The agreement between you and Documenting Reality. By using the site you accept it, so please read it.
This is a plain-English summary. It is here to help you, but it is not the agreement — the numbered sections below are.
Documenting Reality ("DR", "we", "us") is a privately owned and operated website and discussion forum at documentingreality.com (the "Site"). It is run by its owner and administrator, who you can reach at chris@documentingreality.com.
These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between you and DR. They apply to everyone who accesses the Site in any way — visitors, registered users and paying members alike — whether or not you create an account. By visiting, browsing, registering, paying for a membership, posting or otherwise using the Site, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Site.
The following are part of these Terms and are incorporated by reference: the Forum Rules, the Privacy Policy and the Membership Levels page. If these Terms and the Forum Rules ever conflict, these Terms control on legal matters and the Forum Rules control on day-to-day conduct and moderation.
You may use the Site only if all of the following are true:
We may ask you to confirm your age or identity at any time and may suspend or close any account we believe belongs to a minor. If you become aware that a minor is using the Site, report it to us at once.
Documenting Reality does exactly what the name says: it documents the reality of the world we live in. That includes real, unedited depictions of death, serious injury, violence, crime, accidents, disasters, war and other disturbing events, as well as graphic discussion of them. Much of this material is uploaded by members, and some of it comes from public records, law-enforcement and government releases, court evidence and news sources.
DR does not condone violence, cruelty or hatred of any kind. Publishing a record of an event is not an endorsement of it. DR is not a hate site, and conduct that treats it as one is prohibited under Section 8 and the Forum Rules.
DR is a private community. Access is a privilege, not a right. We decide who may join and who may stay, and we may refuse, suspend, restrict or close any account at any time, for any reason or no reason, with or without notice. When you hold an account you agree that:
You may close your account at any time by emailing us from the address registered to it. Closing your account does not remove content you have posted (see Section 6) and does not entitle you to a refund.
Joining the Site requires a membership payment. The current suggested amount is $20, which grants Supporting Member status for one year. Membership is a one-time payment, not a subscription: nothing renews automatically and we never charge you again without your action. When the year ends, your account simply drops to the Registered Users level, which keeps most access but may show advertising and other limits. You can upgrade again whenever you like. Details of each level are on the Membership Levels page.
The preferred payment method is cryptocurrency, processed through our own payment gateway. Other methods may be available by arrangement — email us for details. When you pay with cryptocurrency you are responsible for sending the correct amount, on the correct network, to the address shown on your invoice before the invoice expires. Transactions on a blockchain cannot be reversed, and we cannot recover funds sent to the wrong address or network. Underpaid or late payments may not be credited automatically; contact us with your transaction details and we will sort it out where we can.
Membership payments are support for the Site and its running costs. They buy the privileges listed on the Membership Levels page for the stated term and nothing more; they do not buy ownership of anything, a say in how the Site is run, or immunity from the rules. We may change membership prices, levels and privileges at any time; changes do not affect a term you have already paid for.
Gift vouchers are redeemable only on the Site for the membership they describe, have no cash value, and may not be resold.
"Your Content" means anything you submit to the Site: posts, threads, titles, replies, private messages, images, video, audio, documents, links, profile information, usernames and avatars.
You retain whatever rights you hold in Your Content. In exchange for hosting it, you grant DR a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable and sublicensable license to host, store, copy, reproduce, reformat, resize, transcode, watermark, excerpt, edit, translate, adapt, publish, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute, index and promote Your Content, on the Site and in connection with it, in any media now known or later developed. This license survives the closure of your account and the removal of the content from public view. You also grant every other user of the Site a license to view Your Content through the Site as these Terms allow. You waive any moral rights or rights of attribution in Your Content to the extent permitted by law.
We review nothing before it is posted and are not obligated to monitor anything, but we may. We may edit, retitle, move, merge, split, tag, watermark, re-encode, thumbnail, hide or remove any of Your Content at any time, for any reason, without notice. We may also decline to post, or remove, content that is perfectly legal if we simply do not want it on the Site.
Your Content may remain on the Site after you leave. Threads and posts are part of an ongoing record and are not deleted when an account closes; they may instead be attributed to a generic "deleted user" name. Requests to remove content you posted are considered case by case and granted at our discretion. We do not guarantee that Your Content will be backed up or available to you after it is removed.
The Site as a whole — its name, domain, logos, design, layout, look and feel, software, code, database, thread organization, compilation of content, and the original text, titles, descriptions and other material created by DR — is owned by DR or its licensors and protected by copyright, trademark, database and other laws. Content posted by members belongs to them and is licensed to us as described in Section 6. Material from third parties, including public records and news sources, belongs to its respective owners.
We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access the Site and view its content for your own personal, non-commercial use, through an ordinary web browser, as these Terms allow. Everything else is reserved. In particular, you may not:
The Forum Rules set out how we expect members to behave and how moderation works, and you must follow them. In addition, you agree that you will not use the Site to do, attempt, or help anyone else do, any of the following:
This list is not exhaustive. We may remove any content and take any action we consider appropriate to protect the Site and its members, whether or not a specific rule is listed here.
The Site is for people using ordinary web browsers. You may not access it with any bot, crawler, scraper, spider, headless browser, download manager, script, browser extension, app or other automated tool, or use any of these to collect content or data from it, make automated requests to it, or download its images or video. The only exception is a legitimate search-engine or AI crawler indexing the Site in accordance with our robots.txt and the content signals declared there: such systems may index the Site and cite it as a source, but may not reproduce threads in full or relay the Site's content to their users as a substitute for visiting it. You may not bypass, disable or interfere with any rate limit, access control, free-view limit, login wall, challenge or other technical measure we use to control access.
Accounts that are not currently paid members may be shown advertising, sponsored content and promotional messages, including short intros before video plays. This is how the Site remains affordable. You may not use ad blockers, filters, scripts or any other means to block, hide, skip or otherwise circumvent advertising on the Site, and you may not alter how the Site is rendered in order to do so. Advertisements and sponsored links may lead to third-party sites that we do not control (see Section 13).
We enforce these Terms and the Forum Rules through the infraction and strike system described on the Forum Rules page, as well as through warnings, content removal, restrictions on account privileges, temporary suspension and permanent bans. Which measure applies is entirely our decision, and some violations result in an immediate permanent ban with no warning.
We may suspend or terminate your access or account at any time, with or without cause and with or without notice, including if we believe you have violated these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if continuing to provide you access would create legal or operational risk for us. On termination your right to use the Site ends immediately; Sections 6, 7, 14, 15, 16, 18 and 19 survive, along with anything else that by its nature should.
Bans may be appealed by emailing chris@documentingreality.com. We will review every appeal, but the decision on review is final.
We cooperate with law enforcement. We may preserve and disclose account information and content where we believe in good faith that doing so is required by law or legal process, or is necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of DR, our members or the public, as described in the Privacy Policy.
We respect the intellectual-property rights of others and expect members to do the same. If you believe that content on the Site infringes a copyright you own or control, send a written notice to our designated agent, registered with the U.S. Copyright Office under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act:
Email is the fastest way to reach us. Use the subject "Copyright Notice" and include:
We will act promptly on complete notices, which may include removing or disabling access to the material and notifying the member who posted it. Members who repeatedly infringe will have their accounts terminated. Knowingly sending a false notice may make you liable for damages.
Requests to remove content for reasons other than copyright — for example a request from a family member of a person depicted, a privacy concern, or a request from a public authority — are considered case by case. Write to the same address with the exact URL and the reason for your request. We will respond to valid legal process, but we decide, at our sole discretion, whether and how to act on requests that are not legally binding on us. Removal of an item from public view does not end the license in Section 6.
Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect, how we use it and when we share it, and it is part of these Terms. Two points worth repeating here:
The Site contains links to, embedded content from, and advertisements for third-party websites and services, and it relies on third-party providers for things such as payment processing, content delivery and security. We do not control these third parties and are not responsible for their content, policies, practices or availability. A link or advertisement is not an endorsement. Your dealings with any third party, including any purchase, are solely between you and them and are governed by their terms. Third-party content remains the property of its owners.
The Site and everything on it are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement and accuracy, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade. We do not warrant that the Site will be available, uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that the Site or the servers that make it available are free of viruses or other harmful components.
Information on the Site may be inaccurate. Most of it is submitted by members, who may be mistaken or biased, and much of it concerns events whose facts are disputed or still emerging. Nothing on the Site is professional, legal, medical, financial or other advice, and nothing should be relied on without independent verification. Opinions expressed by members are their own and not ours.
We may change, suspend, limit or discontinue any part of the Site, or the Site as a whole, at any time without notice or liability. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, DR, its owner, moderators, contributors, suppliers and licensors will not be liable to you for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or other intangible loss, arising out of or relating to the Site, its content or these Terms, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages. This includes, without limitation, damages resulting from any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay, computer virus, communication failure, theft or destruction of data, unauthorized access to or alteration of any record, your reliance on any content, or your exposure to any content.
Our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to the Site or these Terms will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose and $20.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the limitation or exclusion of liability for certain damages, so some of the above may not apply to you. In that case our liability is limited to the fullest extent the law allows.
You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless DR, its owner, moderators, contributors, suppliers and licensors from and against any claim, demand, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of or relating to: Your Content; your use of the Site; your violation of these Terms, the Forum Rules or any law; your violation of anyone else's rights; or any dispute between you and another user or third party. We may take over the exclusive defense and control of any matter subject to indemnification, in which case you agree to cooperate with us.
We may revise these Terms, the Forum Rules, the Privacy Policy and the Membership Levels at any time. When we do, we will post the updated version on the Site and change the "last updated" date at the top of this page; for significant changes we may also post an announcement on the forum or email registered members. Changes take effect when posted. Your continued use of the Site after a change means you accept the revised Terms. If you do not accept them, your only remedy is to stop using the Site.
These Terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or to the Site, are governed by the federal laws of the United States and the laws of the U.S. state in which the owner of Documenting Reality resides, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. You agree that any legal action against DR must be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in that state, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. We may seek injunctive or other relief in any court with jurisdiction to protect our intellectual property or the Site.
Talk to us first. Before starting any formal proceeding, you agree to email us a description of the dispute and to work with us in good faith for at least 30 days to resolve it informally.
To the extent permitted by law, any claim arising out of or relating to the Site or these Terms must be brought within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred; and you agree to bring claims only in your individual capacity, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class or representative proceeding.
Questions about these Terms, copyright notices, removal requests, ban appeals and legal correspondence all go to the site administrator:
Every message is read personally, so please allow a little time for a reply.