This is a legal document. Please read it carefully.
If you believe any of the description below is ambiguous, please contact us for a clarification.
The use of the name OpenIntro should be interpretted to include the OpenIntro project, company, nonprofit, incorporation, and anyone working on behalf of the project (i.e. founders, fellows, and volunteers, not all of whom may be listed on this website). Any use of we, our, us, or other first-person pronouns written below should be interpreted to include any or all elements of OpenIntro, as described above.
You must be 13 years old to use this website. If you are not yet 13 years old, please visit us on your 13th birthday.
The purpose and mission of this site
The goal of the website openintro.org ("the website") and its related projects are to improve the quality of education while lowering expenses. This is largely accomplished by providing, distributing, and organizing educational information, materials, and services.
You are legally responsible for anything You submit to this website, and content submitted or posted is licensed to be used by OpenIntro
You are legally responsible and liable for any information you submit. You agree to not submit materials or link to materials that are unlawful for individuals of any age to view. You agree not to in any way encourage, endorse, or promote behavior or postings that would be unlawful or violate these terms of use.
You acknowledge and accept that we may examine materials that you post to the website, even if they are in user-to-user messages and have not been flagged by site users. For example, we may examine a teacher account if the teacher has an unusual number of uploads. You agree that OpenIntro may remove any of your materials if OpenIntro believes the material to be inappropriate or break a law. You also agree to allow OpenIntro to delete any materials that are not used for more than 12 months. (We will often, but not always, attempt to contact the user in such cases.)
Any materials (also called products) you submit or post on this website are licensed to OpenIntro under both a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license and a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license unless otherwise noted. You understand that if we use any of your submitted or posted materials, we will provide attribution, unless in some special cases where you elect not to be attributed. If you submit or post any materials to the website, you agree that our chosen forms of attribution satisfy the attribution component of the licenses listed above. You retain the copyright to your original content and so may release it to others in any way you deem appropriate, and you may use your materials in pursuit of profit, as is your right as the copyright owner.
You agree to allow Openintro to host materials on the website that you submit or post to the website indefinitely. You also agree that by hosting your materials (without substantive changes), OpenIntro is not obligated to release the material under a Creative Commons license. This paragraph is saying that your materials are not automatically released under one of the two Creative Commons licenses listed in the preceding paragraph just because the materials are hosted on the website. If OpenIntro releases the materials in a modified way or through any other medium, then we agree to release the file under one or both of the licenses listed above. No aspect of this paragraph affects the copyright ownership of your original materials or your ability to release original materials under any license you desire.
Users viewing or obtaining materials from the website understand different materials may be under different licenses, and some content is not released under an license except to that particular person to view and use.
Accuracy, timeliness, availability of this site and its contents are not guaranteed
Occasionally we will make an error, mis-statement, or mistake. Examples, exercises, and other information may not represent real-world information. By using this site, you agree not to hold OpenIntro liable for information, actions, inaccuracies, or any other component of the website or project.
Sometimes this site will not be available. You agree not to hold OpenIntro liable if this website or any of its resources are not available to you at any time or if there is an error made by OpenIntro.
You acknowledge and accept that not all content may be entirely accurate and that it is your responsibility to seek out and verify details when appropriate.
The site and all of its contents are copyrighted, but some of these materials are released under Creative Commons licenses
All materials and text on this site is copyrighted by OpenIntro, the site users, or the site contributors. Materials may be used, redistributed, shared, and modified only when specified and under the corresponding license. By using this site, you agree to abide by these licenses and any copyright and license laws.
You agree to not use HTML frames in conjunction with our website and to not call images or files from our server to an alternative web domain
You agree to allow OpenIntro to remove information, content, questions, or other materials for any reason.
Data management, retention, and sharing
Users agree to allow OpenIntro to use tracking files known as "cookies".
Below are samples of information that OpenIntro collects and may retain and use indefinitely:
- Quiz performance data
- User account information
- Any content submitted through the website
- Actions or activity of users visiting the site
We collect this information because it allows us to improve the website and our resources. For instance, we can assess the quality of different pieces of our site by assessing user interactions. By using this site, you agree to participate in this data collection.
You agree to allow OpenIntro to share your personal information when you elect for it to be shared, e.g. when you invite another person to the website through our website interface. By using this website, you also agree to allow OpenIntro to share anonymized data (i.e. names, email addresses, and hashed passwords removed) with the public or with other groups. Data-sharing exceptions related to malicious activity are identified below. You also acknowledge that OpenIntro may grant access to law enforcement officials if it is deemed necessary by OpenIntro or by a court. Additionally, if you impersonate any individual or entity, you agree that we may share any information you have provided with the person or entity you have impersonated. For example, if you are applying for a teacher account, we may contact staff at any schools to confirm your teaching status during our review of your application and in that process share your name, email address, and other information. If we believe that your application contains false information, e.g. impersonating a teacher, you understand and agree that we may share information about your account (including your teacher application) to relevant school(s). For this reason, we suggest students not apply for teacher accounts unless they serve in a formal instructor role (FYI: we manually review all Teacher Applications).
If a Verified Teacher invites you and you are or become registered on OpenIntro, you accept that the Verified Teacher who invited you will be notified that you registered and / or will be shown in some other view that you joined openintro.org. Information that will be shared includes your email (the Verified Teacher must have already had your email to invite you), your first and last name, and the date you registered, and if you have confirmed your email address. These persons may also reach out to you. Please note that Verified Teachers are considered our most trusted set of website visitors, because they have either gone through a verification process or were invited to the site by another Verified Teacher.
If you apply for Teacher Verification, any individual who helped us confirm your teaching status may be included on a notification email. This email contains a confirmation of your Verified Teacher status plus other general information about Verified Teacher access. The main goal in including such individuals in emails is to help them be confident that their actions were helpful.
How your information may be shared with others on the website
When you post a message to a Forum on the website, you accept that your user ID or name may appear along with your message.
Verified Teachers may learn of other teachers on the platform. For example, if someone applies for a teaching account, a set of already-Verified Teachers may be able to review and approve that application; such crowd-sourcing methods allow the OpenIntro platform to better scale. There may be additional features for Verified Teachers that lead to their names and email addresses to be shared with each other, e.g. so they can collaborate on projects. As we have done throughout the history of OpenIntro, we will be very mindful of how information can be shared and remain cautious in this space.
As a user of OpenIntro, you are not permitted to harvest data from the website for use in any efforts unrelated to OpenIntro and not for any commercial purposes. You are also not allowed to share any names, contact information, or any other details about a person obtained on OpenIntro to anyone else. For example, Verified Teachers are not permitted to create their own list of other teachers. If there's a chance these terms are ambiguous for your purpose, you agree to ask OpenIntro via the Contact page for permission first and not to proceed until receiving OpenIntro's explicit and written agreement that you may proceed.
Generally, we want to note that any sharing of your information is something specifically for the purposes of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of OpenIntro in advancing education. For example, we remain committed to not sharing your information with other companies, because that does not further the mission of OpenIntro.
Accounts on openintro.org
By registering on openintro.org, you agree to receive occasional emails; we aim for 4 or fewer general emails per year, though you may receive other account-specfic emails (e.g. if you reset your password, you will receive an email). If you would like to opt out of promotional emails, please email our admin account, which is listed on the Contact page.
We reserve the right to cancel an account, retract a teacher's Verified or Pre-Verified status, cancel a textbook request, or take other actions we deem to be appropriate regarding user accounts on OpenIntro.
We reserve the option to force users to change their usernames. For example, if a user chooses "BarackObama" as a username, we may later require that user to change their name to avoid confusion with the real Barack Obama, who visits our site regularly (we're sure of it...). Similarly, we may also require a username including a trademark (or something very close to it) to be changed. In general, our goal with this policy is to minimize confusion and a perception of impersonation.
Malicious users and vandalism
We monitor data collected on the website to try to improve the website and its contents. Sometimes this may lead us to find a user that is acting maliciously. If malicious behavior is identified, names, email addresses, and all other information that we deem necessary to describe malicious behavior or identify a malicious user may be shared with law enforcement or other authorities or officials. Be aware that malicious activity, if reported to academic officials, may affect the offending user's academic standing, employment status, or reputation.
Below are a few examples of what is considered malicious behavior:
- registering multiple accounts and using more than one of those accounts to rate content;
- intentionally flagging items inaccurately, e.g. flagging a question as copyrighted content when it is in fact original user content;
- attempts at SQL injection.
This list is not comprehensive. We may (or may not, depending on the severity of the actions) issue a warning to the user before reaching out to law enforcement or other officials (e.g. academic officials).
Changes to these terms may occur
These terms of use may change. The latest terms of use will always apply to all users. By using OpenIntro, you agree to abide by these changes. If OpenIntro sends an email to notify you of a change in terms, which it will not typically do, you agree not to hold OpenIntro liable if you do not receive an email with information about a change in these terms or the privacy policy.
Disclosure
OpenIntro is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
Website scraping agreement
This section of the agreement goes into effect on January 1st, 2025, and it remains in effect indefinitely.
These conditions are not applicable to non-automated website access, such as a person browsing the website and accessing resources. These conditions only apply to companies with employees or systems that scrape our website or access our content through automated means.
We appreciate the plight of artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) companies. However, we also expect compensation for use of our website server(s) and content(s) when it is obtained by a website scraper or other automated access process that has not received an exemption. Any company that obtains content from this website (openintro.org) through automated means from openintro.org to train an AI or ML system agrees that as compensation it will provide OpenIntro with an indefinite option to obtain 1% of the company's stock at a cost of $100 total, where no additional legal documentation is required to solidify this agreement. OpenIntro may choose to exercise this option for 100 years in the future following each access of information on openintro.org, and the company agrees to honor the option within one week of OpenIntro reaching out to exercise the option. The stock granted by the company shall be stock as chosen by OpenIntro, such as common stock or preferred stock, without any ability for the company to dilute the 1% company ownership.
Additionally, if a company refuses to honor or seeks to prevent OpenIntro from exercising this option -- either through delays longer than 4 weeks or through legal action -- it then agrees that OpenIntro shall receive an additional option that may be exercised for conversion to shares worth 10% of the company, at a cost of $500, under the same stock conditions described for the 1%. Furthermore, if the company delays OpenIntro's ability to exercise its option longer than 1 year from the time we choose to exercise the option, the company agrees to pay OpenIntro $1 billion for each month of delay from the day of OpenIntro choosing to exercise its option, and the company agrees to eliminate annual total compensation in excess of $1 million for all employees or board members indefinitely. The company also agrees that it will honor this agreement ahead of all other debts or obligations, including ahead of all debts or obligations with similar requirements.
In the case that a company is a nonprofit organization, such as OpenAI, or if there is another situation where stock cannot be granted, the nonprofit agrees to pay OpenIntro an amount equal to 50% of all past contracts that the nonprofit had been paid, in addition to reducing annual total compensation for all employees or contractors to be $500,000 or less going forward, once OpenIntro exercises its option. Additionally, the nonprofit agrees to no longer share its AI or ML systems with any private company going forward without the express written consent of the OpenIntro board.
All dollar values in this agreement shall not be inflation-adjusted unless OpenIntro agrees to such an adjustment, and adjustments may be done selectively based on OpenIntro's discretion.
If a company wishes to request an exemption from this section, please contact us with information about your company, and we will consider the exemption request. No exemption request is granted without an official response. Exemptions are also only available for subsequent actions. Requests are not granted retroactively without unanimous approval by the Board of Directors and at least one OpenIntro co-founder (Christopher Barr or David Diez).
Voiding part of these terms does not void all the terms
If part of these terms are voided due to a conflict with any law or for any other reason, the rest of the terms of use will remain valid and continue to apply to the site users. If part of these terms are not valid in one or more states, then those terms will remain in effect for all other states where they are otherwise valid and it will not affect any other part of the terms.
Terms of Use License
The text of these Terms of Use are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license. However, usage of the Terms of Use comes with absolutely no warranty for guarantee.