Terms and Conditions

These are the terms and conditions (Terms), upon which Black and White Digital Ltd (we, us and our) will allow you to access our database of historical records and materials (Records) through the website www.treepress.net and our associated mobile and tablet applications (Site).

Please read these Terms carefully before you start to use the Site. By using the Site, you indicate that you accept these terms of use and agree to be bound by them. We reserve the right to change these Terms from time to time by changing them on the Site, and by continuing to use the Site, you accept these changes and agree to be bound by them. It is your responsibility to check the Terms each time you use the Site.

Black and White Digital Ltd is a limited liability company registered in England and Wales (Company number 10221101) having its registered office at 23 Templemere, Weybridge, KT13 9PA.

The advertisement of Credits and Subscriptions on the Site and other digital platforms and/or in other publications is an invitation to treat only and any order from you constitutes an offer to us to buy such Credits and Subscriptions. All orders are subject to acceptance by us. There will be no contract between you and us unless and until we accept your order in accordance with the procedures detailed in these Terms.

From time to time, we may propose special offers or temporary promotions which may either be published on the Site and other digital platforms or in other formats such as marketing emails, newspapers, and magazines. These may be subject to additional terms and conditions that we will let you know about in those offers.

In addition, the following additional terms may apply to your use of the Site and are deemed incorporated into these terms:

These Terms contain the following sections:

1. Applicability of these Terms

These Terms apply to all users of the Site, including those who redeem voucher codes purchased from us or a third party, except for commercial users. If you wish to make any commercial use of credits or subscriptions or to use our records in a work-related capacity (e.g. an organisation or company that carries out research using our Records or a library), please contact us to find out more about corporate access to the service using the Contact Us link on the Site. Separate terms and conditions apply to corporate access and these will be provided to you before purchase.

If you are a self-employed professional genealogist using the Site in your professional capacity (Genealogist), you may use the Site to carry out research for others using either Credits or a Subscription in accordance with and subject to these Terms. Genealogist users shall not, however, be deemed a consumer under these Terms and consumer rights will not apply to such users. Please refer to specific sections of these Terms that clarify exclusions applicable to Genealogists.

2. Obtaining access to and use of Records

You can see the different types of Records held on the Site for free; however, to access and view most Records or use certain features of the Site, you will need to register with the Site. Site use is currently free but we researve the right to introduce charges for services and access at any time.

It is your responsibility to ensure your computer system meets any necessary technical and compatibility specifications to enable you to access and use the Site. It is also your responsibility to ensure that all persons who access the Site through your internet connection are aware of these terms and comply with them.

We may, from time to time, restrict access to certain features, parts, or content of the Site or the entire Site to users who have registered with us. You must ensure that any registration details you provide are accurate and up to date. If you choose, or you are provided with, a login ID (such as a username and password or other identifier) as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential and must not reveal it to anyone else. You are responsible for all activities that occur under your login ID and must notify us immediately of any unauthorised use or other security breach of which you become aware. By using the Site as a registered member, you accept on your own behalf and on behalf of the organisation (if any) named on your registration form to be bound by these Terms of Use and references to ‘you’ and ‘your’ refer to you individually and to your organisation. We reserve the right to disable any login ID, at any time, if in our opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms and conditions or if any detail you provide for the purposes of registering as a user proves to be false.

You may use the Site for your own personal use, for example to research your family history. You may also assist friends and family with their family history by telling people about the Records available on the Site and how and where they can be found. However, please note our terms below in relation to the use of your login details.

Aside from our advertisers who may display their advertisements in accordance with our terms and conditions of advertising on our Site, you may only use the Site for non-commercial and private professional use (as a self-employed, sole trading Genealogist) and only in accordance with these terms and conditions. You may retrieve and display content from the Site on a computer screen, print and copy individual pages and, subject to our terms, store such pages in electronic form. Additional terms may also apply to certain features, parts, or content of the Site and to our seperate WordPress plugins and add ons and, where they apply, will be displayed before you access the relevant features, parts, or content.

Except to the extent expressly set out in these terms and conditions, you are not allowed to

store pages of the Site on a server or other storage device connected to a network or create an electronic database by (i) systematically downloading and storing all or any of the pages of the Site or (ii) by screen scraping, framing, caching, data extraction or programmatic access whether by robot, spider, or otherwise or (iii) by printing pages of the Site in a systematic or regular manner so as to create a database in hard copy form;
collect or harvest personally identifiable information from the Site;
remove or change any legal notices or other content of the Site or attempt to circumvent security or interfere with the proper working of the Site or the servers on which it is hosted;
use the Site to transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam);
use the Site to knowingly transmit any data, send, or upload any material that contains viruses, trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware, or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware;
attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Site, the server on which the Site is stored, or any server, computer, or database connected to our site or circumvent, disable, or otherwise interfere with our security-related features;
reproduce, copy, distribute, publicly display, or re-sell any part of the Site in contravention of these terms and conditions;
create links to the Site from any other website for commercial purposes, without our prior written consent;
modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Site or parts of the Site or create derivative works from the Site;
use the Site for any business, commercial, or public purpose, except when you have purchased a corporate subscription.

We reserve the right to withdraw any linking permission granted without notice. If you wish to make any use of material on our site other than that set out above, please address your request to support@treepress.net

You must only use the Site and anything available from the Site for lawful purposes (complying with all applicable laws and regulations), in a responsible manner, and not in a way that might damage our name or reputation or that of any of our group companies and affiliates.

All rights granted to you under these terms and conditions will terminate immediately in the event that you are in breach of any of them and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made in breach of these terms.

3. Site Usage

Use of the site is currently free of charge.

Access is granted to Users of our TreePress WordPress plugin to store, share, display, edit, delete and otherwise manage data syncronized from any website where the plugin is installed. WordPress plugin users are responsible for managing their own data security using the tools and options provided within the plugin and on this site and we accept no responsibility for data displayed in error or shared inadvertently with other users or the public. Users are recommended to familiarize themselves with our help documentation and understand the security and privacy settings before adding potentially sensitive data to either the ‘hub’ site of individual instances of the TreePress plugin on their websites.

In addition to users of our WordPress TreePress plugin, registered users of this site can add, edit, display and remove their own data directly within this site and subject to approval of other members, access those member’s data as well.

Limited data can can also be accessed by non-registered Users who can search for basic information on our front end search tools and listings.

4. Fair usage.

We have a fair usage limit on the number of Records you may view.

You may access a maximum of 5,000 Records in any calendar month (Month), subject to a maximum of 500 Records in any 24 hour period (Limit).

There is no carry over permitted of any unused Limit from one Month to the next Month.

5. Your personal information

When you register, you will need to provide us with certain personal data to enable us to provide you with access to the site and it’s services.

Our privacy policy sets out how we use any of your personal information you give us.

Any personal data which you provide to us when you register with the Site or purchase a plugin or add on must be true, accurate, current, and complete in all respects. You agree not to impersonate any other person or entity or to use a false name or a name that you are not authorised to use when purchasing Subscriptions. You will notify us immediately of any changes to any personal information supplied to us.

6. User Generated Content & Community guidelines

By using the site or engaging with us online, you indicate that you accept and agree to be bound by our Code of Conduct. The Code covers, but are not limited to, TreePress’s websites, WordPress plugins, blog, and presence on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter globally. You warrant that your contribution does comply with those standards, and you indemnify us for any breach of that warranty.

If you use the Site to publish material (including your family tree), make comments, or participate in a forum or our communities, you do so in accordance with our terms of use and community guidelines. You are solely responsible for managing the content that you create, including managing the privacy settings that are available to you. You indemnify us for any failure to obtain the appropriate permissions of the owner of rights in the content you upload and for any breach of these terms of use. We are not liable or responsible for the third-party content on this Site including links to other sites and resources.

We encourage you to take part, to engage with people, to share your discoveries, and to help your fellow community members. Transgressors may be temporarily or permanently banned from TreePress’s channels and may have their subscriptions cancelled and their access to TreePress’s records removed. Complaints about the content of any posting must be sent to support@treepress.net and must contain details of the specific posting giving rise to the complaint. Further details of our take down procedure are set out in our Code of Conduct.

By publishing any content or syncronizing data to this site from our WordPress TreePress plugin and add ons, you consent to us making it available to other users of the Site and to users of other websites that are either part of our company group or with whom we have a partnership, as well as by internet search engines. You also consent to us using it for marketing, product improvement, or any other commercial purposes.

Your registration, payment information, and private conversations between members are always kept private and secure.

Subject to the liability section below, we exclude all liability for any loss you may suffer as a result of content created by you and made available by you in accordance with this section being abused by a third person.

We do not control the material submitted by other users (collectively ‘Postings’). We do not screen, moderate, or monitor any content either before or after it is posted or sent; although, we may use filtering tools from time to time to screen or suppress certain information or language. You acknowledge that all Postings express the views of their respective authors and not our views. Your content may be viewed by any user of the Site unless it is posted in a restricted members-only area with the appropriate privacy settings, in which case, only we and our members may view that content. We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to delete any Posting submitted by you and/or to close any topic, at any time without notice to you.

You should never upload material that would violate the intellectual property or other rights of other people or organisations. Before posting or sending any content referring to or relating to any living person, you must obtain their explicit consent to be referred to on the Site and you warrant to us that you have done so prior to posting such material. If the living person is under 16, you must obtain the consent of their parent or guardian to this use.

By submitting your content or Postings, you give us and our group companies and our affiliated companies and third-party service providers permission to use, copy, adapt, edit, translate, make available, and transmit or otherwise communicate, display, and publish such content (or any part of it) and to create any derivative works from it together with the ability to sub-licence the same whether we refer to your user name or not, and to the extent permitted by law, you waive any moral rights you may have in your content (i.e. the right to be identified as author of or to object to derogatory treatment of such content). The grant of these rights to us is irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free. We can use all or part of your content in advertising and marketing materials for our products. It is in our sole discretion whether or not we use your content. We can remove your content even if you have complied with our Code of Conduct. If you do not agree to this, please do not submit any content to us.

7. Age of consent

Although you may be able to register as a user of our Site if you are under 18, please note that all plugins, subscriptions and services must be purchased by an adult of 18 years or older, using their own account details.

By submitting an order, you are confirming to us that you are 18 or over.

If we discover or are of the opinion that you are not legally entitled to make purchases, we shall be entitled to cancel the order immediately, without notice to you.

8. Price and payment

All prices are inclusive of VAT where applicable at the current rates.

All prices are correct at the time they are given. Prices are liable to change at any time, but changes will not affect orders for which you have already paid. If we change the Subscription price (which we may do at any time), this will not affect your current Subscription, but the higher price will apply on your Subscription renewal. We will always inform you by way of email if any Subscription charges will be increased in your next renewal period, and you can always choose not to renew your Subscription (see Continuous Subscriptions above).

It is always possible that some of the Credits or Subscriptions listed may be incorrectly priced. We will verify prices as part of our sale procedures so that the correct price will be stated at the point of sale. If we discover a manifest error with our prices then we may cancel your order and refund you.

When making a purchase via the Site, you can pay using a credit or debit card through our secure third-party payment gateway. All credit/debit card purchases are subject to validation checks (which you consent to) and authorisation by the card issuer. If the issuer of your payment card refuses to or does not for any reason authorise payment to us for a particular purchase, we will not accept your order. Please note that it is possible that your card issuer may charge you an online handling or processing fee. We are not responsible for this.

The payment card originally used for purchasing a subscription will be charged based on the chosen Subscription package, on the day the Subscription automatically renews. However, any subsequent payment cards used to purchase, for example, additional credits, may update the default card used for all future payments (subscriptions or credits). Simply, the most recent, valid (unexpired) payment card used for any purchase will become the default for all future payments.

Pre-authorisation

When you enter your details for payment or update of payment card, we may hold a pre-authorisation amount of £0.01/$0.01/€0.01 to validate your card. This is held from your account temporarily (1 – 5 working days) but is not charged.

Plugin Purchases and Subscriptions

Purchases of our TreePress WordPress plugin and it’s add ons and variations, together with subscriptions, are subject to seperate Terms and Conditions which are agreed during the purchasing process.

9. Cancellations

This Section shall only apply to consumer users of the Site. If you are a Genealogist or other commercial user of the Site, you will not have the right to cancel your membership in accordance with the below.

If you change your mind or for any other reason decide you do not want a Subscription or membership package, you may cancel your order within fourteen days after the day on which the contract is entered into (Cooling-Off Period). Where you have given your express consent to start access to Records in accordance with the section below {link}, then we will not be obliged to provide you with a refund (see Refunds below), however we may give you a refund in this circumstance if no Records have been viewed.

To cancel your membership you must inform us

in writing either to the address noted at the end of these Terms or by emailing us at support@treepress.net giving us your name, address, and order reference; or
by using the cancellation options on the Account Management Dashboard.

After cancellation, you will lose access to any previously viewed records with the exception of free-to-view records available on Site.

Cancellation of a subscription to our TreePress WordPress plugin and/or removal of that plugin from your website does not automatically cancel membership of the TreePress ‘hub’ site and you will need to log into your account on this site to manage your subscription or cancellation.

Details of the consumer rights described above, and an explanation of how to exercise them, are provided in the Confirmation Email. Nothing in this section affects your legal rights.

10. Express consent to start access to Records

This Section shall only apply to consumer users of the Site. If you are a Genealogist or other commercial user of the Site this Section does not apply.

If you wish to access Records before the expiry of the Cooling-Off Period, then you expressly request that we begin the supply of digital content (i.e. allow you to access Records) before the end of the Cooling-Off Period. You acknowledge that once we have begun the supply of the Records that you lose the right to cancel and we shall not be obligated to provide a refund if a charge has been made or agreed.

11. Refunds

This Section shall only apply to consumer users of the Site. If you are a Genealogist or other commercial user of the Site this Section does not apply.

Subject to the following sentence, if you cancel your membership within the Cooling-Off Period then we will refund all monies that you have paid to us (if any) in respect of the contract being cancelled. However, as stated above, if you have given your express consent to us to provide access to Records in the Cooling-Off Period and if we have begun that supply, we shall not be obligated to provide a refund.

We will aim to process any refund due to you within three working days and, in any case, not later than 14 days after the day on which we were informed about your decision to cancel the contract. Refunds can only be made to the original source of payment / payment method.

12. Intellectual property rights

We are the owner or licensee of all intellectual property rights in any content of the Site (including text, graphics, software, photographs, and other images, videos, sound, trademarks, and logos).

Except as expressly set out here, nothing in these terms and conditions gives you any rights in respect of any intellectual property owned by us or our licensors and you acknowledge that you do not acquire any ownership rights in the Site or its content.

Records on the Site may be provided by third-party licensors (Licensors). In most instances the copyright or database rights owner is displayed as part of the Records. The Licensors shall retain all intellectual property rights in the Records. You cannot use the Records to create your own work such as databases, articles, blogs, or books, or copy or reproduce the Records (either in whole or in part), or publish them, for a purpose other than personal use, without our prior written permission (and/ or that of the Licensor of the Records).

Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of material on our site must always be acknowledged. If you wish to publish or otherwise professionally use the Records please contact us.

You must not modify the paper or digital copies of any material you have printed or downloaded in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, video, or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text. In the event you print off, copy, or store pages from the Site (only as permitted by these terms and conditions), you must ensure that any copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property right notices contained in the original content are reproduced.

If you believe that you own the copyright or any other intellectual property right in any of the Records on the Site and we have not recognized you as the copyright owner, please contact us and we will work with you to resolve this.

13. Content

We may change the format and content of the Site from time to time. You agree that your use of the Site is on an ‘as is’ and ‘as available’ basis and at your sole risk.

Whilst we try to make sure that all information contained on the Site (other than any user-generated content) is correct, it is not intended to amount to authority or advice on which reliance should be placed. You should check with us or the relevant information source before acting on any such information.

Except to the extent expressly set out in the additional terms and conditions mentioned at the top of these terms of use, we make or give no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness, currency, correctness, reliability, integrity, quality, fitness for purpose, or originality of any content of the Site and, to the fullest extent permitted by law, all implied warranties, conditions, or other terms of any kind are hereby excluded. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we accept no liability for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of you or anyone else using the Site or relying on any of its content. No liability can be accepted by us in respect of any changes made to the content of the Site by unauthorised third parties.

We cannot and do not guarantee that any content of the Site will be free from viruses and/or other code that may have contaminating or destructive elements and cannot accept any liability for the same. It is your responsibility to implement appropriate IT security safeguards (including anti-virus and other security checks) to satisfy your particular requirements as to the safety and reliability of content.

14. Our right to amend Records

We reserve the right to make changes to the Records and services we offer on the Site without notice at any time. This includes the right to withdraw any Record offered on the Site. We may, for example, cease to provide Records from a particular data set at any time. We shall not be liable to anyone for withdrawing any Records from the Site or for refusing to accept an order.

Where possible, we add Records to your Subscription at no extra cost; however, if we launch a major new collection of records, for example, we may need to make a separate charge for access to such Records. This will be made clear on the Site.

15. Termination of your right to Membership

If you are in breach of any of these Terms, we may, without notice, suspend or terminate your membership of this site and shall not be liable to you to refund any Subscription or Credit fees already paid (if any), unless you can prove to us that you were not using the Records in contravention of these Terms.

If we cannot take payment for a renewed Subscription or if you regularly exceed the limits on use of Records set out in these Terms, then we may terminate your access to Records. In such a circumstance, you will not be entitled to a refund on any amounts paid.

We may accept or reject any application to register with us at any time and we may suspend or terminate your account if we believe you have breached the terms of use or at our discretion.

16. Liability

Nothing in these Terms shall limit or exclude our liability to you for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or for fraudulent misrepresentation or any other liability that may not, under English law, be limited or excluded.

Subject to this, in no event shall we be liable to you (whether caused by tort or by breach of contract or otherwise) for loss of anticipated savings, data, wasted time, indirect or consequential losses, or for any loss of profit, revenue, contracts, goodwill, or other similar losses whether directly or indirectly incurred and any liability we do have for losses you suffer arising from any contract shall not exceed the purchase price of membership and is strictly limited to losses that were reasonably foreseeable. Losses are foreseeable where they could be contemplated by you and us at the time your order is accepted by us.

We cannot guarantee the uninterrupted or error-free operability of the Site. Access to the Site is permitted on a temporary basis and we reserve the right to withdraw, modify, or suspend the service we provide on the Site without notice. We will not be liable to you or any third party for any unavailability, modification, suspension, or withdrawal of the Site, or any features, parts, or content of the Site at any time for any period.

We shall not be obliged to perform our obligations under these Terms to the extent that we are prevented, hindered, or delayed in the event of ‘Force Majeure’ meaning an event beyond the control of the Authority and the Operator, which prevents a Party from complying with any of its obligations under this Contract, including but not limited to: act of God such as fires, explosions, earthquakes, drought, tidal waves and floods; war; hostilities; invasion; act of foreign enemies; rebellion; revolution; insurrection; military or usurped power; civil war; contamination by radioactivity from any nuclear fuel; riots; commotion; strikes; failure of transport links; failure of telecoms links; unavailability of the internet or any utility; go slows; lock outs or disorder, unless solely restricted to employees of the Site or of subcontractors; and acts or threats of terrorism.

We exclude any liability arising out of any dealings you have with third parties that take place using or facilitated by our website unless specifically agreed elsewhere in our terms of use.

You are responsible for and agree to pay us any losses, costs or expenses that we suffer as a result of you failing to comply with these terms of use.

Any software is downloaded at your own risk.

17. External links and banners

The Site may, from time to time, include links to external sites and banner advertising. We have included links to these sites to provide you with access to information and services that you may find useful or interesting, but we accept no responsibility for their content nor for their compliance with any laws and regulations. We have no control over the content of these sites or for anything provided by them and do not guarantee that they will be continuously available. We accept no responsibility for these sites or any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them. The fact that we include links to such external sites does not imply any endorsement of or association with their operators.

18. General

If any part or provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, this shall not affect the validity of any other part or provision.

You may not assign, sub-license, or otherwise transfer any of your rights under these Terms. We may assign these Terms or any rights hereunder without your consent or notice.

These Terms supersede any previous versions.

These Terms shall be governed by English law, and you agree that any dispute between us regarding them or the Site will only be dealt with by the English courts, provided that, if you are a consumer and not a business user and live in a part of the United Kingdom other than England, the applicable law of that part of the United Kingdom will govern and any dispute will only be dealt with by the courts there. Nothing shall prevent us from bringing proceedings to protect our intellectual property rights before any competent court.

19. Contacting us

Please submit any questions you have about these terms and conditions or any problems concerning the Site by email to customer support [support@treepress.net], by using our online enquiry form.

Last Amended: 09 December 2019