Terms of Service

I. Introductory Provisions

1. The NewsNow.TASR.sk internet website is operated by the News Agency of the Slovak Republic, located at Dúbravská cesta 14, 841 04 Bratislava, Business ID: 31 320 414, registered in the Business Registry of Bratislava I District Court, section Po, file 37/B (henceforth only ‘TASR’).
2. The NewsNow.TASR.sk news website is intended for private purposes and to a limited extent for commercial purposes.
3. The provision and use of services on NewsNow.TASR.sk is governed by these terms.
4. The services of NewsNow.TASR.sk are provided free of charge, unless expressly stated otherwise.
5. The use of services provided by NewsNow.TASR.sk is conditioned by unreserved consent with these Terms of Service. If a user does not agree to these Terms of Service, he or she is not entitled to use the service.
6. The NewsNow.TASR.sk site should work correctly on the most widely used web browsers, including: Internet Explorer 7 and later versions, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari etc.

II. Privacy Protection on the NewsNow.TASR.sk Website

1. TASR respects the privacy of NewsNow.TASR.sk users and the need to protect and process any information allowing the personal identification of users. Under the term of personal information we refer to information that can be used to identify an individual, for example, their name, surname, address, email address and other personal and business contact information.
2. In general, a user can visit NewsNow.TASR.sk without providing any data. Some of the pages on the site may use cookies and/or other tracking technologies making it possible to record information that was previously entered by the user. Most pages on the site can be set up in order to bring the reception of cookies to the user’s notice, and it is also possible to prohibit the use of cookies altogether. Nevertheless, such a move could make some operations on the site unavailable. The tracking technologies can record information such as internet domain, browser version and host name, IP addresses, and dates and times of access to the NewsNow.TASR.sk domain. The use of cookies and other tracking technologies can improve the running of the website and services provided by the portal.
3. All information collected from cookies and/or from visitors can be used by TASR for statistics purposes.

III. Rights and Obligations of the NewsNow.TASR.sk Site Operator

1. TASR provides services on the NewsNow.TASR.sk website in their current state, i.e. with all possible defects, and it provides no guarantee concerning their appropriateness for a particular purpose of use. TASR does not provide any guarantee to users of continuous functionality, fault-free operations and security of the server. Further, TASR is not responsible for any damage that could be incurred to the user in relation to the use of services provided by NewsNow.TASR.sk.
2. TASR is not liable for the content of individual posts published in comment sections or for any other user activities. Individual contributions submitted in discussions, on social media walls, as well as in user profiles are of the users, and TASR assumes no liability and does not necessarily endorse the ideas presented, the content of individual contributions and comments in communications between individual users. The operator of the NewsNow.TASR.sk website reserves the right to delete any post from the comments section without prior notice. Posts containing vulgar words and phrases and those infringing the privacy of other persons will be deleted automatically. Likewise, all posts that could violate valid laws in the Slovak Republic in any way will also be deleted.
3. TASR has the right to discontinue the provision of services on a temporary or permanent basis, in whole or in part, at any time, without providing any justification for the move. TASR has the right to perform technical maintenance of NewsNow.TASR.sk, even without any prior notice.
4. TASR undertakes to provide cooperation with justified calls made by state bodies and other relevant authorised individuals and legal entities. In the case of the imposition of a fine or in the case of any other pecuniary or non-pecuniary damage incurred as a result of user activities on the NewsNow.TASR.sk website, the user commits himself or herself to reimburse any such damage in its entirety.
5. The operator would like to remind users that materials identified in the by-line or in the section identifying their author as (OTS) and materials designated as PR releases are provided as part of the Original Text Service and it is their submitter who is responsible for their content.

IV. Rights and Obligations of Users

1. Users are obliged to observe these rules, including all specific rules applied to any of the particular services provided by NewsNow.TASR.sk as well as to observe the provisions of generally binding legal regulations of the Slovak Republic.
2. Users of services on NewsNow.TASR.sk are prohibited from:
a) using vulgar words, phrases and/or other written phrases and signs, the direct or indirect meaning of which is contrary to generally accepted social morals and ethics,
b) providing false, unverified, misleading, defamatory and otherwise deceptive information about other persons,
c) promoting violence or openly or covertly inciting hatred based on sex, race, skin colour, language, faith and religion, political and other beliefs, national and social origin, and membership of any national or ethnic group,
d) promoting war and/or describing cruel or otherwise inhumane conduct in an inappropriate manner by way of belittling, excusing and/or approving of these,
e) openly or covertly promoting alcohol, alcoholism, smoking, the use of drugs, poisons and precursors and/or downplaying the consequences of the use of these substances,
f) endangering the physical, mental and/or moral development of minors and/or disturbing their mental health and emotional state,
g) promoting pornography
h) openly or covertly promoting a political party or movement, or its representatives,
i) openly or covertly providing advertising to any individuals and legal entities, products and services.
3. Individual users are responsible for their contributions and activities on NewsNow.TASR.sk and agree not to use the services for purposes that are inconsistent with generally binding legal regulations of the Slovak Republic and are at variance with these terms and conditions of particular services.

V. Discussion and Communication Rules on NewsNow.TASR.sk

1. TASR is not responsible for the content and activities in discussions among users.
2. The contributions and statements of individual discussants represent the views of readers and visitors of NewsNow.TASR.sk. TASR assumes no liability for opinions expressed therein and does not necessarily share them.
3. In discussions and communication among users, it is prohibited to publish posts:
a) containing vulgar words and phrases, threats and personal attacks against other discussants and third parties,
b) encouraging the suppression of fundamental rights and freedoms, inciting violence, racism, discrimination, defamation of individual public groups, racial, national and ethnic intolerance,
c) promoting commercial products or those providing an apparently commercial content,
d) containing personal data on other persons, particularly their addresses and telephone numbers if the persons in question have not provided their consent to the publishing of such information,
e) disseminating slanderous, defamatory, obscene and other unlawful materials, while it is also forbidden to publish any links to websites with such content,
f) repeating formerly published posts, and publishing posts containing meaningless and/or unintelligible texts,
g) calling for the violation of laws, and publishing scandalous posts and contributions contrary to principles of morality.
4. TASR reserves the right to intervene in individual posts, delete posts and restrict individual users from participating in a discussion if their posts violate some of the aforementioned rules and/or there is a reasonable assumption based on previous posts by the author that their future posts could violate some of these rules. Users must not prevent other users from taking part in discussions, and they must not upset and harass other users.
5. If a user believes that any published post violates any of these rules, he or she should provide notification of this to tasr@tasr.sk

VI. Terms of Use and Rules for Publishing Content

1. The content on NewsNow.TASR.sk is protected by copyright law. Any transcription, distribution and further disclosure of this content or its part to the public, by any means, are prohibited without the prior consent of TASR. All rights are reserved and performed by TASR. Any use of its parts and larger units, mainly the copying and dissemination of texts, pictures and graphs by any mechanical and electronic means, including in languages other than Slovak, is prohibited without written permission of TASR. TASR, as the authorised representative of the authors of individual articles published on NewsNow.TASR.sk, reserves the right to provide permission for reproduction and public transmission of individual articles designated with the provision ‘news licence reserved’, as well as for the public distribution of copies of these articles according to § 33, Art. 1., Points a) and d) of Act No. 618/2003 of the Legal Code of the Slovak Republic on copyright and rights related to copyright (the Copyright Act).
2. Users who on NewsNow.TASR.sk publish their own written, audible, visual and audiovisual contributions, mainly articles, videos, motion pictures and photographs, are not entitled to any authorship remuneration for their contributions published on NewsNow.TASR.sk.
3. Without prior written consent, no user of the NewsNow.TASR.sk website is permitted to copy pictures and texts from there and include them in their databases and/or disseminate them further, either for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If this stipulation is violated, the user undertakes to pay contractual penalties of the amount of €600 for each of the used texts, their parts and/or images on behalf of the website operator. This provision does not apply to the sharing of headlines, thumbnails, annotations and links to full articles via RSS feeds.
4. The user declares that he or she is authorised to present his or her contributions to TASR for use on NewsNow.TASR.sk and that he or she has obtained all necessary permits, licences and rights required under applicable laws. The user declares that for contributions provided or used on NewsNow.TASR.sk, protected under Act No. 618/2003 of the Legal Code of the Slovak Republic on copyright and rights related to copyright (the Copyright Act), he or she grants permission to TASR to use the contributions by all possible means known as of the date when the post is published on NewsNow.TASR.sk, to an unlimited extent, non-exclusively, free of charge and without any time limit.
5. Users posting individual contributions declare that they are authorised to publish these posts and/or they have acquired the necessary authorisation for such use from authorised persons. With respect to publishing content protected by the licence rights of third parties, the user declares that he or she is entitled to make use of the contribution without infringing the rights of third parties.
6. By publishing his or her posts on NewsNow.TASR.sk, the user provides consent to the public dissemination and use of their contributions, including the user’s own photograph.

VII. Final Provisions

1. TASR reserves the right to change at its sole discretion the terms and scope of services provided on NewsNow.TASR.sk. The change will become valid and effective and binding for users as of the date of its publication on the NewsNow.TASR.sk website. Users are obliged regularly to acquaint themselves with changes to the aforementioned terms and conditions. If the user continues to use the service after changes to these terms have been introduced, it will be considered that they agree unconditionally to these changes.
2. TASR reserves the right to modify or completely replace these terms with a new wording of the terms (further referred to only as ‘change to the terms’). Any change to the terms will be published on the NewsNow.TASR.sk website not later than on the date when it enters into effect.
3. The user and the operator have agreed that relations that emerge from any use of NewsNow.TASR.sk and its services are governed by the effective wording of the terms and by the relevant legislation.
4. These Terms take effect as of February 1, 2016.