Terms of Service

These terms govern use of the Internet forum known as The Philosophy Forum (the “forum”). To use the forum, you must agree to these terms with The Philosophy Forum, operated by James Alistair Robinson (the “Operator”).

The Operator may offer other products and services, under different terms. These terms apply only to use of the forum.

Skip to:

Important Terms

These terms include a number of important provisions that affect your rights and responsibilities, such as the disclaimers in Disclaimers, limits on the Operator’s liability to you in Limits on Liability, your agreement to cover the Operator for damages caused by your misuse of the forum in Responsibility for Your Use, and provisions governing dispute resolution in Disputes.

Your Permission to Use the Forum

Subject to these terms, the Operator gives you permission to use the forum. Everyone needs to agree to these terms to use the forum.

Conditions for Use of the Forum

Your permission to use the forum is subject to the following conditions:

  1. You must be at least 13 years old, or the minimum age required in your country to consent to online services.

  2. You may no longer use the forum if the Operator contacts you directly to say that you may not.

  3. You must use the forum in accordance with the Acceptable Use Policy set out below.

Acceptable Use Policy

Any violation of this Acceptable Use Policy constitutes a material breach of these Terms.

This Acceptable Use Policy (“Policy”) forms part of the Terms of Service and applies to all Forum users. Violations may result in content removal, account suspension, or termination.

The Operator maintains procedures for handling reports of illegal or harmful content in accordance with UK online safety legislation.

1. Illegal and Prohibited Content

You may not post, upload, share, or otherwise distribute any content that is unlawful in the United Kingdom, including content prohibited under UK law, including legislation relating to online safety.

1.1 Priority Illegal Content

  • Terrorism content: Material that encourages, glorifies, or provides instruction for terrorism, or originates from a proscribed terrorist organisation.
  • Child sexual exploitation & abuse (CSEA) material: Any content that depicts or promotes child sexual abuse.
  • Incitement to violence or hatred: Content that directly incites violence or hatred against an individual or group based on protected characteristics (e.g., race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, nationality).

1.2 Other Illegal Material

  • Criminal threats, harassment, or stalking
  • Revenge porn / intimate image abuse
  • Defamation, libel, or malicious falsehoods
  • Fraud, scams, or facilitation of financial crime
  • Copyright or trademark infringement
  • Privacy violations (including doxxing)

2. Content Harmful to Users or the Community

You must not submit content that:

  • Contains malware, spyware, or harmful code
  • Constitutes spam or bulk unsolicited promotion
  • Encourages or glorifies suicide or self-harm
  • Intentionally disrupts discussion, derails topics, or impersonates others
  • Harasses or targets individual users, including via private messages or live chat (DMs allowed only for users at trust level 2 or above)

3. System and Account Usage

You must not:

  1. Use the Forum to commit or facilitate illegal acts.
  2. Access another person’s account without permission.
  3. Buy, sell, or trade usernames or account credentials.
  4. Harvest data for commercial mailing lists or databases.
  5. Automate access (e.g., scraping, crawling, browser extensions) except for bona fide search engine indexing.
  6. Send unsolicited advertisements, chain letters, or spam.
  7. Misrepresent your affiliation or imply endorsement by the Forum.
  8. Embed Forum content elsewhere using iframes or similar methods.
  9. Remove copyright or proprietary notices from Forum materials.
  10. Attempt to bypass, disable, or interfere with security features.
  11. Generate unreasonable load on the Forum’s infrastructure.
  12. Impersonate individuals, organisations, or other users.
  13. Encourage or assist anyone in breaching this Policy.

4. Private Messaging and Live Chat

  • DMs are permitted only for users at trust level 2 or above.
  • Users must not use private messaging or live chat to harass, threaten, or distribute illegal content.
  • Moderators may monitor or intervene in flagged communications where necessary to comply with OSA obligations.

5. Reports & Enforcement

  • Users may report content using the Forum’s built-in tools.
  • Moderators may take any action deemed appropriate, including removing/editing content, issuing warnings, or suspending accounts.
  • Authorities may be contacted where legally required.
  • Moderation decisions are normally final, but users may contact the Operator if they believe an error has been made.

Enforcement

The Operator may investigate and prosecute violations of these terms to the fullest legal extent. The Operator may notify and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting violations of the law and these terms.

The Operator reserves the right to change, redact, and delete content on the forum for any reason. If you believe someone has submitted content to the forum in violation of these terms, contact us immediately.

Your Account

You must create and log into an account to use some features of the forum.

To create an account, you must provide some information about yourself. If you create an account, you agree to provide, at a minimum, a valid e-mail address, and to keep that address up-to-date. You may close your account at any time by e-mailing [email protected].

You agree to be responsible for all action taken using your account, whether authorized by you or not, until you either close your account or notify the Operator that your account has been compromised. You agree to notify the Operator immediately if you suspect your account has been compromised. You agree to select a secure password for your account, and keep it secret.

The Operator may restrict, suspend, or close your account on the forum according to its policy for handling copyright-related takedown requests, or if the Operator reasonably believes that you’ve broken any rule in these terms.

Your Content

Nothing in these terms gives the Operator any ownership rights in intellectual property that you share with the forum, such as your account information, posts, or other content you submit to the forum. Nothing in these terms gives you any ownership rights in the Operator’s intellectual property, either.

Between you and the Operator, you remain solely responsible for content you submit to the forum. You agree not to wrongly imply that content you submit to the forum is sponsored or approved by the Operator. These terms do not obligate the Operator to store, maintain, or provide copies of content you submit, and to change it, according to these terms.

Content you submit to the forum belongs to you, and you decide what permission to give others for it. But at a minimum, you license the Operator to provide content that you submit to the forum to other users of the forum. That special license allows the Operator to copy, publish, and analyze content you submit to the forum.

When content you submit is removed from the forum, whether by you or by the Operator, the Operator’s special license ends when the last copy disappears from the Operator’s backups, caches, and other systems. Other licenses you apply to content you submit, such as Creative Commons licenses, may continue after your content is removed. Those licenses may give others, or the Operator itself, the right to share your content through the forum again.

Others who receive content you submit to the forum may violate the terms on which you license your content. You agree that the Operator will not be liable to you for those violations or their consequences.

Your Responsibility

You agree to indemnify the Operator from legal claims by others related to your breach of these terms, or breach of these terms by others using your account on the forum. Both you and the Operator agree to notify the other side of any legal claims for which you might have to indemnify the Operator as soon as possible. If the Operator fails to notify you of a legal claim promptly, you won’t have to indemnify the Operator for damages that you could have defended against or mitigated with prompt notice. You agree to allow the Operator to control investigation, defense, and settlement of legal claims for which you would have to indemnify the Operator, and to cooperate with those efforts. The Operator agrees not to agree to any settlement that admits fault for you or imposes obligations on you without your prior agreement.

Disclaimers

You accept all risk of using the forum and content on the forum. As far as the law allows, the Operator and its suppliers provide the forum as is, without any warranty whatsoever.

The forum may hyperlink to and integrate forums and services run by others. The Operator does not make any warranty about services run by others, or content they may provide. Use of services run by others may be governed by other terms between you and the one running service.

Limits on Liability

Neither the Operator nor its suppliers will be liable to you for breach-of-contract damages their personnel could not have reasonably foreseen when you agreed to these terms.

As far as the law allows, the total liability to you for claims of any kind that are related to the forum or content on the forum will be limited to £50.

Feedback

The Operator welcomes your feedback and suggestions for the forum. See the Contact section below for ways to get in touch with us.

You agree that the Operator will be free to act on feedback and suggestions you provide, and that the Operator won’t have to notify you that your feedback was used, get your permission to use it, or pay you. You agree not to submit feedback or suggestions that you believe might be confidential or proprietary, to you or others.

Termination

Either you or the Operator may end the agreement written out in these terms at any time. When our agreement ends, your permission to use the forum also ends.

The following provisions survive the end of our agreement: Your Content, Feedback, Your Responsibility, Disclaimers, Limits on Liability, and General Terms.

Disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of Scotland, United Kingdom.

Any dispute relating to these terms or use of the forum shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Scottish courts.

General Terms

If a provision of these terms is unenforceable as written, but could be changed to make it enforceable, that provision should be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. Otherwise, that provision should be removed.

You may not assign your agreement with the Operator. The Operator may assign this agreement to any successor in ownership or operation of the forum, or to any person or organisation that acquires the forum or its assets. Any attempted assignment against these terms has no legal effect.

Neither the exercise of any right under this Agreement, nor waiver of any breach of this Agreement, waives any other breach of this Agreement.

These terms embody all the terms of agreement between you and the Operator about use of the forum. These terms entirely replace any other agreements about your use of the forum, written or not.

Contact

The Philosophy Forum is operated by James Alistair Robinson, United Kingdom.

You may notify the Operator under these terms, and send questions to the Operator, at [email protected].

The Operator may notify you under these terms using the e-mail address you provide for your account on the forum, or by posting a message to the homepage of the forum or your account page.

Changes

The Operator last updated these terms on February 16th 2026, and may update these terms again. The Operator will post all updates to the forum. For updates that contain substantial changes, the Operator agrees to e-mail you, if you’ve created an account and provided a valid e-mail address. The Operator may also announce updates with special messages or alerts on the forum.

Once you get notice of an update to these terms, you must agree to the new terms in order to keep using the forum.