Terms of Service

State of the Arts expects and welcomes contributions that stimulate debate. While encouraging vigorous debate, we expect all participants to treat each other with respect and courtesy.

While State of the Arts aims to provide balanced coverage of issues, contributions and comments reflect the views of participants and are not those of State of the Arts. From time to time, one particular side of the debate may dominate views expressed. This reflects the natural flow of contributions we receive.

You may contribute to the State of the Arts community and features subject to the following terms and conditions. These conditions apply to any content contributed to State of the Arts.

• All material published on this website is at State of the Arts' sole discretion.
• You may be held legally responsible for the content you submit to State of the Arts.
• Your contribution may be edited, removed or not published if State of the Arts considers it to be:
  • defamatory, or otherwise unlawful or that it violates laws regarding harassment, discrimination, privacy or contempt;
  • intentionally false or misleading;
  • an impersonation of somebody else - attributing your comments to somebody other than yourself is vexatious and unnacceptable;
  • an infringement of intellectual property rights or copyright. See below for further information on copyright;
  • Unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive, or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable.
  • Material designed to offend on the grounds of gender or sexual orientation.
  • of nuisance value, inappropriate, off topic or vexatious. For example State of the Arts reserves the right to reject contributions that have been widely canvassed in the forum. It also reserves the right to reject contributions from participants who seek to dominate the discussion;
  • compromising the privacy of yourself, other contributors or containing inappropriate personal information;
  • seeking to endorse commercial products or activities or to solicit business;
  • deliberate provocation of other community members;
  • State of the Arts reserves the right to archive and republish contributions to its interactive features.
• Repeated breaches of these Conditions of Use may cause State of the Arts to complain to the Internet Service Provider of the person responsible, and in very serious cases, initiate legal action.
• Material published on the internet is protected by the same laws of copyright which apply to books, videos and music.
• The right to "copy" always remains with the owner of the material. Unless expressly stated otherwise, you are not permitted to copy or republish anything you find on the internet without the copyright owner's permission.
• If you wish to refer to material on someone else's website we recommend you include an attribution in your message. State of the Arts publishes links to other websites at its sole discretion. Unless otherwise advised State of the Arts will not publish external links in its guestbooks or forums.
• Be careful including email addresses, instant messaging numbers and the like in contributions, and please do not include anyone else's personal details.
• Under Australian copyright law, limited quotation is permissible in the context of genuine review and criticism. However this does not permit extensive quoting of song lyrics etc.
• When you submit content, you acknowledge that you have all necessary rights, including copyright, in the material that you are contributing to State of the Arts. You agree that State of the Arts may use the material online and in whatever other ways State of the Arts chooses, now and in the future.
• Complaints or comments about the content and management of particular interactive features can be made via the email contact form