After 11 years of bringing you local reporting, the team behind the Vancouver Observer has moved on to Canada's National Observer. You can follow Vancouver culture reporting over there from now on. Thank you for all your support over the years!

Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

Terms of Use

Welcome to our site. We ask you review these Terms of Use, which constitute a binding agreement that governs your use of this site ("Agreement"). We are Observer Media Group Inc. (incorporated in BC, Canada) and its employees, and agents (referred to as "us", and "we"). We have tried to avoid unnecessary legal verbiage. Our goal is to set terms of your access to the content at this site. We do not refund monies paid in any of the usual circumstances. If you do not wish to be bound by this Agreement after you have read it, please leave the site. If you remain on this site, or return, or pay for access or renew, then you thereby agree to be bound by this Agreement.

1. Responsible conduct. We encourage a free and open exchange of ideas in a climate of mutual respect. Any action by a user that infringes on another user's right to use and enjoy our site is prohibited. We reserve the right, but do not assume any obligation, to monitor your online conduct to enforce these Terms of Use. Without limitation, we reserve the right to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us in our sole discretion and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the legal requirements, regulation, government request or to preserve our rights. We reserve the right to permanently block any user who violates these terms and conditions.

2. Copyright. The content on this site is protected by intellectual property laws, including Canadian and U.S. copyright laws. You are hereby granted a non-exclusive license to use the material at this site ("Content") while connected to this site (including, where available, to email individual stories to friends directly from this site). You are also granted a limited license to print one copy of any Content posted at the site, but only for your personal use. Except as expressly provided above, all rights are reserved. Except to the extent required for the limited purpose of reviewing material on our site, electronic reproduction, adaptation, distribution, performance or display is prohibited. Changes to or deletion of author attribution or copyright notices are prohibited. Commercial use of any of the Content is prohibited. Use of any of our trademarks as metatags on other web sites is prohibited. "Scraping," indexing, and caching are all prohibited. You may not display this website in frames (or any of the Content via in-line links) without our express written permission, which may be requested by contacting us through our feedback form. You may, however, establish ordinary links to our site without our written permission.

3. Links. We may provide links from our site to other sites as a convenience to our visitors. We usually have no control over linked sites and make no representations about any content or material available at these locations. Links do not imply adoption, sponsorship, affiliation or endorsement.

4. Discussion Boards and other self-publishing third-party products. Although we do not have any obligation to monitor these services, or this self-published content, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us in our sole discretion and to disclose any information to preserve our interests or to satisfy law, regulation, or government request. We reserve the right to permanently block any user who violates these terms and conditions, in our judgement.

5. Limit to Actual Damages. You agree not to claim against us (or against any third party who might claim indemnity from us) for any loss, damage, injury, or expense unless that claim is for actual out-of-pocket expense sustained by you directly and caused or contributed to by our acts or omission in connection with this website or these Terms of Use or our Privacy Policy from time to time. It is understood that, except for such actual or special out-of-pocket damages, you assume all risks of all injury, loss, damage, or expense by any and every cause, whether by negligence, or breach of this or another contract, or otherwise.

6. Modifications/ Termination. You agree that we may modify the terms of this Agreement (or discontinue this site) at our discretion, without advance notice, and that your right to access and use this site is conditional on an ongoing basis upon adhesion to and your compliance with the then-current version of these Terms of Use. You should therefore visit this page frequently.

7. RSS Feeds – By downloading the information through an RSS Feed, you agree you will only do so for personal use or in conjunction with a non-commercial website (a website that generates no revenue). For use in conjunction with a commercial website, please contact us and obtain our written permission. If the RSS Feed information is posted on your website, prominent attribution must be made to nationalobserver.com or vancouverobserver.com including a link to the relevant home page.

8. Your Contribution

If you contribute content or comment to this site you:

  1. warrant that you are the author or otherwise have obtained sufficient copyright or copyright license for the contribution or assured yourself that it is in the public domain, such that you can grant the licence below,
  2. grant a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual licence to us to use the content by any means of dissemination or archival retrieval, known or yet to be invented,
  3. waive your claims based upon moral rights in the absence of malicious intent on our part,
  4. warrant that factual statements and implications are true and opinions honestly held (making a reasonable allowance for reader recognition of sarcasm, parody, exaggeration and similar devices), and
  5. warrant that the content is not threatening, abusive, libelous, obscene, pornographic, profane, indecent, criminal, breach of confidence, infringement of Trade-mark, discriminatory or otherwise unlawful under any applicable private or public law.

9. Choice of Law

These Terms of Use are agreed to be subject to and governed by the law of British Columbia, Canada.

10. Arbitration and Waiver of Class Action

All claims, dispute, or controversy between you and us arising from or involving this website or these Terms of Use are agreed to be heard by and submitted to arbitration pursuant to the Commercial Arbitration Act.

For greater certainty, and as a separate agreement, both you and we agree to waive any right you or we may have to commence or participate in any class action against us (or you) and, where applicable, you and we hereby agree to opt out of any class proceeding otherwise commenced.

11. If any provision of these Terms of Use are held ineffective, illegal, or void, then the remaining terms are agreed to remain in full force and effect.

12. Privacy Policy – Please review our Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy

At the VancouverObserver.com we respect our readership and value personal privacy. We understand the nature of the information given to us and value the importance of protecting this information in accordance with the Personal Information Protection Act.

All personal information submitted to the VancouverObserver.com is kept confidential as described below and normally only viewed by the VancouverObserver team. It is not sold or related to any other organization or company without prior consent.

We do not disclose Personal Information to others, without first, attempting to notify you.

We take reasonable steps to protect your Personal Information.

We maintain reasonably physical, technical, and procedural measures to limit access to Personal Information to authorized individuals with appropriate purposes and protocols. As set out in our terms of use, we will endeavour to notify you first but reserve the right to disclose any information necessary to satisfy legal requirement, regulation, and government request or to preserve our rights.

We use cookies to identify your individual browser and to assist in the site’s operation. No personally identifiable information is collected via cookies. Some cookies are only saved while you’re using the site, and others assist you while you have left the site. If you have disabled cookies through your browser, some site functions may not work properly.

One of the third party services we use, Google Analytics, also uses cookies. To opt out of Google Analytics and related marketing services, follow the steps outlined here.

Despite our best efforts, a data breach is possible. In the event of a data breach coming to our attention, whether or not through our fault, we will immediately notify all persons whose Personal Information has been or may have been inappropriately hacked or disclosed, we will minimize the breach and we will take steps to minimize foreseeable damage in the circumstances. We will keep those potentially affected abreast of our investigation and steps to mitigate damage.

The policy may be revised or updated at any time and we encourage you to check back often to ensure that you are familiar with the most recent version and the terms of our policy.

If you have any questions related to our Privacy Policy, please contact us.