Terms of Service

CarsonLore is a private family website, run by one family member (Jean-Paul Cozzatti, "the administrator") as a personal, non-commercial project, so that our family - the descendants of our great-grandmother - can share stories, voice recordings, and pictures of letters and documents with each other. These terms are deliberately plain. They exist so everyone understands what the site is, what is expected of each of us, and what happens to the stories we share. By signing in and using CarsonLore, you agree to them.

Access is by invitation and approval only. The administrator approves every account individually. Accounts are personal: please do not share your sign-in or let others use your account. If you are not sure whether someone belongs in the archive, ask the administrator rather than sharing access.

Sharing family lore: stories, memories, voice recordings, and photographs or scans of letters, documents, and handwritten pages, about our family's people, places, and history. It is a family archive, not a social network, not a marketplace, and not a public publishing platform.

• You keep ownership of everything you contribute. Sharing a story here does not make it anyone else's.
• By contributing, you give the archive permission to store your contribution, display it to approved family members on this site, and preserve it as part of the family archive. That permission is limited to this site and this family - the administrator will not publish your contributions anywhere else without asking you first.
• You may edit or remove your own contributions at any time, or ask the administrator to do it. Removing a contribution ends its display on the site; the archive will also delete the stored file on request.
• Please contribute only material you have the right to share: your own stories and recordings, and photos, scans, or documents you own or have permission to share. If a story includes a recording or writing by someone else, share it only with their permission, or, if they have passed away, in the spirit of preserving their memory for the family.

Family stories are about real people, including people still living. By contributing, you agree to the family's ground rules:

• Tell the truth as you know it, and mark memory as memory. Stories may be introduced as recollections ("as I remember it") where details are uncertain.
• Be kind. Do not contribute material whose purpose is to embarrass, harm, or settle scores with a living person.
• Respect privacy. Do not share a living person's private details - addresses, phone numbers, financial or medical information - in stories or scans. Check scans of documents for such details before uploading.
• If someone asks for a story about them to be corrected or removed, the administrator will review it and, where the request is reasonable, correct or remove it. Family members are encouraged to add their own version alongside rather than erase each other's memories where possible.

You agree not to:

• Copy, download in bulk, or redistribute archive material outside the family.
• Post archive material on social media or anywhere public without the contributor's permission.
• Attempt to access the site without approval, probe its security, or disrupt its operation.
• Upload anything unlawful, anything that infringes someone else's copyright, or malicious files.
• Use the site for any commercial purpose.

Individual saving of a story or photo for your own personal or genealogical use is fine; sharing it onward outside the family is not.

The administrator maintains the site, approves accounts, and may moderate contributions - including removing material that breaks these terms, correcting obvious errors in titles or dates in consultation with the contributor, and organising the archive's folders and index. The administrator may suspend or remove any account that breaks these terms or that the administrator reasonably believes does not belong in the archive. Because this is a small family project, moderation decisions rest with the administrator and are final, though they will always be explained to the family member affected.

The site is provided as-is, as a gift to the family, with no guarantee of availability, uptime, or permanence. The administrator will take reasonable care of the archive, including keeping the stored files in place on Google Drive, but cannot guarantee against technical failures, service changes by providers such as Google, or accidental loss. If you have a story that matters, keep your own copy as well. These terms may be updated; significant changes will be announced in the family Facebook group (Carson Family Connection), and continued use of the site after a change means acceptance of the updated terms.

Use of the site is free to family members. The administrator personally bears the (small) costs of hosting, storage, and sign-in messages.

To the extent the law allows, the administrator is not liable for losses arising from use of the site, from material contributed by other family members, or from the site being unavailable. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law. These terms are governed by the laws of Washington State, USA, where the administrator is based - while recognising that this is a family arrangement first and a legal document second.

How the site handles personal information is set out in the CarsonLore Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.

Questions about these terms: contact the administrator through the family Facebook group (Carson Family Connection) or by email at jeanpaul.cozzatti@gmail.com.