Courthouse News Service Privacy Policy
Policy version date: August 1, 2011
Courthouse News
Service ("Courthouse News,"
“Us,” or “We”) wishes to offer the users of its web sites a personalized and
interactive experience. At the same
time, Courthouse News is committed to
protecting the privacy of information that users provide to Courthouse News
through its web sites. This Privacy
Policy explains how Courthouse News and others use the information received
when you use Courthouse News’ web sites.
This Privacy Policy applies only to information collected by or through
Courthouse News’ web sites and does not apply to information obtained by
Courthouse News through other means.
This Privacy Policy
applies to the following web sites:
Courthouse News
Service
(www.courthousenews.com)
Entertainment Law
Digest
(www.entlawdigest.com)
Securities
Law Report
(www.cnssecuritieslaw.com)
Environmental
Law Report (www.cnsenvironmentallaw.com)
Kaiser Bad News
(www.kaiserbadnews.com)
The web sites listed
above are each a “Site,”
and referred to collectively as the “Sites.”
Amendments to this
Privacy Policy will be posted on the Sites and will be effective when
posted. Your continued use of the Sites
following the posting of any amendment will constitute your acceptance of that
amendment. See the “Changes to the
privacy policy” section below for further information.
If you have questions
about this Privacy Policy, please contact Courthouse News by e-mail at
[email protected].
Registered users
Registration
is not mandatory to access the public areas of the Sites. However, registration may be required to access
certain areas of the Sites or the products and services provided through those
areas of the Sites. The areas of the
Sites requiring registration are noted on each Site. When registering, users may be provided with
a user name and password. Courthouse
News is not responsible for any loss or misuse of your user name and
password. Always remember that in order
to protect your privacy you should not share your user name or password with
others.
You may change, delete
or deactivate information provided through the registration process by
e-mailing us at [email protected] or
writing to us at Courthouse News Service,
Personally
identifiable information
We may collect
personally identifiable information from you automatically when you access the
Sites, as well as through your voluntary actions while visiting the Sites. For example, we collect personally
identifiable information from you when you register with a Site, submit a
comment, use a Site to make purchases, send us an e-mail, or use a Site to make
changes to one or more of your Courthouse News subscriptions. The particular information we collect from
you will depend on the particular pages of the Sites you visit as well as the
particular features of the Sites you choose to use. We will not share this information with
anyone outside of Courthouse News except as set forth in this Privacy Policy or
as disclosed at the time the information is collected. Personally identifiable information we may
collect from you may include, by way of example:
● Your
name;
● Internet Protocol
address;
● E-mail
address;
● Contact
information (including address, zip code, country, and phone number);
● Company
or business affiliation;
● Financial
information, such as account or credit card numbers;
● User name and password
information collected during the registration process;
● Other
personal information provided to us as part of a comment, discussion forum,
e-mail, or other similar communication or post.
YOU SHOULD NOT
PROVIDE COURTHOUSE NEWS WITH ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION (OR SUBMIT
OR POST ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION TO ANY OF THE SITES) UNLESS YOU
WOULD LIKE THAT INFORMATION TO BE USED AND SHARED BY COURTHOUSE NEWS IN
ACCORDANCE WITH THIS POLICY. LIKEWISE,
YOU SHOULD NOT PROVIDE PERSONAL INFORMATION AS PART OF A COMMENT, DISCUSSION
FORUM, OR OTHER SIMILAR POST TO ANY OF THE SITES UNLESS YOU WANT THAT
INFORMATION TO BE ACCESSIBLE BY OTHER USERS OF THE SITE, AS INFORMATION
PROVIDED AS PART OF A COMMENT, DISCUSSION FORUM, OR OTHER SIMILAR POST MAY BE
AVAILABLE TO OTHER USERS OF A SITE.
Use of personally
identifiable information
The personally
identifiable information that Courthouse News receives from users of the Sites
(both registered and unregistered users) may be used for a variety of purposes,
for example to improve the content of the Sites, to customize content and/or
layout of the Sites for each individual user of the Sites, to notify users of
the Sites about updates to and activities on the Sites and about goods and services
that we feel may be of interest to users, to analyze data and patterns
regarding usage of the Sites, and to contact users of the Sites. Personally identifiable information may also
be used and shared for the purpose of providing the user with any requested
information, products, or services.
Courthouse News may
contract with third parties to provide various services relating to the Sites
on an outsourced basis. For example, we
may contract with an e-mail provider to handle the distribution of e-mail messages
to or from users of a Site, a web site hosting provider to host all or a
portion of a Site, or some other third party to process payments for the
products and services we offer.
Courthouse News may provide personally identifiable information received
from users of its Sites to these third party providers for the purpose of
enabling these third party providers to provide these outsourced services to
Courthouse News.
As our business
develops, we reserve the right to display advertisements on our Sites. In the event we display advertising on our
Sites, you should be aware that third party advertisers may receive certain
personally identifiable information about you if you click on any
advertisements that may be displayed on the Sites (and clicking on any
advertisement displayed on the Sites will be considered your consent to “opt
in” for this transfer). In addition, we
reserve our right to combine and enhance the personally identifiable
information we receive from users of our Sites with other data and information
we obtain from third parties for such purposes as improving our
advertising.
Disclosure and use of personally identifiable information
as required by law
We may use and/or
disclose personally identifiable information where it is necessary to enforce a
subscriber agreement, our terms of use for the Sites, or to otherwise enforce
or protect Courthouse News’ rights under applicable law, including, without
limitation, Courthouse News’ intellectual property rights. We may also need to use and/or disclose
personally identifiable information about certain users of the Sites when we
have a reasonable and good-faith belief that such use or disclosure is
necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order, or legal
process served on Courthouse News or the Sites.
While this Privacy
Policy describes ways you can opt-out of some uses of personally identifiable
information (see the “Choice and opt-out” section, below), you may not opt-out
of the uses of personally identifiable information described in this section.
E-mails you may
receive from us or our partners
Service Announcements. On
occasion it may be necessary to send out service related announcements. For instance, if our Sites or any of the
services offered through the Sites are temporarily suspended for maintenance,
Courthouse News or its partners might send an e-mail to users. These communications are not promotional in
nature. Generally, users may not opt-out of
these communications.
Special Offers
Choice and opt-out
You may opt-out of receiving certain e-mail,
mail or telephone calls from us. As
noted above, you may not-opt out of the uses of personally identifiable
information described in the section above entitled “Disclosure and use of
personally identifiable information as required by law.” In addition, you may not opt-out of receiving
e-mail service announcements.
All opt-out requests can be made by e-mailing
us at [email protected] or writing to us at Courthouse News Service,
Subscribers to
Courthouse News’ reports
If you are a
subscriber to Courthouse News’ reports, you may review and change certain
personal information relating to your subscription by clicking on the
“subscribers” link on the www.courthousenews.com home page.
Non-personally identifiable information
Like many web sites,
our server, where possible, automatically recognizes each visitor’s Internet
Protocol address. Our servers may also collect other
information about how visitors use the Sites (for example, what pages are
viewed, what products and services are purchased, or the length of time that
users stay on the Sites). This
information is generally collected and maintained in anonymous and in a
non-personally identifiable form and it allows us to do such things as improve
the content of the Sites, facilitate market research, and ensure that
subscriber agreements are not abused. We
may utilize the services of a third party to help us understand this
information better, and the information that is disclosed to these entities
will usually remain in an anonymous and non-personally identifiable form.
Cookies and web beacons
We may use cookies or similar technology for
various purposes to facilitate and enhance interaction with the Sites. “Cookies” are small files that are placed on
an individual computer’s hard drive to enable the person using that computer to
more easily communicate and interact with the Sites. Some of the ways we may use cookies are to
save user preferences, to record user-specific information on what pages users
access or visit, and to record session information, such as items that users
add to their shopping cart. Courthouse
News does not use cookies to retrieve information from a computer that is
unrelated to Courthouse News or the Sites.
A cookie does not collect or keep your name
or other personally identifiable information; however, we may link the
information obtained through cookies to other personally identifiable
information to give us a better understanding of your preferences, so that we
can provide a more meaningful experience to you on our Sites.
We may also use web
beacons (also known as web bugs, pixel tags or clear GIFs), an often
transparent graphic image placed on a web site that is used to monitor the
behavior of users visiting web sites.
We may use an outside
advertisement serving company to display advertisements on the Sites. The advertisement serving company may also
use web beacons, and may also place and collect cookies when it displays an
advertisement on the Sites. Those web
beacons and cookies are controlled by the outside advertisement serving
company, and users should refer to that provider’s privacy policy for further
information regarding its use of web beacons and cookies.
Links to other web
sites
The web sites of
third parties not affiliated with Courthouse News may be accessible through the
Sites. For example, a news story or
column may provide a link to a third party’s web site. In addition, third party advertisers may
receive certain personally identifiable information about you if you click on
advertisements displayed on the Sites.
These third party web sites have their own privacy and data collection
policies and practices. Courthouse News
is not responsible for any actions or privacy policies of such third
parties. You should check the applicable
privacy policies of those third parties when providing personally identifiable
information through linked web sites or advertisements.
Children
The Sites are not
intended for children under the age of 13, and Courthouse News does not
knowingly solicit, collect, or store personally identifiable information from
or about children under the age of 13.
If we discover that we have inadvertently collected any information from
a child under 13, we will delete such information immediately. Please contact us at [email protected] if you believe that we have received personally
identifiable information from or about a child under 13.
Security
We will use
reasonable security measures on the Sites to protect the loss, misuse and
alteration of the information under our control. While there is no such thing as perfect
security on the Internet, we will take all reasonable steps to insure the
safety of your personal information. For
example, only those individuals who need your personally identifiable
information to perform a specific job are granted access to that personally
identifiable information. Furthermore,
the servers on which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a
secure environment.
Changes to this
privacy policy
This Privacy Policy
is subject to change. If we decide to
change this Privacy Policy, we will post material changes on the Sites so our
users are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and if we disclose
it. Unless we seek and receive your
consent, we will use your personally identifiable information in accordance
with the version of the Policy in effect at the time the information was
collected. Your continued use of the
Sites following the posting of any amendment to the Privacy Policy will
constitute your acceptance of that amendment.
Transfer of
information
If Courthouse News elects, in its reasonable discretion,
to transfer ownership or control of a Site or the Sites to a third party,
whether or not in the context of an acquisition of Courthouse News or a merger
of Courthouse News with a third party, you consent to the transfer of your
personally identifiable information and non-personally identifiable information
by Courthouse News to that third party, provided that all use of your
information by that third party remains subject to the terms of this Privacy
Policy.
Thank you for visiting the Sites.
Effective date: August 1, 2011
