The Ethno-ornithology World Archive (“EWA”) aims to raise awareness and documentation of the importance of birds in culture by curating, generating and sharing knowledge in a secure, freely accessible and trusted digital resource. EWA is operated by the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford (“University of Oxford”) Department of Zoology and School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography on behalf of the EWA collaborators, which includes University of Oxford, BirdLife International and Lynx Edicions.
These terms of use (together with the documents referred to in it) tell you the terms on which you may make use of EWA (https://ewatlas.net), whether as a guest or a registered user. Use of EWA includes accessing, browsing, or registering to use EWA. Please read these terms of use carefully before you start to use EWA, as these will apply to your use of EWA. By using EWA, you confirm that you accept these terms of use and agree to comply with them. If you do not agree to these terms of use, you must not use EWA.
Other applicable terms
Our Privacy Policy, which sets out the terms on which we process any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us. By using EWA, you consent to such processing and warrant that all personal data provided by you is accurate.
Our Acceptable Use Policy, which sets out the permitted and prohibited uses of EWA. When using EWA, you must comply with this Acceptable Use Policy.
Our Cookie Statement, which sets out information about cookies on EWA.
Accessing EWA
We do not guarantee that EWA, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. Access to EWA is permitted on a temporary basis. We may suspend, withdraw, discontinue or change all or any part of EWA without notice. We will not be liable to you if for any reason EWA is unavailable at any time or for any period.
You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to EWA. You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access EWA through your internet connection are aware of these terms of use and other applicable terms and conditions, and that they comply with them.
Registration and passwords
If you choose, or you are provided, with a user identification code or password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential. You must not disclose it to any third party who is not authorised by us to have access to such information.
We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms of use.
If you know or suspect that any unauthorised person knows your user identification code or password, you must promptly notify us at ewa@zoo.ox.ac.uk
Changes to the EWA website
We may update EWA from time to time, and may change the content at any time. However, please note that any of the content on EWA may be out of date at any given time, and we are under no obligation to update it. We do not guarantee that EWA, or any content on it, will be free from errors or omissions.
No reliance on information
The content on EWA is provided “as is” for general information only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on EWA.
Although we make reasonable efforts to update the information on EWA, we make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether express or implied, that the content on EWA is suitable for any particular purpose or use, accurate, complete or up-to-date.
Intellectual property rights
We are the owner or licensee of the intellectual property rights in the EWA website and database design, and the licensee of intellectual property rights in the content archived and published on it except in the circumstance where we contribute such content ourselves to EWA, in which case we may be the owner. All intellectual property rights in content contributed to EWA by contributors remains owned by the relevant owners and is licensed individually by contributors under a Creative Commons or Traditional Knowledge licence which they select at the time of submission. The EWA website and the content published on it are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.
You are permitted to use the EWA website and content published on it only in accordance with the Creative Commons or Traditional Knowledge licence attached to the relevant content and any notices and instructions for use and acknowledgement provided with the relevant content. You should also take into consideration any guidelines offered by Traditional Knowledge (TK) Labels associated with EWA content.
You must not use any part of the EWA website or content for commercial purposes without obtaining explicit written agreement to do so from us or the relevant owners. If any content has a ‘TK Label’ attached to it which marks it as potentially available for commercial use, you may contact the contributor of the content to agree the terms of any commercial use of the content by you. Such an agreement would be a separate transaction between you and the contributor of the content and not subject to these terms of use.
You must always acknowledge authorship of the content as indicated by, and in accordance with, the notices and instructions for use and acknowledgement provided with the relevant content when you use such content. A format for the formal citation of specific EWA contributions can be found on the entry page itself.
Certain names, titles, trademarks, service marks, and logos that appear on EWA (“Marks”) are owned by us, EWA project partners, EWA collaborators or third parties. Nothing on EWA or in these terms of use shall be construed as granting any licence to use any Mark without the express written permission of the owner of the relevant Mark.
If you print off, copy or download any part of the EWA website or content in breach of these terms of use, your right to use EWA will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the content you have made.
Limitation of our liability
Nothing in these terms of use excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury arising from our negligence, or our fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by English law.
To the extent permitted by law, we exclude all conditions, warranties, representations or other terms which may apply to the EWA website or any content on it, whether express or implied.
We will not be liable to any user for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, even if foreseeable, arising under or in connection with:
use of, or inability to use, EWA; or
use of or reliance on any content displayed on EWA.
We only provide EWA for non-commercial private research or educational purposes. You agree not to use EWA for any commercial or business purposes, and we have no liability to you for:
loss of profits, sales, business, or revenue;
business interruption;
loss of anticipated savings;
loss of business opportunity, goodwill or reputation; or
any indirect or consequential loss or damage.
We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a virus, distributed denial-of-service attack, or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material due to your use of EWA or to your downloading of any content on it, or on any website linked to it.
We assume no responsibility for the content of third party websites and resources linked on EWA. These links are provided for your information only and should not be interpreted as endorsement by us of those linked websites or resources. We will not be liable for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them.
You undertake to make no claim in connection with EWA against any of our employees, students, agents or appointees (apart from claims based on fraud or deliberate default). This undertaking is intended to give protection to individuals and does not prejudice any right which you might have to claim against use. The benefit conferred by this sub-clause is intended to be enforceable by the persons referred to in it.
If notwithstanding the provisions of these terms of use we are held to be liable to you for any reason, our aggregate liability to you shall not exceed one hundred pounds sterling (£100).
Contributing content to EWA
You can contribute content to EWA after you register with the site. Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload content to EWA, or to make contact with other users of EWA, you must comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy. You warrant that any such contribution does comply with those standards, and you will be liable to us and indemnify us for any breach of that warranty, which means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of warranty.
By contributing content to EWA you warrant that you have the legal right and the authority to contribute the content and acknowledge and agree that:
you are responsible for protecting and enforcing any intellectual property rights you hold in the content and we have no obligation to do so on your behalf;
your contribution will be curated by one or more EWA curators for the purpose of achieving high quality metadata and accuracy of the information supplied (although the curators will not edit the content of your contribution);
EWA provides the opportunity to restrict the visibility of the content you contribute. If you decide to restrict visibility of your contribution after it has been published by the curator, EWA shall have no liability to you in respect of making your contribution visible without restriction while its visibility was not restricted by you;
you retain control and ownership of your contributions, and if you later edit your contribution this will cause it to be un-published and subjected to the curation process again;
even contributions with closed visibility will be accessible by the EWA curator responsible for publishing it and the site administrator.
we may, without notice to you, reject, refuse to publish, delete or restrict the visibility of your contribution at any time where we consider this to be reasonably necessary, including (by way of example only) if we deem the content of the contribution to jeopardise the reputation or safety of any person, or the welfare or safety of wildlife.
EWA reserves the right to publish submitted content as described in the current EWA Curation Code of Best Practice developed in collaboration with EWA curators and communities. EWA users will be offered the ability to email a curator if EWA content appears inappropriate or in need of moderation (e.g. to add further detail).
Any content you upload to EWA will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You retain all of your ownership rights in your contribution, but you are required to grant us a limited licence to use, store and copy that content and to distribute and make it available to third parties, as described in the next paragraph (Rights you licence).
By contributing content to EWA, you confirm that you have provided EWA with your legal name when registering for an account. We have the right to disclose your identity to any third party claiming that your contribution constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.
We will not be responsible, or liable to any third party, for the content or accuracy of any content contributed by you or any other user of EWA.
We have the right to remove any contributions you make on EWA if, in our opinion, it does not comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy.
The views expressed by other users on EWA do not represent our views or values.
You are solely responsible for securing and backing up your content.
Rights you licence
Rights you licence to us
By contributing content, you grant to us a perpetual, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, worldwide licence to do the following in connection with the purposes of the EWA archive:
in respect of any content, to use, host, store, reproduce, modify and create derivative works of such content for the purposes of curating and archiving it;
in respect of any content which you designate as being restricted to a selected group, to communicate, publish, perform, display and distribute such content within that group;
in respect of content which you designate as being openly visible, to communicate, publish, perform, display and distribute such content to the public generally and to use such contributions for the purposes of promoting and redistributing part, or all, of EWA in any media formats and through any media channel.
Rights you licence to other EWA users
When contributing content you will be asked to select the Creative Commons or TK licence under which you wish to make your content available to other EWA users. You may also include a notice and/or instructions for use and acknowledgement of your content by other EWA users.
When contributing content you will also be asked to select whether you wish to make your content openly visible, restricted to a selected group, or private. We will make your content available to EWA users in accordance with your selection, and any EWA user who has access to your content is obliged by these terms of use to use your content in accordance with the licence you have selected.
You may, at any time and for any reason, delete your contributions from EWA and withdraw our right to use such contributions, but you accept that such contributions may have been downloaded and used by other EWA users prior to such deletion, and that we have no control over the use of any contributions which may have been downloaded or copied from EWA by other users prior to such deletion. In the interests of EWA’s mission (see EWA Mission Statement), we reserve the right to contact you about deletion of your contribution.
Viruses
We do not guarantee that EWA will be secure or free from bugs or viruses. You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform in order to access EWA. You should use your own virus protection software.
You must not misuse EWA by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to EWA, the server on which EWA is stored or any server, computer or database connected to EWA. You must not attack EWA via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use EWA will cease immediately.
Linking to the EWA website
You may link to the EWA home page, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it. You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists.
You must not establish a link to EWA in any website that is not owned by you, frame the EWA site on any other site, nor create a link to any part of EWA other than the home page.
The website in which you are linking must comply in all respects with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy.
We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.
Third party links and resources
Where EWA contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources.
Changes to these terms of use
We may revise these terms of use at any time by amending this page. Please check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we made, as they are binding on you.
Applicable law
These terms of use and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or their subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction over any claim.
Contact us
To contact us, please email ewa [at] zoo.ox.ac.uk.
If you have any complaints or objections in connection with the intellectual property rights in any content published on EWA, please contact the above email address, providing your contact information, a working link to the relevant content, and any other relevant information.
Thank you for visiting EWA.