Yes I know. You are all great people out there and you would never ever do anything nasty, illegal or otherwise socially unacceptable. But there are numerous lawyers in the world being kept in tow by the folks with all the money - read that as bankers and venture capitalists. They are understandably concerned that there are a lot of other people (with their lawyers in tow) who would love to grab off a big chunk of cash by bringing a lawsuit to be heard by some judge who could not think his way out of a paper bag; or worse by 12 people who could not come up with an excuse for getting out of jury duty. So, here is where we lay out what you can and cannot do. If you do these things we might send you a polite reminder of the rules and ask you to please not do it again. If you do something really bad, or do something not so bad a few times, we might send you a less than polite reminder that your violation of these rules can get you kicked off of the site. If you do something illegal or really, really bad, we will summarily bounce you from the site, curse your name, destroy any good karma you ever had and/or remand you to the proper legal authorities or the deity of our choice. By the way, whatever we do is entirely at our discretion and could be based on the fact that we are having a bad hair day.

That brings up another point. We decide what our terms of service are - up to and including no service at all. We welcome your comments but we can do exactly what we want, when, how and where we want. Most of us are male and married so mostly we do what we are told. But here we reign supreme. [INSERT EVIL LAUGHTER]. If we want to change things, we will. We'll probably let you know but we are under no obligation to do so. We can remove offensive content or just content we don't happen to like - or even if we do like it and we want to keep it all to ourselves.

Now let's get to it. The basic terms of use are these. We are not responsible for anything you do and you are. That's pretty simple; don't you think? Like most people in the world we do not like bad stuff. Life is too short to deal with nasty people. Perhaps one day science will break the aging code and we will live forever. But until then life is short. That brings up an interesting question. If life does get to be long then does it make more sense to put up with nasty people or even less since there will be plenty of people to pick from and lots of time to do it? At any rate philosophical conundrums aside, for those of you who failed kindergarten, or just in general need it spelled out, here it is:

1. Mean, nasty and threatening. Don't be mean or nasty or threatening. If you are going to be mean then be very creative without using profanity being libelous or defamatory. If you are creative enough then you can probably get away with it. If you are blunt and gross, we will not be amused.
2. Password. Don't share your password. I know that seems obvious but if someone gets a hold of your password because you gave it to them (perish the thought) or just sort of left it laying around - like in a notebook with words like ZIPFO PASSWORD HERE: PASSWORD then someone might do some bad things in your space and guess who will get blamed? If you never saw Mean Girls this might be a good time to rent it.
3. Age. You have to have ridden this planet for 13 revolutions around the sun or you cannot use the site. That means you have to be 13 years old or older. I realize this is arbitrary but we do not know each of you well enough to administer a maturity test - not to mention we would have to find someone in the company mature enough to administer the test. So, we are taking a guess and we hope you understand.
4. Spamming. Is there anyone in the world who likes Spam? I guess the people who make a ton of money from it like Spam. Unfortunately, we haven't made a ton of money from Spam so we don't like it. So, no Spamming.
5. Illegal stuff. Get serious! If you are going to break the law then you are taking the rap all by yourself. We will not assist, ignore nor countenance any illegal stuff. So if you are a pedophile, want to deal some happy grass or anything else which is illegal in your jurisdiction please feel free not to use this site. By the way, if folks with badges and guns come around asking for information we will cooperate - boy will we cooperate.
6. Site content. We recognize that it takes a lot of strange people to make up the world. There have been times when people have grouped us in that category. However, whatever you put on your site is your responsibility - not ours. We will not review it or make sure it is not unacceptably weird.
7. Bad Computer stuff. We do a lot of programming. None of us understands the motivation which leads people to build viruses, worms, trojans or anything else which screws up a computer just for the heck of it. These folks must have been dropped on their heads as children. We really, really hate that stuff and will delete anything that can be identified as infected. Adware, while at least having a profit motive, also is unacceptable.

COPYRIGHT

Ah, what can we say? Copyright must be the most frequently violated law that could land you in the federal pokey of all - including taxes. I realize that modern technology has placed an almost irresistible temptation out there. But look at it this way. While you may be just this single individual skulking around on the fringes of legality, we are solid and identifiable members of the establishment. The Feds can find us and tack our hides up on the sides of their metaphorical barn. So, if you violate any copyright stuff, you are responsible - not us. None of the stuff you put on Zipfo belongs to us and we claim no right to it (unless you stole it from us and put it on Zipfo which would be weird). I've got a little flash for you. Prosecutors make their reputation, raises and promotions based on how many convictions they get - not based on how nice or cool or just they are. You do not want to be on the bad side of a federal prosecutor - or any prosecutor for that matter. Make sure nothing that you put on Zipfo is under someone else's copyright protection. I would go into an explanation of how to file a claim with us but I have no doubt an aggrieved copyright owner will find a way to contact us.