Terms of use

The most important facts in brief

The use of DOOIY is free of charge.

All the guides you find on the platform are subject to an open sharing licence, usually Creative Commons CC:BY-SA. This means that you can use, distribute and modify the content, but you must always credit the author correctly and any modifications of the content will be published under a similar licence.

Your use of DOOIY and the available guides is at your own discretion and risk.

Be respectful of other users and, where possible, make your own positive contribution to the development of the service.

DOOIY - Our service

Our service gives you the opportunity to discover and view step-by-step guides from other users free of charge. You can also share your own guides with the community; in this case you are considered an author according to the terms of use.

DOOIY is a platform of people and organisations around the world who share concrete technical and organisational solutions that can improve the lives of people living in areas with poor infrastructure and economic poverty. Our goal: to enable a new, digital form of empowerment and to build a community that supports and inspires each other. We support a culture of sharing and further development through the use of open sharing licences.

We as a service provider

The official operator of DOOIY can be found in the Impressum. The pronouns “we”, “us” or “our” refer to the operator of DOOIY.

Applicability of the terms of use

Your use of the Service is subject to the Terms of Use posted on the Website at the time of use. Please read the Terms of Use carefully before accessing the Website or using any part of the Service. By accessing our Service, you agree to be bound by our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. The Terms of Use apply to all users and authors.

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change and/or modify our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy at any time. It is your responsibility to regularly review the current Terms of Use and Privacy Policy on our website at https://dooiy.org/nutzungsbedingungen and https://dooiy.org/datenschutzerklaerung.

If you do not unconditionally agree to all of the Terms of Use (or any changes thereto), you may not use our Service.

Who can use DOOIY?

The service is only available to people who are at least 18 years old. If you are under 18 but at least 13 years old, you must have the permission of at least one parent or guardian to use the Service. Please read these Terms of Use with him or her. For continued use, we will assume that at least one parent or guardian has given their consent. Use is only permitted with your parent/guardian. Children under the age of 13 are not permitted to use the Service.

If you are using the Service on behalf of a business, institution or other organisation, you represent to us that you are authorised to grant all permissions and licences under these Terms of Use and accept these Terms as binding on behalf of the organisation. If you wish to use DOOIY as an organisation, please contact us at info@dooiy.org.

Your use of the service

Access to and use of this Service is permitted subject to compliance with the Terms of Use and the law. Our Service (including all content and contributions by users and authors) is provided for personal, non-commercial use or for non-profit purposes only. If you wish to use DOOIY for commercial purposes, you must agree this with us separately.

Rules and restrictions

The use of the Service is subject to certain rules and restrictions. In particular, please note the following when using the Service.

1. it is prohibited to use the Service to distribute content that is not in line with the objectives of DOOIY. This includes, but is not limited to, automated content, advertising, pornography, violence, drugs, human trafficking, weapons, commercial content such as contests, sales, solicitations, and other SPAM. It also includes content that spreads misinformation and could harm the health, safety and trust of our users.
2. you may not violate the privacy of others by collecting, sharing or otherwise using information, videos or photos that could identify a person or private location unless you have their consent.
3. it is forbidden to violate the personal rights and well-being of others by acting in a racist, obscene, offensive, sexist, defamatory, threatening or otherwise unlawful manner (e.g. by sharing such content). DOOIY is a platform to make the world a better place - not a place to offend or harm individuals or groups of people.
4. it is forbidden to use the Service to embed advertising and sponsorship - unless there is a separate agreement with us in this regard.
5. it is prohibited to damage, restrict, disproportionately burden or interrupt the Service, its technical infrastructure or security-related functions by means of viruses or other measures or to gain unauthorised access to our infrastructure, data and data of third parties.
6. it is prohibited to access the Service with automated methods (e.g. robots, botnets or scrapers), except for the purpose of indexing for a public search engine.

You as an author

If you have ideas that you want to share and that fit the theme of DOOIY, you can become an author and host guides on DOOIY and make them accessible to other users. In the following, these ideas will also be referred to as “content” and persons or legal entities who publish content within the framework of DOOIY will be referred to as “authors”.

Publishing on DOOIY is done through an editorial process with our team, at the end of which you give permission for your content to be published under an open sharing licence. Unless otherwise agreed, your guides will be published under a Creative Commons CC:BY-SA licence. Together we will also create an author profile for you, which will also be published on DOOIY. An author profile includes a text introducing your organisation, your contact details released for publication, your logo if applicable, an image as well as links to your guides and other content that you have explicitly released to us for publication. The open sharing licence does not apply to your author profile.

With your release, you grant us a simple right of use, i.e. we may distribute your instructions, stories, author profile, etc. through our Service as well as remove or edit them at our own discretion or change their use on DOOIY. We will mark content changes according to the agreed open sharing licence and discuss them with you if they are significant in scope. Of course, you retain the copyright to the instructions, stories and components of the author profile that you have created yourself and that you publish with us. The contents remain your responsibility.

The chosen open sharing licence and the right you grant us to distribute, edit and remove refers to all published content, i.e. without exception all texts, photos, graphics, information, videos, audio files, logos, interactive functions, software and any other known or yet to be named works that you create, make available or otherwise make accessible via our Service.

Note: You must not infringe the rights of third parties with your publication, so pay particular attention to copyrighted works, patents, utility models, designs, trademarks or trade secrets. You should not enable or facilitate their infringement with your publication. DOOIY respects the intellectual property rights of others. We expect the same from you and other users and authors.

If you see content that you believe does not comply with these Terms of Use, please contact us by email: info@dooiy.org.

Rights, liability and updating of the service

We remain the sole owner of all rights, title and interest in the Service and reserves all rights not expressly granted in these Terms of Use. The Service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. Use is at your own risk and under disclaimer.

We may change, replace or discontinue the Service or any part thereof at any time, with or without notice, in our sole discretion.

Content and Licenses

DOOIY is an open sharing platform. This means that all guides on DOOIY are subject to an open sharing licence. Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that provides a set of standardised, modular open-sharing licences. As a rule, we use the licence CC:BY-SA 4.0 for all instructions published on DOOIY. For individual works, a different, similar licence may be agreed with the author if required. You can always find out which licence applies to which content near the author information.

We have summarised for you which rights and responsibilities are associated with which open sharing licence on a page with detailed information. We have also linked the corresponding original licence documents there. There are no payments associated with Open Sharing licences.

What does the licence CC:BY-SA mean?

This means that you may use, distribute, modify and build upon the guides on DOOIY. However, you must always cite the work, the author and the licence appropriately, link to the original guides on DOOIY and state whether you have modified the work, and you must also make your modified instructions available under the same or similar conditions. This means that you must also grant others rights to your work that are comparable to the CC:BY-SA rights.

Reverse case: If you post a guide, we and all other users of DOOIY are allowed to reuse these guides as we like and to modify the content as long as we mention the licence and your name. This also applies to subsequent users, i.e. persons and legal entities who find your content elsewhere - not on DOOIY. However, new versions of your guides may only be distributed under similar licence conditions (Share Alike - also under CC:BY-SA).

In other words, your instructions remain your instructions and anyone who uses or changes them must always name you as the author. It must also be stated whether your instructions have been changed. There are no payments associated with the issuing of a Creative Commons licence. This means that you do not receive any money for your guide, its use or further use.

Note: Creative Commons licences do not have an expiry date. They cannot be cancelled or terminated. You, as the licenser, cannot revoke, withdraw or time limit the CC licence, as long as the reusers abide by the terms of the licence.

How do you reference a CC-licensed work?

All CC licences require you to reference the original work when redistributing it. You should always cite the title, author, source (with link) and original licence.

Example of a good reference:

“Container Gardening” by Abalimi Bezekhaya (modified).
Link to original instructions (dooiy)
Licence: CC:BY-SA 4.0

If you use a guide within DOOIY and fork it, we will automatically add the reference.

More information about Creative Commons licences can be found here: https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/

You may not post content through this Service that violates these Terms of Use or the law. For example, the content you submit may not contain any intellectual property of third parties, such as copyrighted material in the sense of trademark law, patent law or design law, unless you have received the appropriate authorisation for this (e.g. via a Creative Commons licence). If you upload content that you did not create or that does not belong to you, you are responsible for ensuring that the content you upload is licensed or permitted to be licensed under the above terms. You are legally responsible for the content you publish through DOOIY.

If you believe that your copyright has been infringed, please contact the author to resolve the matter amicably. If this is not possible, please contact us so that we can help: info@dooiy.org. We will check the case and if necessary delete the content and block the user. However, you are responsible for the legal enforcement.

Your data

We know that your personal data is important to you. It is also important to us. Our privacy policy explains in detail how your information is collected, used and shared when you use our Service. By using our Service, you also agree that we may use your information in the ways described in our Privacy Policy. Therefore, you should read it here: https://dooiy.org/datenschutzerklaerung.

We process personal data of users and authors (e.g. names and email addresses) and are therefore considered a separate and independent data controller under EU law for the personal data of users and authors. This means that each party is responsible for the personal data they process to provide the services. For example, if an author inadvertently discloses the name and email address of another user when communicating with that user, the author, not us, is responsible for the unauthorised disclosure.

Third party websites

The Service may contain links to, or allow you to link to, third-party websites and services. These third-party websites are not under our control. As we have no control over them, we are not responsible or liable for their content or any damage they may cause. You acknowledge this with these Terms of Use. Please be careful when you follow external links and leave our service.

Termination of the service

As the “normal” use of DOOIY is without registration, you can stop using DOOIY at any time. If you have provided guides to the platform, please write us an email and indicate whether you want your organisation profile and instructions to continue to be available on the platform. Please note that CC licences do not have an expiry date.

After termination, we will retain and use your data as necessary to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes or enforce agreements. Unless legally required, we will delete your profile within 90 days. Encrypted backups will not be affected. Your data cannot be restored once your account is deleted. Other content (e.g. comments etc.) will remain on the platform.

Conversely, we may suspend or terminate our Service or your access to it at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, with immediate effect. We reserve the right to refuse service to you at any time and for any reason. In addition, we may delete content from you if it violates the Terms of Use. In such cases, however, all provisions of the Terms of Use shall remain in force even after termination of your use. This applies, among other things, to ownership provisions and licences, warranty exclusions, indemnification and limitations of liability.

Rights you grant us as a service provider

As a service provider, you grant us the right to host, publish and distribute your content. You also grant us and our successors the right to store, archive, analyse, display and make copies of Your Content as necessary to provide the Service. This includes improving the Service over time. You also grant us the right to copy and back up Your Content to our database, to display it to you and other users, to include it in a search index or otherwise analyse it on our servers, to share it with other users and to show it.

Our rights

The Service Provider retains ownership of all intellectual property rights of any kind relating to the Website and the Service. We reserve all rights not expressly granted to you under this Agreement or by law.

The DOOIY trademark is protected by copyright (trademark file number at the DPMA 302022232721). You may not duplicate, copy or reuse any part of the code or design elements without the express written permission of the Service Provider. If you wish to use the DOOIY trademark, please use our templates or contact us.

Reservation

Any right not expressly granted to you in these Terms of Use is retained by us. This means, for example, that you do not acquire any copyrights or industrial property rights to the content you access by using the Service. This also applies to trademarks used or displayed on the Service.

No guarantees on content and service

We provide our Service to you free of charge, “as is” and “as available” without warranty of any kind. As an ambitious not-for-profit company, we operate the Service with reasonable care and skill and endeavour to correct errors and faults in the Platform in a timely manner. However, we make no warranties or representations as to the accuracy, completeness, availability, security, ownership, non-infringement, defect remediation, freedom from viruses and other harmful software components or suitability of our Service or its content for your purposes. Accordingly, we do not assume any liability or responsibility for any errors, mistakes, inaccuracies, functionality or any personal injury or property damage that you may suffer as a result of or in connection with the use of our Service.

Disclaimer

We expressly disclaim warranties and conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and warranties arising from course of dealing, usage of trade, or course of dealing.

You agree that we are not responsible or liable for any loss (such as profits, goodwill, data), or damage suffered by you or any third party arising out of the use or publication of your content, unavailability of the Service/content/data, unauthorised access by third parties, software modifications, suspension of the Service or any other actions in connection with the Service. This also applies to our managers, employees, volunteers, contractors, partners, suppliers and instructors.

Our liability is limited whether or not we have been advised of the possibility of such damages, and even if any remedy provided in this Agreement is found to have failed of its essential purpose. We will not be liable for any failure or delay due to circumstances beyond our reasonable control.

Governing Law

Unless applicable law provides otherwise, this Agreement between you and the Service Provider and your use of or access to the Service shall be governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Severability clause

If any part of the Terms of Use in this Agreement is unenforceable, the remaining Terms of Use shall not be affected.

No waiver

If you do not comply with our Terms of Use and we do not take immediate action, this does not mean that we waive our rights or that we will not enforce them in the future.