Violation of any of the rules listed below is likely to lead to the immediate suspension of your account and could lead to legal action being taken against you by the authorities or an aggrieved party.

Keep your contributions civil, tasteful and relevant. Please:

• No defamatory comments. A defamatory comment is one that is capable of damaging the reputation of a person or organisation. If successfully sued you could be held liable for considerable damages and costs.
• Avoid contempt of court which means not posting anything that risks prejudicing on-going or forthcoming court proceedings.
• Do not incite people to commit any crime, including incitement of racial hatred.
• Avoid breaking a court injunction (for example, naming an individual or speculating as to their current whereabouts after a court has issued an injunction against doing so).
• Do not post content which you've copied from someone else and don't own the copyright.
• Do not post messages that are unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive.
• Do not make multiple postings. So that we can publish comments from as many different people as possible, participants should keep their number of contributions per debate to a reasonable level. Multiple posts from one individual, or small number of individuals, discourages many others who might otherwise wish to take part.
• No swearing. People of all ages read and contribute to the forum. Please don't use profanities or other words which might offend them.
• No spamming or flooding. Don't repost the same message, or very similar messages, more than once.
• No personal information. It is not acceptable to publicise your or anyone else's contact details including address, place of employment, name of educational establishment, telephone or mobile number, email address, etc. This is for your own safety and that of everyone who uses this service.
• Keep your posts relevant. Each debate is about a particular story or issue of the day. Posts which aren't relevant lower the value of the debate for everyone and may be removed.
• No advertising, promotion of products or services, or posting of web links (URLs).
• No capital letters. This is internet shorthand for raising your voice. You can make your point perfectly well in lower case so please take the caps lock off.
• No impersonating. Impersonating someone (including other members) is unacceptable.
• No inappropriate usernames (vulgar, offensive, etc).
• Markets Abuse Directive. Comments must not tip shares or make recommendations on investments.
• No multiple memberships. Please do not create more than one membership. It is unfair to the other users who only have one membership and abide by the posting and recommendation limit.
• Abusing the complaints system. Please don't abuse the complaints system. It exists to enable visitors to alert the Belfast Telegraph moderators about content which breaks the above rules. The complaints system cannot be used to complain about Belfast Telegraph coverage in general. Please do not use the complaints system to alert us to multiple postings, spelling mistakes and so on. Anyone who abuses the complaints system repeatedly may have their account suspended.

Copyright and the law

You own the copyright in your postings, articles and pictures, but you also agree to grant the Belfast Telegraph a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicenseable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, play, and exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to any such work worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any media now known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist in such content, consistent with privacy restrictions set forth in the Belfast Telegraph's Privacy Policy.

If you do not wish to grant such rights to the Belfast Telegraph, it is suggested that you do not submit your contribution to this site.

By submitting your contribution to this site, you also warrant that such contribution is:

• is not defamatory
• does not infringe any law

You also agree to indemnify the Belfast Telegraph against all legal fees, damages and other expenses that may be incurred by the Belfast Telegraph as a result of your breach of the above warranty.

You also agree to waive any moral rights in your contribution for the purposes of its submission to and publication on the Belfast Telegraph site and the other purposes specified above.

You may not post any defamatory or illegal material of any nature. This includes text, graphics, video, and/or audio. Posting a message with the intention of committing or condoning an illegal act is strictly prohibited.

You may not violate, plagiarise, or infringe on the rights of third parties including copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, personal, publicity, or proprietary rights.

About your privacy

The Belfast Telegraph complies with the 1998 Data Protection Act.

Disciplinary procedure

Violation of any of the rules above may lead to your membership account be temporarily suspended or terminated. The Belfast Telegraph additionally reserves the right to suspend or terminate any membership account at any time and at its sole discretion. While suspended, returning to the site by creating another account will constitute a further offence and will result in your account being closed permanently. The Belfast Telegraph reserves the right to delete any posting, at any time, for any reason, and is under no obligation to publish any work submitted.