AubeActu partner charter

AubeActu is a free, advertising-free local news outlet covering the Aube department of France. This charter is for the bodies that send it information: town halls, inter-municipal bodies, public institutions, associations and clubs.

It is deliberately short. Everything in it is applied.

This English text is a courtesy translation. The relationship is governed by French law, and the French version prevails.

1. Who is committing

The account is opened in the name of an organisation, and it carries the name and role of the person committing it. Both are kept with every submission: without them the organisation has committed to nothing, and the declarations below are worthless.

For a town hall, the account email address is the one published for that town in the French public administration directory. The confirmation link is sent to that address, never to another.

2. What the organisation declares

With each submission, the organisation declares two separate things:

• it holds copyright in the TEXT sent, or has written permission from its author;
• it holds the rights to EACH of the photographs sent, or has written permission from their author.

The two declarations are separate because they are two different works. An organisation may well entrust its text and keep its photographs.

3. The licence granted

The organisation grants AubeActu a non-exclusive, free licence over the text and photographs in the submission. The rights granted, the purpose, the scope, the place and the term are listed in the clause shown at the time of submission, and that clause is kept verbatim with the submission.

Non-exclusive: the organisation publishes the same information wherever and whenever it likes.

Free: AubeActu charges nothing and pays nothing. Payment would move the relationship into a different legal status.

The licence covers only the current submission. It covers no future submission: the law forbids assigning in advance works that do not yet exist.

4. People in photographs

For each photograph the organisation states whether people are identifiable in it. If so, it states which consents it obtained, from whom, and in what form. That text is not published: it is kept.

A photograph in which a minor is identifiable is not published. The form refuses it, and there is no way around it. For a group photograph of children, the only route is a framing in which no face is identifiable.

5. The credit

Every photograph must carry a credit. The field is mandatory: a submission with an uncredited photograph is refused.

The credit is published under the photograph, exactly as given.

6. Technical file data

A phone photograph carries the GPS position where it was taken, the date, and the device model. AubeActu keeps that data internally as proof of provenance and strips it from the published file: the image put online is a new, re-encoded image that carries none of it.

7. What happens to a submission

Nothing is published automatically. A member of the newsroom reads every submission, without exception. Three outcomes are possible:

• the newsroom writes an article from the announcement and credits the organisation as the source. The words are the paper's;
• the newsroom runs the announcement verbatim. It then carries an "Official announcement" label and the name of the organisation;
• the newsroom does not take it further, and the reason is given to the organisation.

An event may join the paper's listings and its town page.

AubeActu remains in charge of its editorial line. Submitting an announcement confers no right to publication.

8. What AubeActu does not do

• No resale, no transfer to a third party, no advertising use.
• No election campaign material, no partisan statements.
• No text from another news outlet, none of its photographs.

9. Removal

The organisation may ask at any time for content to be removed, through the site's removal request form. The request is examined, and the answer is in writing. A refusal is reasoned and states the avenues of redress.

Removed content is unpublished: its page no longer answers. The records proving the origin of the submission are kept, because they are the proof of what was received.

10. Personal data

The account records the name, role, email address and telephone number of the person committing the organisation. Legal basis: performance of the partnership relationship, and the obligation to know who issued published information.

The telephone number is never published. The email address is published only if the organisation made it public in its own announcement.

This information is kept for the duration of the partnership, then three years. Charter acceptances and licences are kept longer: they are evidence.

To exercise a right of access, rectification, erasure or objection, write to the "data" contact address given in the site's legal notice.

11. This charter may change

A published version is never modified: a change opens a new version. Acceptances already given continue to refer to the version in force when they were given.