Terms Of Service

General Conditions of Use

General
Definitions
Acceptance of the present general conditions
Newsletter Service
Corners & Blog
Editorial articles service
Conditions of payment
Special obligations of the User
Data protection
Cookies
Intellectual property
Disclaimer
Force majeure
Modification and withdrawal of www.swisster.ch or one of the services offered
Miscellaneous
Applicable law and jurisdiction

1. General
The present General Conditions of Use (hereafter: GCU) govern the conditions of use applicable to the website www.swisster.ch. The entire website is hereafter referred to as www.swisster.ch, published by Edipresse Publications SA (hereafter referred to as the Publisher), a public limited company under Swiss law whose headquarters are located at 33, avenue de la Gare, 1001 Lausanne, Switzerland.
The GCU apply to all the products commercialised and services provided by the Publisher, whether they are bought individually or on subscription. The GCU apply to both the free access areas and the paid access areas.
2. Definitions
Blog: A website enabling the simple publication of text and multimedia content, as well as the writing of comments, with distribution on the Internet.
Content: Any information, data, text, programme, music, audio, photography, image, graphics, video, message or all other existing or future content.
Newsletter: A communication service that takes up the editorial headlines of the day and which is sent by email.
User (s): Any person who or legal entity that consults www.swisster.ch and /or subscribes online in order to use of one of the services offered or participate in an event operation.
Free area: part of the site that can be accessed freely and without subscription. It consists of 48-hour-old editorial content.
Paid area: part of the site that can only be accessed using a login and a password obtained after registering for individual or group subscription. It consists of instant and up to 48-hour-old editorial feeds. It also includes value-added service areas.
3. Acceptance of the present general conditions
The consultation of www.swisster.ch and /or subscription for use of one of the business services offered or participation in an event operation implies full and unreserved acceptance of the present general conditions.
4. Newsletter Service
When he or she subscribes to the paid area of www.swisster.ch, the User can subscribe to the Newsletter Service, which enables him/her to receive information by email.
5. Corners & Blog
When he/she subscribes to the paid area of www.swisster.ch, the User can access website services, which are mainly developed in the Corners. In these Corners, which are very distinct areas of the website, the User can access Blogs, allowing him/her to consult the multimedia content featured on them and to write comments that must comply with current Swiss law, the present GCU, good morals and public order. Any comment that the Publisher considers does not comply may be deleted at the Publisher’s discretion without prior notice or liability.
6. Editorial articles service
The User can access and consult paid and free editorial articles and, if he/she has a subscription and identifies him/herself using his/her login + password, write comments that must comply with current Swiss law, the present GCU, good morals and public order. Any comment that the Publisher considers does not comply may be deleted at the Publisher’s discretion without prior notice or liability.
7. Conditions of payment
7.1 Rates
Some services offered by the Publisher are paid. The rates are indicated in Swiss Francs. The User accepts to pay the rates and relating costs in full, including taxes; no right of return is granted. The services are always invoiced on the basis of the rates in force at the time of registration of the order. The Publisher reserves the right to change the rates at any time. For products offered for sale onwww.swisster.ch, the Publisher refers to the General Conditions of Sale of the online Edipresse Shop.
7.2 Payment
Payment may only be made by credit card. Only the following credit cards are accepted: Eurocard / Mastercard and Visa.
7.3 Secure payments and proof
www.swisster.ch has a secure system by virtue of the adoption of an SSL encoding process. All the scrambling and encoding processes set up aim to provide optimal protection to all sensitive data relating to methods of payment. The data registered by www.swisster.ch constitutes proof of all transactions concluded between any User and the Publisher. The data registered by the system of payment constitutes proof of financial transactions.
8. Special obligations of the User
The User commits him/herself to using Content obtained during use of www.swisster.ch for lawful purposes only, in the respect of current Swiss legislation and the present GCU. The User will be held responsible in case of contrary use. The User is entirely responsible for all Content he/she publishes on www.swister.ch; he/she acknowledges and accepts to assume the related risks. www.swisster.ch declines any responsibility with regard to Content published by the User or to any other information given or communication made by the User.
9. Data protection
9.1 General principle
With the exception of any provision contrary to the present GCU, the Publisher acknowledges the confidentiality of the information that the User communicates at the time of subscription to one of the services offered and /or the participation in an event operation and commits to not disclosing this information to a third party. This information consists of surname, first name and email or more precise details, according to the service or operation to which the User subscribes.
9.2 Right of access to, correction and removal of personal data
The user has the right of access to, correction and removal of personal data concerning him /her. To exercise these rights, the User accesses the administration of his/her user account directly on www.swisster.ch.
9.3 Use of data
The Publisher reserves the right to disclose general demographical statistics and information relating to Users. This information is presented in a general way, notably to its founder partners. The Publisher reserves the right to use the data for advertising purposes in order to send the User business offers relating to www.swisster.ch or to one of the print or online publications of the Edipresse group in Switzerland, to which the Publisher belongs.
10. Cookies
The Publisher reserves the right to set a cookie during consultation of www.swisster.ch or one of its services, with the aim of registering information relating to navigation on the website without identifying the User. Some functional modules require the activation of cookies. However, the User may refuse this by disabling the relevant option in the parameters of his/her browser.
11. Intellectual property
11.1 Content published by the Publisher
The presentation and each Content item and element, including brands, logos and domain names, featuring on www.swisster.ch, as well as on each of the services offered, are protected by current intellectual property laws and belong to the Publisher or are subject to authorisation for use. Only use for private purposes is permitted, according to Swiss legislation in force. No element composing the aforementioned website or its services may be copied, reproduced, distributed, sold, published, modified, republished, altered, transferred, disseminated or used in any way or on any medium, either fully or in part, without the prior written consent of the Publisher.
11.2 Content published by the User
The User commits him/herself to ensuring that all content fully complies with current Swiss law as well as the present GCU and that it does not violate the rights of third parties. The User guarantees that all the Content he/she uses belongs to him/her or is copyright-free. All Content published by the User on www.swisster.ch or one of its services is publicly accessible and may be used freely, in full or in part, in an unlimited, perpetual and non-exclusive way by any User within the aforementioned services. Moreover, the User authorises the Publisher to publicly distribute the Content offered by the User, notably by way of potential publication in the media it publishes in print and/or online versions, as well as to use the aforementioned content in the context of the writing of one of its media.

11.3 Access to RSS format
The Publisher provides all Users with a web address to access Content in RSS format. This Content published on the Swisster home page makes it possible to complement incorporated information sources via a RSS feed reader programme. The User may only use RSS feeds in the context of private use. Any commercial or public use is expressly prohibited. Therefore, no element delivered by RSS feeds may be copied, reproduced, disseminated, sold, published, modified, republished, altered, transferred, distributed or used in any way, on any medium, either partially or fully, without the prior written consent of the Publisher.
12. Disclaimer
The Publisher is in no case responsible for any direct or indirect loss, prejudice or damage of any kind resulting from an interruption or malfunction of www.swisster.ch or of any of the services offered, notably in case of breakdown of the server, virus attacks, pirating or other computing problem having engendered a partial or definitive interruption. The Publisher does not guarantee that the functions contained in www.swisster.ch or any of the services offered meet the requirements of Users or that the functioning is uninterrupted, fast, secure, fully compatible with the equipment systems and programmes of the User, has no errors or is devoid of any programme or code aiming to contaminate other programmes. In case of defectiveness of www.swisster.ch or of one of its services, the User pays all costs of maintenance, repair or correction of his/her own equipment and programmes. The Publisher is not responsible for the content of websites accessible through advertising banners that may be displayed, or for any external content provided, directly or indirectly, by other websites. No other explicit or implicit guarantee is provided.
13. Force majeure
Neither the Publisher nor any third party participating in the provision of services is held responsible in case of failure or delay in the execution of their obligations according to the present GCU, resulting from causes independent of their will, including, and without any limitation, cases of force majeure, such as acts by civil or military authorities, fire, flooding, earthquakes, rioting, wars, acts of sabotage, network failure, computer file encoding errors, programme limits or inability to obtain telecommunication services or measures taken by the government.
14. Modification and withdrawal of www.swisster.ch or one of the services offered
The Publisher reserves the right to change, interrupt or stop definitively one, several or all of the services of www.swisster.ch.
15. Miscellaneous
The Publisher may modify the present GCU at any time. It is up to the User to check the GCU in force regularly. Any clause of the present GCU that may be in total or partial contradiction with mandatory regulations will be separable and any nullity - either total or partial - of a clause will not affect the validity of the rest of the clause in question or the other clauses of the present GCU. The present GCU represent the entire agreement made between the User and the Publisher.
16. Applicable law and jurisdiction
16.1 Applicable law
In case of dispute, the GCU in force are governed by Swiss law, to the exclusion of all other legislation.
16.2 Jurisdiction
The User accepts that the place of jurisdiction will be in Lausanne (VD), Switzerland.
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April 2008, Lausanne