Terms of Use

Mason County Press/Oceana County Press use policy.

Mason County Press and Oceana County Press are owned and operated by Media Group 31, LLC, PO Box 21, Scottville, MI 49431. Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief/Chief Executive Officer.

This policy is for all websites owned, operated or affiliated with Media Group 31, LLC. Including, but not limited to, MasonCountyPress.com and OceanaCountyPress.com along with affiliated social networking sites.

All content on the above mentioned websites is the intellectual property of Media Group 31, LLC and protected under the United States Copyright Act. Use of such content is limited to personal viewing without the written consent of the Editor-in-Chief or his representative. This includes re-posting, publishing or broadcasting text or any parts of text, photographs and videos.

This Site may include a variety of features, such as discussion forums, blogs, photo- and video-sharing pages, email services and social networking features, that allow feedback to us and allow users to interact with each other on the Site and post content and materials for display on the Site. This Site also may include other features, such as personalized home pages and email services, that allow users to communicate with third parties.

• The services of Media Group 31, LLC are protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.
• As the services of Media Group 31, LLC are news services, the information posted within the sites are archivable for public record and historical posterity. For this reason it is the policy and practice of this company to not delete postings. It is the editor’s discretion to update or edit a story when/if new information becomes available. This may be done by editing the posted story or posting a new “follow-up” story. Media Group 31, LLC or any of its agents have the right to make any changes to this policy.
• Users of any Media Group 31, LLC social media page/group/site should refer to its “rules” within those respective pages/groups/sites for additional terms beyond those listed below.
• Postings on our sites or social networking sites that promote businesses that are not paid advertisers are prohibited.
• Letters to the editor are welcome and encouraged. However, contributors must include their name and the township or town of residence. Refer to Op/Ed Policy for further details.
• The opinions and views of contributors are not necessarily those of Media Group 31, LLC and its owners. All material on this Site is copyrighted through Media Group 31, LLC and may not be reproduced without the expressed written consent of the owners.
• We may, although we are not obligated to, monitor any discussion forums, blogs, photo- or video-sharing pages, or other areas of the Site through which you can supply information or material. However, we reserve the right at all times, in our sole discretion, to screen content submitted by users and to edit, move, delete, and/or refuse to accept any content that in our judgment violates our Terms of Service (including these Community Rules) or is otherwise unacceptable or inappropriate, whether for legal or other reasons. reserve the right to deny access to the Site or any features of the Site to anyone who violates these Community Rules or who, in our sole judgment, interferes with the ability of others to enjoy our website or infringes the rights of others.

By accessing and using any such features, you represent and agree that you will not:

• Restrict or inhibit any other user from using and enjoying the Site;
• Use the Site to impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
• Use a pseudonym;
• Interfere with or disrupt any servers or networks used to provide the Site or its features, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of the networks we use to provide the Site;
• Use the Site to instigate or encourage others to commit illegal activities or cause injury or property damage to any person;
• Gain unauthorized access to the Site, or any account, computer system, or network connected to this Site, by means such as hacking, password mining or other illicit means;
• Obtain or attempt to obtain any materials or information through any means not intentionally made available through this Site;
• Use the Site to post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane or indecent information of any kind, including without limitation any transmissions constituting or encouraging conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law;
• Use the Site to post or transmit any information, software or other material that violates or infringes upon the rights of others, including material that is an invasion of privacy or publicity rights or that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right, or derivative works with respect thereto, without first obtaining permission from the owner or rights holder;
• Use the Site to post or transmit any information, software or other material that contains a virus or other harmful component;
• Use the Site to post, transmit or in any way exploit any information, software or other material for commercial purposes, including content that contains advertising or links to third parties or their products or services;
• Use the Site to advertise or solicit to anyone to buy or sell products or services, or to make donations of any kind, without our express written approval;
• Gather for any unauthorized purpose, including marketing purposes, any email addresses or other personal information that has been posted by other users of the Site;
• Contact anyone who has asked not to be contacted;
• Engage in personal attacks, harass or threaten, question the motives behind others’ posts or comments, deliberately inflame or disrupt the conversation, or air personal grievances about other users;
• Repeatedly post the same or similar content or otherwise impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure;
• Take or cause to be taken any action that disrupts the normal flow of postings and dialogue on our Site (such as submitting an excessive number of messages – i.e. a flooding attack), or that otherwise negatively affects other users’ ability to use the Site and/or services; or
• Use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from our Site. Exception is made for Internet search engines (e.g., Google) and non-commercial public archives (e.g., archive.org) that comply with our Terms of Service.

Also see Facebook use terms policy here. 

And, Twitter use terms policy here.