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Acceptable use policy

This acceptable use policy (AUP) document template is designed to regulate the use of a website, web application or other online service.

The bulk of the acceptable use policy is concerned with prohibiting certain actions and certain types of content. The policy naturally covers unlawful actions and content, but may also cover actions and content that are undesirable but not unlawful.

A distinction is made in the acceptable use policy between content generally and content that is shared with other users or published via the service. You may wish to apply stricter rules to the latter.

Unlawful content may be addressed in detail or summarily. There is a general prohibition on content that is "illegal or unlawful" or that infringes "any person's legal rights" or that is capable of "giving rise to legal action against any person". Optionally, there are specific prohibitions relating to defamation, obscenity, copyright infringement, data protection rights, and so on.

As regards merely undesirable content (i.e. content that is not unlawful), the acceptable use policy includes provisions prohibiting content that depicts violence, pornography and other sexually explicit content, and inaccurate / misleading content. Whether or not it is appropriate to retain these prohibitions when editing the template will depend upon the nature of the service and its audience.

If the service you are providing is subject to the UK's Online Safety Act 2023 and/or the EU's Digital Services Act, you may be subject to statutory obligations that are related to the provisions of your acceptable use policy. For example, the EU's DSA sets out obligations to provide "information on any policies, procedures, measures and tools used for the purpose of content moderation" and to "inform the recipients of the service of any significant change to the terms and conditions". If your service is or may be covered by either piece of legislation, we suggest you take legal advice on the scope of your obligations.

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Acceptable use policy contents

  1. Introduction: definitions for acceptable use policy; parties to policy; agreement to policy by using services; express agreement to policy; services user minimum age under policy.
  2. General usage rules: no damaging use of services; prohibition on excessive resource use; no unlawful use of services; content must comply with provisions of part.
  3. Use of content: use of content in accordance with licence; prohibitions relating to use of services; warranty relating to use of content in accordance with licence.
  4. Moral rights waiver: waiver of moral rights in content.
  5. Unlawful Content: no unlawful user content: general prohibition; no unlawful user content: specific prohibitions; previous complaints and user content.
  6. Graphic material: age suitability of user content; no violence, self-harm or suicide depicted in user content; no encouragement of violence, self-harm or suicide; no pornographic user content.
  7. Factual accuracy: content or shared content must be truthful; content or shared content must not risk defamation.
  8. Advice: no professional advice in content or shared content; no negligent advice in content or shared content.
  9. Community standards: shared content appropriate etc; no offensive shared content; no annoying shared content; no hostile communications; no deliberate offense; no shared content flooding; no duplicate shared content; categorisation of shared content; appropriate shared content titles; courtesy to service users.
  10. Marketing and spam: prohibition on marketing activities; no spam in user content; sending spam using email addresses; no promotion of marketing schemes; avoidance of IP blacklisting.
  11. Regulated businesses: no gambling-related activities; no pharmaceutical activities; no weapon-related activities.
  12. Monitoring: acknowledgement relating to monitoring.
  13. Data mining: no data mining.
  14. Hyperlinks: no hyperlinks to prohibited content.
  15. Harmful software: no harmful software; no risky software; no backdoors or vulnerabilities in content.
  16. Variation: variation by publishing new version on website.
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