Circle’s Acceptable Use Policy
1. Scope – This Acceptable Use Policy (this “Policy”) applies to Customers’ use of all Services offered by Circle The People Inc., or its Affiliates (“Circle”). Capitalized terms used below but not defined in this Policy have the meaning set forth in the Circle Primary Services Agreement (“CPSA”).
2. Last Updated – March 23, 2023.
3. Changes to This Policy – Circle may make changes to this Policy by posting an updated version of this Policy at www.circlethepeople.com and such updates will be effective upon posting.
4. Violations – A Customer’s violation of this Policy will be considered a material breach of the CPSA and/or other Documentation governing the Customer’s use of the services.
5. Prohibited Material – Customers may not, and may not allow any third party, including its Users, to use services to display, store, process, or transmit, or permit use of services to display, store, process, or transmit:
a. Material that infringes or misappropriates a third party’s intellectual property or proprietary rights;
b. Hate-related or violent material, and/or material advocating discrimination against individuals or groups, as determined by Circle in its sole discretion;
c. Obscene, excessively profane material, or otherwise objectionable material as determined by Circle in its sole discretion;
d. Material advocating or advancing criminal hacking, cracking, or phishing;
e. Material related to illegal drugs or paraphernalia;
f. Unlawful software;
g. Malicious code, such as viruses, worms, time bombs, Trojan horses, and other harmful or malicious files, scripts, agents, or programs; or
h. Material that violates, encourages, or furthers conduct that would violate any applicable laws, including any criminal laws, or any third-party rights, including publicity or privacy rights.
6. Prohibited Actions – Customers may not use a Service to, nor allow its users or any third party to use a Service to:
1. Generate or facilitate unsolicited commercial email (spam). Such prohibited activity includes, but is not limited to:
a. Sending communications or email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act or any other applicable anti-spam law or regulation;
b. Imitating or impersonating Circle or any of its Affiliates, another person or his, her, or its email address, or creating false accounts for the purpose of sending spam;
c. Mining data or harvesting any web property to find email addresses or other user account information;
d. Sending unauthorized mail via open, third-party servers;
e. Sending email to users who have requested to be removed from a mailing list;
f. Selling to, exchanging with, sharing with, or distributing to a third-party personal information, including the email addresses of any person without such person’s knowing and continued consent to such disclosure; or
g. Sending unsolicited emails to significant numbers of email addresses belonging to individuals and/or entities with whom you have no preexisting relationship;
2. Send, upload, distribute, or disseminate, or offer to do the same, with respect to unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, fraudulent, infringing, obscene, excessively profane, hateful, violent, or otherwise objectionable material, or promote, support, or facilitate unlawful, hateful, discriminatory, or violent causes, as determined by Circle in its sole discretion;
3. Intentionally distribute viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses, corrupted files, hoaxes, or any other items of a destructive or deceptive nature;
4. Conduct or forward multi-level marketing, such as pyramid schemes and the like;
5. Generate or facilitate SMS, MMS, or other text messages or push notifications in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Do-Not-Call Implementation Act, or any other applicable law including anti-spam, telemarketing, or telephone consumer protection laws or regulations;
6. Use the services in any manner that violates any applicable industry standards, third-party policies, or requirements that Circle and its Affiliates may communicate to its users, including all of the applicable guidelines published by the CTIA, the Mobile Marketing Association, the Self-Regulatory Principles as directed by the Digital Advertising Alliance and the Network Advertising Initiative, or any other generally accepted industry associations, carrier guidelines, or other industry standards;
7. Transmit material that may be harmful to minors;
8. Illegally transmit another’s intellectual property or other proprietary information without such owner’s or licensor’s permission;
9. Impersonate another person, entity, or Circle or any of its Affiliates (via the use of an email address or otherwise) or otherwise misrepresent themselves or the source of any communication;
10. Violate the rights (such as rights of privacy or publicity) of others;
11. Promote, facilitate, or encourage illegal activity;
12. Intentionally or unintentionally interfere with the availability of the Service for other users, including, but not limited to, engaging in usage practices prohibited by the Documentation;
13. Mislead people about voting processes or census processes;
14. Engage in activity in connection with illegal peer-to-peer file sharing;
15. Engage in or promote gambling, or run a gambling operation;
16. “Mine” bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies;
17. Sell, distribute, or export illegal or prescription drugs or other controlled substances or paraphernalia;
18. Operate an “open proxy” or any other form of Internet proxy service that is capable of forwarding requests to any end user or third-party-supplied Internet host;
19. Perform significant load or security testing without first obtaining Circle’s prior written consent;
20. Remove any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices contained in or on the Service, or reformat or frame any portion of the web pages that are part of the Service’s administration display;
21. Access a third-party web property for the purposes of web scraping, web crawling, web monitoring, or other similar activity through a web client that does not take commercially reasonable efforts to identify itself via a unique “user agent string” describing the purpose of the web client and obey the robots exclusion standard (also known as the robots.txt standard), including the crawl-delay directive;
22. Use a Service in any manner that would disparage Circle or any of its Affiliates;
23. Use any “bot”, or software with similar features and functionality, to communicate with any third party without clearly communicating that the individual is speaking with a bot;
24. Use any product that incorporates artificial intelligence for the purposes of predicting an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, and past, current, or future political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, health status, medical condition, financial status, criminal convictions, or likelihood to engage in criminal acts. The previous sentence does not limit or prohibit use cases or tools designed specifically to identify security breaches, unauthorized access, fraud, and other security vulnerabilities. Additionally, Customer may not submit images of individuals for the purposes of creating or analyzing biometric identifiers, such as face prints, fingerprints, or scans of eyes, hands, or facial geometry;
25. Use any product that incorporates artificial intelligence as part of a decision-making process with legal or similarly significant effects, unless Customer ensures that the final decision is made by a competent human being; or
26. Directly manage, as the primary operator, private, for-profit prison facilities, or detention centers in the United States. For-profit prisons and detention centers refer to privately owned facilities in which persons are incarcerated or otherwise involuntarily confined for purposes of execution of a punitive sentence imposed by a court or detention pending a trial, hearing, or other judicial or administrative proceeding.
B. Worldwide, Customers may not use a Service to commercially advertise or sell of any of the following firearms and/or related accessories to private citizens:
1. Automatic firearms – firearms that have the capacity to accept a grenade launcher or flare launcher, flash or sound suppressor, forward pistol grip, pistol grip (in the case of a rifle) or second pistol grip (in the case of a pistol), or a barrel shroud; or
2. Semi-automatic firearms – firearms with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds; ghost guns; 3D printed guns; firearms without serial numbers; or firearms that use .50 BMG ammunition; or
2. Firearm Parts – magazines capable of accepting more than 10 rounds; flash or sound suppressors; grenade or rocket launchers; 80% or unfinished lower receivers; blueprints for ghost guns; blueprints for 3D printed guns; barrel shrouds; or threaded barrels capable of accepting a flash suppressor or sound suppressor.
7. U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act or Similar Statutory Obligations
A. To the extent a Customer uses the Services for hosting, advertising, sending electronic messages, or for the creation and hosting of, or for posting material on, websites, each Customer must:
1. Comply with any notices received under Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (Section 512 of the U.S. Copyright Act) or similar statute in other countries if operating in such countries (the “DMCA”);
2. Set up a process to expeditiously respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the DMCA and to implement a DMCA-compliant repeat infringers policy;
3. Publicly display a description of its notice and takedown process under the DMCA on its instance of the Services; and
4. Comply with such processes, policy(ies), and description.
B. It is Circle’s policy to respond expeditiously to valid notices of claimed copyright infringement compliant with the DMCA. In appropriate circumstances, Circle will terminate the accounts of Customers who Circle suspects to be repeatedly or blatantly infringing copyrights.
C. If Circle receives a notice alleging that material on a Customer’s instance of a Service infringes another party’s intellectual property, Circle may disable that Customer’s instance of the Service or remove the allegedly infringing material. If Circle receives more than one such notice for the same Customer, Circle reserves the right to immediately terminate such Customer’s subscriptions to the Services as deemed necessary by Circle to ensure continued protection under the safe harbor provisions under the DMCA, or to prevent violations of other applicable laws or third party rights.
