SPIEGEL Group: General terms and conditions

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Dear Readers,

welcome to the digital offerings of the SPIEGEL Group. Here you will find the general terms and conditions for the use of our pages. These are updated regularly and are valid in their current version as soon as you take advantage of our offerings, even without express consent. Place of fulfillment and jurisdiction is Hamburg.

If you wish to use services requiring registration, you must also agree to special terms of use, which you will then be provided. For special services and offers such as subscriptions, reprint rights and syndication, there are also separate general terms and conditions, to which you will be separately referred.

Profile and usage data are also collected, analysed and used in our products and services. How we protect your rights is explained here in our data protection declaration.

What You Should Know About Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights

All content on our digital pages -- if it has not been posted by third parties - is the copyright- and trademark-protected intellectual property of the SPIEGEL Group. Content posted by third parties is also not freely usable but is protected as the intellectual property of the respective user or rights holder.

You may use our content and that of third parties for private and educational purposes, but you may not publish it yourself or use it commercially. Even in cases of allowable private and educational use, content may not be modified. In particular, copyright notices or other notices regarding the rights and/or property of third parties may not be removed.

All other uses require our prior consent. You will generally find information on how extended usage options can be licensed at the bottom of the pages on our products and services.

Are you interested in acquiring usage rights? Please contact us with information about the article you are interested in and a description of how you would like to use it and we will send you an offer.  (Email: [e-mail] | Phone [phone])

When We Assume Liability and Warranty

There is no right to the use our digital offerings. Maintenance work or technical failures and errors may result in them being temporarily unavailable. Furthermore, despite all of our best efforts, it cannot be 100 percent excluded that using our offerings may result in damage – if, for example, third parties seek to abuse them to spread viruses or other malware despite all of our security measures. Therefore, we assume no liability for damages that occur through the use of our digital offerings – also not for our legal representatives, executives and auxiliary persons – except in cases of intentional or grossly negligent actions (in cases of injury to life, body or health, we do not categorically exclude liability even for simple negligence).

We expressly accept no liability for the accuracy, completeness, reliability, suitability, timeliness or usefulness of the content. Our content serves exclusively as general information. References, recommendations and information are non-binding. Any use of the content on offer takes place at your own risk.

Fundamentally, we are not liable for third-party content that can be accessed via our digital offerings – such as content from third-party websites to which links are provided or which have been published by users on our website. It is not possible to constantly check such third-party content, nor do we make the attempt. We do, however, naturally distance ourselves from all content that violates criminal or liability law or content which is immoral. We will remove such content immediately upon being made aware of it.

How We Handle Your Registration

When you register for our digital offerings, we store personal data in a user account, such as your name, address, e-mail address and the username and password of your choosing. This enables us to log you in and provide you the content for which you registered. You may use a pseudonym for your username so that other readers cannot know your name – except in the manager lounge, where users are presented with their real names.

Following registration, your right-of-use applies only to you personally and is non-transferable. You can only log in from one end device at a time with your personal access data. If you try to log in from another device at the same time with the same login credentials, a message will be displayed and the first open session will be closed automatically. You must be at least 14 years of age to register. In some cases, users must be older and will be notified when this applies. You must provide truthful, accurate and complete information and keep it current at all times. You are responsible for maintaining a suitably secure password and for keeping it confidential. We kindly request you to do everything in your power to prevent the abuse of your personal access to our services. Should your account nevertheless be compromised, please inform us immediately so that we can block your user account or find another solution to the problem.

In certain cases defined by law (including criminal investigations, the enforcement of intellectual property rights and the fight against terrorism, see Section 14 Para. 2 of the German Telemedia Act) and in individual civil claims (for example in the case of insults, see Section 14 Para. 3 Telemedia Act), we may be ordered to release your name and address. For the protection of rights and for effective access protection, we may store the IP addresses of registered users and – if available – pass these on within the scope of such investigations.