means that organization too. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

We may change these Terms as the service evolves. If a change matters, we will give reasonable notice beforehand, by email to your account address or by a notice on the site. The current version always lives at /terms/. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you do not, stop using the Service and ask us to close your account.

Your account is yours alone. Register a nickname with a password only you know, keep it secret, and you are responsible for everything done under it, including by people you share access with. Room founders and operators are responsible for what their helpers do in their rooms.

2. Who may use the Service

You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of majority where you live) and able to enter a contract. ConferenceRooms.org is not directed at children under 13, and children under 13 may not use it. If we learn someone under 13 is using it, we will close the account.

Schools and teachers in the United States who want students over 13 to use the Service, for example for classes, are responsible for complying with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA): notify parents or guardians what information will be collected, get consent first, keep the consents on file, and show them to us on request. Outside the United States, comply with your local equivalent.

3. What the Service is

ConferenceRooms.org provides real-time chat rooms that open in any browser or any IRC client: public and private rooms, registered nicknames, memos, channel agents, CR Scribe conversation logs, CR Translation, and the Professional and Enterprise editions with control panels, branding and linked networks. It does not provide video meetings, voice calls, an app marketplace or ticketing. CR Share is temporary file transfer, not file hosting or archival storage.

Features change over time. We may add, change or discontinue the Service, a plan or a feature at any time. Rights in the Service, including all intellectual property, remain ours.

4. Accounts, nicknames and rooms

Pick a nickname to talk. Register it with a password to keep it yours. Registered rooms keep their topic, settings and helpers even when empty. Founders own their rooms; managers, operators and voiced helpers act under the founder's responsibility.

Room founders set their room's rules within these Terms: who may enter (open, hidden, invite-only, key or registered-only), who may speak, and how the room is moderated. Our staff may enter any room to help and cannot be removed by room operators.

5. Acceptable use

Use the Service only for lawful purposes. You agree not to:

• Post or share anything unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, obscene, hateful or invasive of privacy.
• Harm minors in any way, or use the Service in a way directed at children under 13.
• Impersonate any person or room role, including staff, founders or operators, or lie about who you are.
• Disguise where content comes from, or share content you have no right to share, including confidential information and other people's creative work.
• Spam, flood, advertise without permission, or run pyramid or chain schemes in rooms.
• Upload malware or anything built to damage software, hardware or networks.
• Disrupt rooms or the network: denial-of-service behavior, evading bans with fresh nicknames to harass, or interfering with other people's conversations.
• Try to break into the Service, probe other users' connections, or disobey the technical rules of the network.
• Break the law, including privacy, data protection and export-control laws.
• Collect other users' personal data beyond what normal chat use involves.

We may remove content that breaks these rules, and we may suspend or close accounts that break them repeatedly or seriously. We do not pre-screen everything, and we are not responsible for what users say to each other.

6. Your content and our license to run the Service

You keep your content. To run the Service we need your permission to transmit, store, copy, index and display what you send: messages, topics, memos, files you link or upload, and profile details, so that rooms work, search works and nothing is lost. You grant us that permission, for operating the Service only, including through the hosting and payment providers we use to run it. The permission ends when the content is deleted, subject to backups and room records described in the Privacy Policy.

If you send us ideas or feedback about the Service, you give us a free, unlimited license to use them without owing you anything.

7. Logged rooms

Some rooms are logged by CR Scribe, which writes the conversation to a web page as it happens. Treat a logged room as on the record. Room founders decide whether their room is logged; visitors should check the topic or ask before saying anything sensitive. See the Privacy Policy for how logs and records work.

8. Payment

Professional costs $399 per month and Enterprise costs $799 per month, billed in advance to the payment method you provide. Keep your billing details current. Dispute a charge within 60 days of the invoice or it stands. Paid amounts are non-refundable. If prices change, we will tell you on the site and by email at least 30 days before the new price applies; continuing to use a paid edition after that means you accept it. You pay applicable taxes except taxes on our net income. Unpaid invoices may suspend the paid features until paid.

9. Ending your account

You may stop using the Service and ask us to close your account at any time through /contact/. We may suspend or close accounts that break these Terms, abuse the network, or go unpaid, with or without notice where abuse is ongoing. When an account closes, we delete or anonymize its account data within a reasonable time unless the law requires us to keep it; room records follow the room's own rules (see Privacy Policy). Paid fees already collected are not refunded.

10. Disclaimers

The Service may pause for maintenance or for reasons beyond our control; we will give advance notice of planned work that matters. You are responsible for keeping your own important records. THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED AS IS AND AS AVAILABLE, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, and nothing we tell you outside these Terms creates a warranty.

11. Liability cap

To the maximum extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, consequential or punitive damages, including lost profits, business or data. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the fees you paid in the six months before the claim arose, or $100 if you paid nothing. Some places do not allow these limits, so some may not apply to you; there, our liability is limited as far as the law permits.

12. Disputes and arbitration

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION: IT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS, INCLUDING TRIAL BY JURY. Most disagreements can be settled with a message. Before starting any formal proceeding (except the exceptions below), write to us at info@conferencerooms.org or through /contact/ with your name, contact details, what happened and what you want; do the same if we write to you. Neither side starts a formal proceeding for at least 30 days after that notice.

If 30 days pass without agreement, any claim arising from the Service or these Terms will be resolved by binding arbitration, not in court, under the rules of JAMS in effect when the arbitration starts (these Terms prevail over any conflicting JAMS rule). You waive any jury trial. You may still seek any remedy your state law allows. Join a claim as follows: write a Demand for Arbitration describing the claim and the amount sought, send three copies plus the filing fee to JAMS, and one copy to us at info@conferencerooms.org. Members who start an arbitration do not pay the initiation fee or proceeding costs; we do. Filing organizations pay their own initiation costs. Hearings happen near your hometown unless we agree otherwise, including by phone.

Class actions and class arbitrations are excluded: claims stay individual, and JAMS class procedures do not apply. A court may sever any unenforceable part of this section except the class-action exclusion.

Exceptions: the 30-day notice and arbitration do not apply to intellectual-property disputes (patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, piracy), which go to a competent court, nor to individual small-claims actions. Registered-nickname holders may opt out of arbitration within 30 days of first use by writing to info@conferencerooms.org; then neither side is bound by it.

Claims must be raised within one year of arising (three years for the court exceptions above), or they are barred.

13. Copyright complaints

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright or intellectual property, write to info@conferencerooms.org with: your signature (you may act for the owner), what work is infringed, where the infringing material is (room and time, or page address), your address, phone and email, a good-faith statement that the use is unauthorized, and a statement under penalty of perjury that your notice is accurate. We may remove material and, for repeat infringers, close accounts.

14. General terms

You will defend and compensate us for claims, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your breach of these Terms, your content, or misuse of the Service; we may run the defense and you will cooperate. If any provision cannot be enforced, the rest stands. These Terms are the whole agreement about the Service and replace earlier understandings; changes need our written agreement except as described above. No agency, partnership or employment is created. You may not transfer your account or these Terms without our written consent (except with 30 days notice as part of selling your business); we may transfer ours freely. Notices by email count as written. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict rules. Your account and its content rights are personal and do not survive you, though room records and published logs follow room rules.

15. Memos (MemoServ)

Memos are private messages from one registered nickname to another, held for pickup when the recipient returns. They travel encrypted like everything else, are visible only to sender and recipient, are never written to CR Scribe logs, and never pass through CR Translation.

Once a memo is deleted, it is gone for good: deleted memos are not backed up and cannot be recovered. Delivery is best-effort. We do not promise when, or whether, a memo arrives, and we are not responsible for delayed delivery or for any failure to send, receive or display a memo.

16. CR Scribe records may contain errors

CR Scribe writes rooms to web pages as conversations happen, but automation is never perfect: lines can arrive late or out of order, nicknames can mismatch across reconnects, and brief outages can leave gaps. The daily SHA-256 seal shows a log has not been tampered with; it does not show the log is complete or error-free.

Do not treat a Scribe page as a certified transcript. Check anything that matters against the room itself, and tell us about systematic errors through /contact/ so we can fix them.

17. CR Translation may be wrong, slow or unavailable

CR Translation produces automated translations, and they can make mistakes: wrong words, wrong tone, swapped meanings, especially with slang, names and short messages. It can run slowly, arrive delayed, or be unavailable at certain times of day or week when demand is high or providers are down.

Translation is not guaranteed in every language, including languages we otherwise advertise: coverage changes as models and providers change. Translated words can replace or distort what was actually said, and we are not responsible for misunderstandings, decisions or losses that follow from a translation error. For anything where precision matters, confirm in a shared language first.

18. Enterprise Edition: limits, language ratings and disclaimers

The figures below are the measured limits of our current Enterprise deployment, not a promise that they will never change. We may raise, lower or withdraw any limit to protect the Service, to control abuse or to reflect a change of provider, and your order may state a different figure. The Service is offered 24/7 on a best-effort basis and is subject to maintenance, capacity, abuse control and events outside our control.

MemoServ: the Enterprise increases

Memo delivery is best effort. We do not promise when, or whether, a memo arrives, and we are not responsible for delayed delivery or for any failure to send, receive or display a memo.

CR Scribe: retention

A Scribe page is not a certified transcript. Check anything that matters against the room itself.

CR Translation: scope and limits

Language ratings

Quality varies by language. The rating reflects current model quality and measured speed together. It is a guide, not a warranty.

CR Translation: use at your own risk

CR Translation produces automated translations, and they can make mistakes: wrong words, wrong tone, swapped meanings, dropped names and numbers, especially with slang, short messages, names and technical terms. A translation can reverse or distort what was actually said. Do not rely on a translation where a mistake could cause harm, loss, legal consequences or a safety risk, including medical, legal, financial, emergency and safety-critical use. Confirm anything important in a shared language or with a qualified human.

Translation is not guaranteed to be available, complete, accurate or timely, and languages, models and providers can change or be withdrawn without notice. We are not responsible for misunderstandings, decisions, losses or damages that follow from a translation error, a delay or an unavailable language. To the fullest extent permitted by law, CR Translation is provided "as is" and "as available", without any warranty, and our liability is limited as set out in section 11.

19. CR Share: file and image sharing

CR Share lets a registered nickname send a file or image to a room. The chat uploads it and posts a public link that anyone with the link can open. CR Share is available on every edition; the file size and storage you get depend on your plan.

You need a registered nickname (NickServ) to upload. There are no guest uploads. The nickname that uploads owns the file and can delete it.

Limits

• Free: 1 GB of storage in total, 100 MB per file, links last 3 days.
• Professional: 50 GB of storage in total, 1 GB per file, links last 7 days.
• Enterprise: 100 GB of storage in total, 5 GB per file, links last 32 days.

The Service enforces these limits. When your storage is full, new uploads are refused until you delete files or links expire. We may change limits with notice on the site.

Temporary storage, never an archive

CR Share is temporary transfer storage, not permanent or archival storage. Every file is deleted automatically when its link expires, and we may delete files earlier to enforce these Terms, respond to abuse or legal requests, or protect the Service. We do not keep a copy after deletion, we do not promise any retention beyond the link lifetime, and we do not restore expired or deleted files. Keep your own copy of anything you need. Do not use CR Share as a backup, a document store, or the only copy of anything important.

Chat-only links and temporary passthroughs

A CR Share link looks like https://confrooms.crorg/share/<id>. It is not a public web address: the .crorg name is handled inside the Service and has no public download page. Clicking the link in the web chat creates a short-lived, session-bound passthrough on conferencerooms.org; the passthrough expires after a few minutes and only works in the browser session that clicked it. Anyone using the web chat who has the link can open the file; people outside the web chat cannot. Share links only with people you trust, and do not upload confidential, sensitive or regulated information unless you accept that risk. You are responsible for what you upload and for who receives the link.

Your content and deletion

You must have the right to share what you upload, and it must comply with Section 5. You can delete any of your files at any time from /cr-share/; deletion is immediate and permanent, and the link stops working. We may remove files that break these Terms or the law. Uploading malware, illegal content, or other people's confidential material is prohibited.

No warranty

CR Share is provided as part of the Service, as is and as available. We do not warrant that a file will be stored for any particular time, that a link will keep working, or that a download will succeed. Our liability for files is limited by Sections 10 and 11.