Terms & Rules

The rules and terms for using BYDEVs.com to foster a better community for everyone

Terms & Rules

Last Updated On 27 February 2025

1. GENERAL RULES AND DEFINITIONS

1.1 If you choose to use certain M2N Limited products or services displaying or otherwise governed by these Terms of Service, including BYDEVs.com (the "Site"), any of the features of the Site, including but not limited to RSS feeds and downloads (collectively, the "Services"), you will be agreeing to abide by all of the terms and conditions of these Terms of Service between you and M2N Limited.

1.2 We may change, add, or remove portions of these Terms of Service at any time by notifying you of the change in writing (by updating the date above after "Last Updated On"). Such changes will become effective immediately upon posting. It is your responsibility to review these Terms of Service prior to each use of the Site.

1.3 If any of the terms and conditions of these Terms of Service, or any future changes, are unacceptable to you, you may: (1) cancel your account (by using the account deactivation feature) and/or (2) discontinue your use of these Servicess. Your continued use of these Servicess now, or following the posting of updated Terms of Service, will indicate acceptance by you of such Terms of Service, changes, or modifications.

1.4 We may change, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of the Services at any time, including the availability of any Services feature, database, or content. We may also impose limits on certain features and services or restrict your access to parts or all of these Servicess without notice or liability.

2. CONTENT ON THE SERVICES

2.1 The contents of these Servicess, including the Site, are intended for your personal, non-commercial use. All materials published or available on these Servicess (including, but not limited to text, photographs, images, illustrations, designs, audio clips, video clips, "look and feel," metadata, data, or compilations, all also known as the "Content") are protected by copyright, and owned or controlled by M2N Limited or the party credited as the provider of the Content. M2N Limited also owns copyright in the selection, coordination, compilation, and enhancement of such Content ("Arrangement"). You shall abide by all additional copyright notices, information, or restrictions contained in any Content accessed through these Services. Non-commercial use does not include the use of Content without prior written consent from M2N Limited in connection with: (1) the development of any software program, model, algorithm, or other generative AI tool, including, but not limited to, training or using the Content in connection with the development or operation of a machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) system (including any use of the Content for training, fine tuning, or grounding the machine learning or AI system or as part of retrieval-augmented generation); or (2) providing archived or cached data sets containing Content to another person or entity.

2.2 The Services and Content are protected by copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, database rights, sui generis rights and other intellectual or proprietary rights in or to these Servicess and Content pursuant to U.K. and international laws. You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce (except as provided in Section 2.3 of these Terms of Service), create new works from, distribute, perform, display (including framing and inline linking), communicate to the public or in any way exploit, any of the Content (or its Arrangement) or the Services (including Software) in whole or in part.

2.3 You may download or copy the Content and other downloadable items displayed on these Servicess for your personal use only, provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained in the Content and other downloadable items. Copying or storing of any Content for other than personal use is expressly prohibited without prior written permission from M2N Limited, or the copyright holder identified in the copyright notice contained in the Content.

2.4 Certain Content is furnished by the Associated Press and Reuters, which will not be liable for any delays, inaccuracies, errors or omissions in any such Content, or in the transmission or delivery of all or any part of that Content, or for any resulting damages.

3. USAGE OF THE FORUMS

3.1 The providers ("we," "us," "our") of these Services are not responsible for any user-generated content and accounts. Content submitted expresses the views of their author only.

3.2 These Services are only available to users who are at least 16 years old. If you are younger than this, please do not register for these Services. If you register for these Services, you represent that you are this age or older.

3.3 All content you submit, upload, or otherwise make available to these Services ("Content") may be reviewed by staff members. All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services). Do not submit any Content that you consider to be private or confidential.

3.4 You agree not to use these Services to submit or link to any Content which is defamatory, abusive, hateful, threatening, spam or spam-like, likely to offend, contains adult or objectionable content, contains personal information of others, risks copyright infringement, encourages unlawful activity, or otherwise violates any laws. You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content or your conduct.

3.5 We may remove or modify any Content submitted at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice. Requests for Content to be removed or modified will be undertaken only at our discretion. We may terminate your access to all or any part of these Services at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice.

3.6 You may not access these Services through automated or programmatic means (such as through a content scraper) without prior permission from us.

3.7 You are granting us a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with these Services. You retain copyright over the Content.

4. FORUM RULES

If you do not agree with these terms, please do not register or use these Services. Use of these Services constitutes acceptance of these terms. If you wish to close your account, please use the account deactivation feature.

Primary forum rules

Users of BYDEVs.com

We find that the vast majority of forum members have no problem with the above rules. However, if any of them are broken, then moderators will take appropriate action to ensure the forums remain a pleasant place to visit.

Disputes with moderators

If any forum member feels they would like to dispute a moderator's decision, first contact the moderator who made the decision at issue, or another moderator within that forum if the original moderator is unavailable. Politely explain why you disagree and request that they review their decision. If after their review, you are still unhappy, and the issue is important, you may escalate the issue by starting a new thread in this forum.

Rules for trading

All classified adverts must be placed within the appropriate classifieds forums. Those of you who will be trading on BYDEVs.com must read and abide by the additional classified trading rules set out here.

Additional and more detailed rules and guidelines

New members may find the following guidelines useful. They are here to help you make the most of BYDEVs.com.

Your account
  1. Login names must not be offensive. Additionally if you use a login name which is considered to be too similar to an existing user's login name (to the extent that it would cause confusion) then we reserve the right to change your login name. Login names must not include include business names unless the member is an advertiser with BYDEVs.com.
  2. If there is a dispute over the use of avatars, the user who first used an avatar has the option of retaining it and the new user of the avatar will have to select an alternative. We reserve the right to remove people's avatars as we see fit.
  3. Please make sure your email address is kept up-to-date. If you change ISP or move jobs etc., please remember to update your profile with your new email address. In addition, if you install a spam filer, please specifically allow our emails through. We regularly send out messages to forum members and if an email sent to you bounces back for any reason we may well deactivate your registration.
When submitting Content
  1. Search for existing answers in the forums before posting a new question. You may find an answer much more quickly if you use the search facility.
  2. Post questions once only. Even if you think it is relevant in several forums, you should pick the most relevant and post it there. Your question will be seen by lots of people wherever you post it. Duplicate posts swamp the forums and will most likely get deleted.
  3. Please do not post text in ALL UPPER CASE. The internet community considers this to be SHOUTING and therefore discourteous.
  4. Please avoid using txt speak. There is plenty of capacity for creating eloquent, correctly punctuated posts. Txt speak will not get a good response from forum members.
  5. Threats of suicide. We believe that advice to people contemplating suicide should only be given by people suitably trained to do so. We suggest anyone feeling suicidal should contact an organisation in your country which can give appropriate advice. The Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 (free call) in the UK or the Republic or Ireland. Threats of suicide either explicit or implicit made in the forums will likely result in the message being removed.

More about rule 7

Members who own, operate, represent or who are affiliated with a commercial enterprise or competing website may not submit messages which reference that organisation in any way, directly or indirectly unless they have sponsor accounts on BYDEVs.com. This includes promotion of and providing support for that organisation. Request advertising information here.

If we were to allow organisations to promote their businesses in the forums, we would have many posts from manufacturers advertising their products and retailers selling their wares. This would both annoy readers and undermine important advertising activities.

It may be tempting to some individuals representing companies to covertly invite business by pretending to be, for example, a 'satisfied customer'. This is very unwise, since if such dishonesty is discovered (either by members or moderators), and publicly exposed (as it often is), it could embarrass or even tarnish the reputation of the company in question.

Exceptions for advertisers
There is a situation when rule 7 can work against the ethos of the forums. Let's look at a reasonably common example. Someone asks for a retailer in their local area. One of our advertisers is not allowed to reply to their question yet another member is allowed to recommend a non-advertiser. That seems very unfair because advertisers with BYDEVs.com are putting in the effort to contribute to the forums, yet are gagged by our rules and are unable to help a poster.

To redress this unfairness, we allow advertisers to post in reasonably unrestricted way. Specific details are available upon request and to existing advertisers here.

More information about advertising here.

Exceptions for Content Partners
Content Partners are creators, usually experts in their field, who are allowed to promote their content in exchange for sharing their expertise on BYDEVs.com. Their content will be YouTube videos in the main, but could be media from other platforms.
They are not representatives of commercial organisations such as retailers, distributors or manufacturers.
Content Partners are identified by the Content Partner badge on their profile and have limited exemption from rule 7.

Right of Reply
Organisations have a right to reply to criticism on BYDEVs.com, but they must do this without making any self promotion.

  • Published
    Feb 27, 2025
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