YourTrees

Terms of Use

YourTrees Terms of Use

By using or accessing the YourTrees services, you confirm your agreement to these terms of service (“Terms”)

Definitions

The following terms are used throughout this document and will have the meanings defined here unless the context in which they are used indicates otherwise.  Upper and lower-case occurrences have the same meaning.

Birth Brief (“BB”)	Multi-generational (originally five generations but now unlimited) ancestor charts – a source for MemberTrees
Content	1. The combination of the family tree data and fedia that together form the Member Tree 2. The combination of all member trees to form a system-wide data set
Date	Where the word ‘date’ is used in the context of a life event including but not limited to birth, marriage, death or burial, it is defined as a date that is correctly formatted accourding to the GEDCOM standards
GEDCOM	(GEnealogical Data COMmunication) – a specification for exchanging genealogical data between different genealogy software
IPR	Intellectual Property Rights
Media	Photos, video, audio, and PDF files that directly support the Member Tree
Member	A current member of the society as defined by its constitution
Member Interests (“MI”)	A list of surnames of interest to a researcher – another source for Member Trees
Member Tree	A family tree submitted by a member and included in the service
Private Person	A deceased individual in a member tree whose details the tree owner wishes to be suppressed
Private Tree	A member tree that the tree owner has requested to be made private so as to make it inaccessible to other members
Public	Non-members of the society, comprising prior members and members of the general public
The Service	The provision of an online service for members to publish their family tree (Member Tree) and to create a permanent record that persists after their membership ceases
Tree Owner	The member who submits and maintains a Member Tree/Trees and is responsible for all aspects of the content
UK GDPR	UK General Data Protection Regulation, tailored by the Data Protection Act 2018 and other legislation that may be enacted from time-to-time
User Guide	Information setting out data quality requirements, standards and operating procedures found under YourTrees Help
We/Us/Our/The Society	Berkshire Family History Society (see page footer for details)
You/Your	A member who has access to the service
YourTrees (“YT”)	The name of the service provided by Berkshire Family History Society to its members

Headings

Headings are provided for reference. They do not form part of the terms of use

1. The Service

1.1 In consideration of and conditional upon payment of the appropriate society annual membership fee, the society will provide a complimentary platform and access to it to allow members to:

1.1.1  maintain a member tree (or trees) to act as a backup service to their primary data held elsewhere, while they are a member

1.1.2  to preserve a read-only digital copy of all Member Trees for as long as it is practicable for the society to do so, even after the tree owner ceases to be a member

1.1.3  to browse others’ content in pursuance of their own research, while they are a member

1.2 The service is provided to allow members to store family history research of their family and their ancestors comprising information about people and supporting media.  Any other use including but not limited to commercial use is prohibited

1.3 The society will use its best endeavours to maintain a working service but does not guarantee such availability

1.4 We reserve the right to withdraw the service in the event it becomes unviable for any reason.  We will provide 28 days notice of this by notice on the website and by dispatching an email to the registered email address on the member’s society membership account.

2. Ownership and access

2.1  You own your personal information and your content regardless of your member status

2.2  While you are a member you may submit GEDCOM files to create and update your tree(s) and media files that support your tree(s).

2.3  On termination of membership you lose access to the service but your content will remain accessible to other users

2.4  On termination of membership you may request removal of your content

2.5  You may transfer ownership of your content to another member at any time with mutual consent

2.6  You may bequeath your content as part of your estate, and the beneficiary may gain access to it and assume ownership by becoming a member and proving title

2.7  The service facilitates you storing a variety of content including personal information, content such as pictures, videos, stories about a deceased relative and your comments

With respect to your content, you agree that:

2.7.1  You are solely responsible for your content

2.7.2  You have all the necessary legal rights and owner consents to use the content

2.7.3  Any content that you have shared publicly (e.g. by including such content in a public family tree) may be viewed by others

2.7.4  We have no responsibility or liability related to your content

2.7.4.1 We do not routinely monitor your content but we reserve the right to do so

2.7.4.2 We reserve the right, but do not have the obligation, to remove or disable access to any of your content that we believe violates these terms

2.7.5  As a tree owner you acknowledge that YourTrees is a supplementary service and that you are not using it as your sole/primary repository of your digital content

2.7.6  The society has no responsibility or liability in respect of data loss caused by the tree owner’s failure to comply with clause 2.7.5

3. Respect for Data Privacy

3.1 In order to carry out their administrative duties, YourTrees application and server administrators have unrestricted access to all data

3.2 UK GDPR and similar laws in other countries require the details of living people are not published

3.2.1 The society provides the platform on which you can publish your family tree.  The responsibility for ensuring the privacy of the data in your trees is yours.  It is your responsibility to submit compliant GEDCOM files and to bring to our attention any issues arising from the import process that need to be corrected

3.2.2 We do not routinely monitor user content for violation of these terms but we reserve the right to do so and to act upon our findings

3.2.3 Under UK GDPR and similar laws in other countries, the right to privacy only applies to the living. If you wish to suppress the details of deceased people it is your responsibility to mark the records as private using the functionality provided in your local family tree program and to bring to our attention any issues arising from the import process that need to be corrected

3.2.4  If the society receives requests for personal records, deletion requests or complaints about the privacy of individuals we will pass these to you for resolution. 

3.2.5  You agree that you will be fully responsible for dealing with any claim or prosecution arising from the inclusion of material that contravenes relevant laws, especially but not exclusively with respect to privacy, data protection, defamation, the protection of children and IPR

3.2.6  If the society deems that privacy-related requests have not been addressed by you, we reserve the right to take appropriate action to respond to the complainant, up to and including data removal, although we are not obligated to do so

3.2.7  In the event of severe or repeated privacy incidents, the society reserves the right to suspend or terminate a member’s access to their content and, if deemed necessary, remove the entire content, at our discretion. We may also suspend or terminate a user’s YourTrees account

3.2.8  Summary content from all trees will be discoverable and indexable by internet search engines and may be included in search results provided to the public.  This summary data may include lists of names, places, birth dates and owners; site statistics; and items recently added or modified.  However, access to the detailed records is denied to non-members

3.2.9  The society may but is not obliged to assist tree owners in meeting their privacy obligations by adding filters to imported GEDCOM files to perform privacy related functions

3.2.9.1  If no death or burial date or place exists for an individual, a living flag is calculated from the time elapsed from the individual’s birth date. Individuals younger than 110 years will be considered to be living

3.2.9.2  We will set the Private flag for an individual if the person has not been deceased more than 10 years

3.2.9.3  If no birth date is present, the person will be assumed to be deceased

4. Data Quality

4.1 To deliver maximum benefit to all users, the proper operation of the service is dependent on data being consistently and completely entered 

4.1.2  Specific data quality requirements are defined in the separate user guide which can be found in the YourTrees help system and which is updated from time-to-time 

4.1.3 Tree owners have primary responsibility for following these standards for the benefit of all users including the public

4.1.4 The society reserves the right to inspect, suggest data corrections and arbitrarily correct data that is not compliant with the user guide but is not obligated to do so

5. Community Safety

5.1 While using the service you may not:

5.1.1  Submit or share any content that is illegal, threatening, harmful, abusive or otherwise objectionable, including content or communications that are degrading, defamatory, vulgar, hateful, libellous, fraudulent, obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, sexist, racist, or invasive of another’s privacy

5.1.2  Submit or share content containing any person’s personal, proprietary, or confidential information such as photos or other media including or referring to living individuals, sensitive financial information, or a person’s address, phone number, or email address without their permission. In the case of minors, you must obtain the consent of their parent or guardian

6. Respect for Intellectual Property

6.1 While using your account, you may not submit or share content that is protected by copyright or trademark, or that does not belong to you, including pictures and historical documents posted by other users, unless you have express permission from the owner of the copyright or trademark for such content 

6.2 You agree that you will be fully responsible for dealing with any claim or prosecution arising from the inclusion of material that contravenes relevant laws, especially but not exclusively with respect to infringement of copyright or intellectual property

6.3  You agree that you will not copy third party’s media from another member’s tree that may be protected by copyright and must source your own copy from an appropriate source.  You shall not download copies, take screenshots or use any other method to make copies of such media or any part of the data displayed by the service in respect of another member’s tree(s)

7. Site Access and Security

7.1 While using the service users and tree owners:

7.1.1  Must comply with all applicable laws

7.1.2  May not share the account name and password with anyone else

7.2  YourTrees data is backed up internally and externally on a schedule determined by the society

7.2.1  We do not provide a facility to restore any part or all of an individual tree owner’s data

8. Collaboration

8.1  Tree owners agree to the publication of their contact details and to be identified as the tree owner so  they may be contacted by other users wishing to make enquiries of or collaborate with you

9. GEDCOM Imports and associated media

9.1 The society will provide a service to tree owners to import family trees from external sources using GEDCOM files

9.2  Given the wide variation in the way users record data and external programs generate GEDCOM files, we do not guarantee that the data displayed in YourTrees will be a faithful replica of the tree owner’s local version

9.3 It is the tree owner’s responsibility to inspect the data post-import and report to us any data errors caused during the GEDCOM import process to ensure the data meets the data quality and privacy standards

9.4 The society reserves the right to apply filters to GEDCOM imports to replace Chapman codes with fully enumerated address details, and to otherwise amend any data which is not compliant with the data quality standards, but is not obligated to do so

9.5 There is no facility for tree owners to directly edit the data in YourTrees – a GEDCOM file is the sole means of input.  This is to ensure that the data held by YourTrees data is not more current than the data in your local program, which would lead to the YourTrees data being your primary data source – see clause 2.7.5

9.6 The society may, at its discretion, provide a service to tree owners to upload media files related to their family tree(s)

9.7 Only media that is directly linked to people, places and events in the member’s family tree(s) may be uploaded and the society reserves the right to discard any unlinked media

9.8  The society will use compression and conversion tools to resize images to make them suitable for online use.  The extent of the compression and conversion is at the society’s sole discretion.  The original versions may be discarded once compression/conversion has been completed

10. Reasonable Use

10.1  There are no default quota-based storage or access limits per tree owner

10.2  We reserve the right to impose reasonable use limits to the service or to individuals as determined by us from time to time at our discretion

11. Removal of data

11.1  On request from the tree owner we will remove their content from the system within twenty-eight days. This action is irreversible

11.1.1  We have no control over when or if the content that has been indexed by internet search engines will be removed from those services

11.2 We reserve the right to remove content that we deem to be in violation of any part of these Terms of Use

12. Governing Law and Severability

12.1 These terms of use are subject to the laws of England and any dispute is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Courts of England

12.2  If any clause is found to be unenforceable for any reason, this shall not invalidate the remaining terms of use

13. Changes to these Terms of Use

13.1 Changes to these terms of use will be notified by dispatching an email to the address registered on the member’s membership account and by a notice on the YourTrees homepage

13.2 Changes will be effective 14 days after notification

13.3 Your continued use of the system after the notice period has expired will be deemed acceptance of the revised terms

Dated: 03 Aug 2021

Updated 24 Mar 2022

Updated 15 Jul 2023

YourTrees

A Digital Legacy