path: root/contrib/exchange-tos-bfh-v0.rst

Terms of Service
================

Last update: 26.04.2024

Welcome! The ICE research center of the Bern University of Applied Sciences
in Switzerland (“we,” “our,” or “us”) provides an experimental payment service
through our Internet presence (collectively the “Services”). Before using our
Services, please read the Terms of Service (the “Terms” or the “Agreement”)
carefully.

This is research
----------------

This is a research experiment. Any funds wired to our Bitcoin address are
considered a donation to our research group. We may use them to enable
payments following the GNU Taler protocol, or simply keep them at our
discretion.  The service is experimental and may also be discontinued at
any time, in which case all remaining funds will definitively be kept by
the research group.

Overview
--------

This section provides a brief summary of the highlights of this
Agreement. Please note that when you accept this Agreement, you are accepting
all of the terms and conditions and not just this section. We and possibly
other third parties provide Internet services which interact with the Taler
wallet’s self-hosted personal payment application. When using the Taler wallet
to interact with our Services, you are agreeing to our Terms, so please read
carefully.

Highlights:
~~~~~~~~~~~

* You are responsible for keeping the data in your Taler wallet at all times under your control. Any losses arising from you not being in control of your private information are your problem.
* We may transfer funds we receive from our users to any legal recipient to the best of our ability within the limitations of the law and our implementation. However, the Services offered today are highly experimental and the set of recipients of funds is severely restricted. Again, we stress this is a research experiment and technically all funds held by the exchange are owned by the research group of the university.
* For our Services, we may charge transaction fees. The specific fee structure is provided based on the Taler protocol and should be shown to you when you withdraw electronic coins using a Taler wallet. You agree and understand that the Taler protocol allows for the fee structure to change.
* You agree to not intentionally overwhelm our systems with requests and follow responsible disclosure if you find security issues in our services.
* We cannot be held accountable for our Services not being available due to any circumstances. If we modify or terminate our services, we may give you the opportunity to recover your funds. However, given the experimental state of the Services today, this may not be possible. You are strongly advised to limit your use of the Service to small-scale experiments expecting total loss of all funds.

These terms outline approved uses of our Services. The Services and these
Terms are still at an experimental stage. If you have any questions or
comments related to this Agreement, please send us a message to
ice@bfh.ch. If you do not agree to this Agreement, you must not use our Services.

How you accept this policy
--------------------------

By sending funds to us (to top-up your Taler wallet), you acknowledge that you
have read, understood, and agreed to these Terms. We reserve the right to
change these Terms at any time. If you disagree with the change, we may in the
future offer you with an easy option to recover your unspent funds. However,
in the current experimental period you acknowledge that this feature is not
yet available, resulting in your funds being lost unless you accept the new
Terms. If you continue to use our Services other than to recover your unspent
funds, your continued use of our Services following any such change will
signify your acceptance to be bound by the then current Terms. Please check
the effective date above to determine if there have been any changes since you
have last reviewed these Terms.

Services
--------

We will try to transfer funds that we receive from users to any legal
recipient to the best of our ability and within the limitations of the
law. However, the Services offered today are highly experimental and the set
of recipients of funds is severely restricted.  The Taler wallet can be loaded
by exchanging fiat or cryptocurrencies against electronic coins. We are
providing this exchange service. Once your Taler wallet is loaded with
electronic coins they can be spent for purchases if the seller is accepting
Taler as a means of payment. We are not guaranteeing that any seller is
accepting Taler at all or a particular seller.  The seller or recipient of
deposits of electronic coins must specify the target account, as per the
design of the Taler protocol. They are responsible for following the protocol
and specifying the correct bank account, and are solely liable for any losses
that may arise from specifying the wrong account. We may allow the government
to link wire transfers to the underlying contract hash. It is the
responsibility of recipients to preserve the full contracts and to pay
whatever taxes and charges may be applicable. Technical issues may lead to
situations where we are unable to make transfers at all or lead to incorrect
transfers that cannot be reversed. We may refuse to execute transfers if the
transfers are prohibited by a competent legal authority and we are ordered to
do so.

When using our Services, you agree to not take any action that intentionally
imposes an unreasonable load on our infrastructure. If you find security
problems in our Services, you agree to first report them to
security@taler-systems.com and grant us the right to publish your report. We
warrant that we will ourselves publicly disclose any issues reported within 3
months, and that we will not prosecute anyone reporting security issues if
they did not exploit the issue beyond a proof-of-concept, and followed the
above responsible disclosure practice.

Fees
----

You agree to pay the fees for exchanges and withdrawals completed via the
Taler wallet ("Fees") as defined by us, which we may change from time to
time. With the exception of wire transfer fees, Taler transaction fees are set
for any electronic coin at the time of withdrawal and fixed throughout the
validity period of the respective electronic coin. Your wallet should obtain
and display applicable fees when withdrawing funds. Fees for coins obtained as
change may differ from the fees applicable to the original coin. Wire transfer
fees that are independent from electronic coins may change annually.  You
authorize us to charge or deduct applicable fees owed in connection with
deposits, exchanges and withdrawals following the rules of the Taler protocol.
We reserve the right to provide different types of rewards to users either in
the form of discount for our Services or in any other form at our discretion
and without prior notice to you.

Eligibility and Financial self-responsibility
---------------------------------------------

To be eligible to use our Services, you must be able to form legally binding
contracts or have the permission of your legal guardian. By using our
Services, you represent and warrant that you meet all eligibility requirements
that we outline in these Terms.

You will be responsible for maintaining the availability, integrity and
confidentiality of the data stored in your wallet. When you setup a Taler
wallet, you are strongly advised to follow the precautionary measures offered
by the software to minimize the chances to lose access to or control over
your wallet data. We will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from
your failure to comply with this paragraph.

Copyrights and Trademarks
-------------------------

The Taler wallet is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License
(GNU GPL). You have the right to access, use, and share the Taler wallet, in
modified or unmodified form. However, the GPL is a strong copyleft license,
which means that any derivative works must be distributed under the same
license terms as the original software. If you have any questions, you should
review the GNU GPL’s full terms and conditions at
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.  “Taler” itself is a trademark
of Taler Systems SA. You are welcome to use the name in relation to processing
payments using the Taler protocol, assuming your use is compatible with an
official release from the GNU Project that is not older than two years.

Limitation of Liability, Disclaimer of Warranties
--------------------------------------------------

You understand and agree that we have no control over and no duty to take any action regarding:

* Failures, disruptions, errors or delays in processing that you may experience while using our Services;
* the risk of failure of hardware, of software or of Internet connections;
* the risk of malicious software being introduced or found in the software underlying the Taler wallet;
* the risk that third parties may obtain unauthorized access to information stored within your Taler wallet, including, but not limited to your Taler wallet coins or backup encryption keys.

You release us from all liability related to any losses, damages, or claims arising from:

* user error such as forgotten passwords, incorrectly constructed transactions;
* server failure or data loss;
* unauthorized access to the Taler wallet application;
* bugs or other errors in the Taler wallet software; and
* any unauthorized third party activities, including, but not limited to, the use of viruses, phishing, brute-forcing or other means of attack against the Taler wallet. We make no representations concerning any Third Party Content contained in or accessed through our Services.

Any other terms, conditions, warranties or representations associated with
such content are solely between you and such organizations and/or individuals.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, in no event will we or any
of our officers, directors, representatives, agents, servants, counsels,
employees, consultants, lawyers, and other personnel authorized to act,
acting or purporting to act on our behalf (collectively the “Taler Parties”)
be liable to you under contract, tort, strict liability, negligence or any
other legal or equitable theory for:

1) any direct damages or 
2) any lost profits, data loss, cost of procurement of substitute goods or services, or direct, indirect, incidental, special, punitive, compensatory, or consequential damages of any kind whatsoever resulting from:

* your use of or conduct in connection with our services;
* any unauthorized use of your wallet and/or private key due to your failure to maintain the confidentiality of your wallet;
* any interruption or cessation of transmission to or from the services; or
* any bugs, viruses, trojan horses or the like that are found in the Taler wallet software or that may be transmitted to or through our services by any third party (regardless of the source of origination).

These limitations apply regardless of legal theory, whether based on tort,
strict liability, breach of contract, breach of warranty or any other legal
theory and whether or not we were advised of the possibility of such
damages. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of
liability for consequential or incidental damages, so the above limitation may
not apply to you.

Our services are provided "as is" and without warranty of any kind. To the
maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all representations and
warranties, express or implied, relating to the services and underlying
software or any content on the services, whether provided or owned by us or by
any third party, including without limitation, warranties of merchantability,
fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, freedom from
computer virus and any implied warranties arising from course of dealing,
course of performance, or usage in trade, all of which are expressly
disclaimed. In addition, we do not represent or warrant that the content
accessible via the services is accurate, complete, available, current, free of
viruses or other harmful components, or that the results of using the services
will meet your requirements. Some states do not allow the disclaimer of
implied warranties, so the foregoing disclaimers may not apply to you. This
paragraph gives you specific legal rights and you may also have other legal
rights that vary from state to state.

Indemnity and Time limitation on Claims and Termination
-------------------------------------------------------

To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and
hold harmless the Taler Parties from and against any and all claims, damages,
obligations, losses, liabilities, costs or debt and expenses (including, but
not limited to, attorney’s fees) arising from:

* your use of and access to the Services;
* any feedback or submissions you provide to us concerning the Taler wallet;
* your violation of any term of this Agreement; or
* your violation of any law, rule, or regulation, or the rights of any third party.

You agree that any claim you may have arising out of or related to your
relationship with us must be filed within one year after such claim arises,
otherwise, your claim is permanently barred.

In the event of termination concerning your use of our Services, your
obligations under this Agreement will still continue.

Discontinuance of Services and Force majeure
--------------------------------------------

We may, in our sole discretion and without cost to you, with or without prior
notice, and at any time, modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently,
any portion of our Services. We will use the Taler protocol’s provisions to
notify wallets if our Services are to be discontinued. It is your
responsibility to ensure that the Taler wallet is online at least once every
three months to observe these notifications. We shall not be held responsible
or liable for any loss of funds in the event that we discontinue or deprecate
the Services and your Taler wallet fails to transfer out the coins within a
three months notification period.

We shall not be held liable for any delays failure in performance or
interruptions of Services which result directly or indirectly from any cause or
condition beyond our reasonable control, including, but not limited to any
delay or failure due to any act of God, act of civil or military authorities,
act of terrorism, civil disturbance, war, strike or other labor dispute, fire,
interruption in telecommunications or Internet services or network provider
services, failure of equipment and/or software, other catastrophe or any
other occurrence which is beyond our reasonable control and shall not affect
the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.

Governing law, Waivers, Severability and Assignment
---------------------------------------------------

No matter where you’re located, the laws of Switzerland will govern these
Terms. If any provisions of these Terms are inconsistent with any applicable
law, those provisions will be superseded or modified only to the extent such
provisions are inconsistent. The parties agree to submit to the ordinary
courts in Bern, Switzerland for exclusive jurisdiction of any dispute
arising out of or related to your use of the Services or your breach of these
Terms.

Our failure to exercise or delay in exercising any right, power or privilege
under this Agreement shall not operate as a waiver nor shall any single or
partial exercise of any right, power or privilege preclude any other or
further exercise thereof.

You agree that we may assign any of our rights and/or transfer, sub-contract,
or delegate any of our obligations under these Terms.

If it turns out that any part of this Agreement is invalid, void or for any
reason unenforceable, that term will be deemed severable and limited or
eliminated to the minimum extent necessary.

This Agreement sets forth the entire understanding and agreement as to the
subject matter hereof and supersedes any and all prior discussions,
agreements, and understandings of any kind (including, without limitation, any
prior versions of this Agreement) and every nature between us. Except as
provided for above, any modification to this Agreement must be in writing and
must be signed by both parties.

Questions or comments
---------------------

We welcome comments, questions, concerns or suggestions. Please send us a
message on our contact page at legal@taler-systems.com.