Terms

Hi, and welcome. Thanks for using Brightest. We've written this page to help you understand your rights and our responsibilities under this Agreement ("User Agreement" or "Agreement") between Brightest, Inc. (collectively, "Brightest," "we", "our," and "us") and you. This Agreement sets the terms of your use of the Brightest website and services ("Brightest", "Service") that include brightest.io, brightest.life and all related domains and subdomains, our messaging platforms, Brightest mobile and other apps, and all other current and planned components of the Service. This Agreement is meant to encourage a fair and tolerant place for ideas, people, links, and discussion that respects you as an individual, partner, or client, and, hopefully, friend.

This Agreement is a legal contract between you and us. You acknowledge that you have read, understand, and agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement. If you do not agree to this Agreement, you should not use Brightest (despite our best efforts and positive intentions). That said, we mean you no harm. This page also summarizes the core tenets of our privacy policy, which explains how we collect and use your information.

If you are a Brightest account administrator, customer, or client and use the software-as-a-service (SaaS) component of Brightest for administration, management, and all other aspects of work related to sustainability management and reporting, ESG management and reporting, supply chain due diligence, event hosting and promotion, student or campus engagement, organizing, issue advocacy, fundraising, volunteer management, non-profit operations, corporate [social] responsibility (CSR), social impact, and/or environmental measurement, and any and all other uses of Brightest for Organizations (the "Subscription Service"), you also agree to (and should review) our Customer Agreement.

Your access to Brightest

Without advance notice and at any time, we may, for violations of this Agreement: (1) suspend your access to Brightest, (2) suspend or terminate your account or Brightest membership, and/or (3) remove any of your User Content from Brightest. Realistically, we're only going to do this if you knowingly and deliberately violate these terms, such as by attempting to hack us, post hate speech, or otherwise mis-use the platform in a way that runs counter to our values.

We reserve the right to monitor Brightest, and your use of the Service means you agree to such monitoring. At the same time, we do not guarantee we will monitor everything or anything. Put another way - and as we outline in our privacy policy - we do have the ability to track a lot of what you do on the site. The REASON why do that is to deliver you personalized recommendations, understand ways we can improve the service, make Brightest better, and help track and measure your social impact, which we couldn't do without analytics tracking. To be clear, we will not track you when you don't use our service, we will not sell, trade, or expose your data to third parties not involved in helping us deliver you the Service, and we have no interest in surveilling you in depth to target ads at you. We simply want to know the city or town where you live (generally), and which causes, events, and positive actions you care about and take part in.

Brightest is for your personal, lawful use

Brightest is designed and supported for personal or approved organizational use only. You may not use Brightest to break the law, violate an individual's privacy, or infringe any person or entity’s intellectual property or any other proprietary rights. You may not use Brightest to promote any business, organization, advertisement, or cause that is inconsistent with Brightest's intent to maintain a free, tolerant, and caring community. If you are caught using Brightest for unsanctioned use, you may be warned, or even suspended.

Brightest respects your privacy but also collects your information when you use it/us

Brightest collects, uses, and shares information (as anonymously as possible with analytics-providing third parties) about you when you access and use the Service, or when you otherwise interact with us. We collect information you provide directly to us when you use our Services. Depending on which Service you use, we may collect different information about you. This can include information used to create your account (e.g., a username, password, and email address), account preferences, and the content of information you post to the Service (e.g., text, photos, videos, links). You may choose to provide other information directly to us. For example, we may collect information when you fill out a form, participate in promotions, apply for a job or volunteer opportunity, communicate with us via third-party sites and services, request customer support or otherwise communicate with us.

We collect user data in different ways to provide you the best service and make sure our website is running properly. We may log information when you access and use the Service. This may include your IP address, user-agent string, browser type, operating system, referral URLs, device information (e.g., device IDs), pages visited, links clicked, user interactions (e.g., voting data), the requested URL, hardware settings, and search terms. We also use and may receive information from cookies, which are pieces of data your browser stores and sends back to us when making requests. Again, we only use this information to improve your experience, understand user activity, personalize content and advertisements, and improve the quality of our Service. Your privacy is very important to us, and we're not just saying that like some companies we know.

We'll do our best to keep your data secure

We take commercially reasonable measures to help protect information about you from loss, theft, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. Nonetheless, despite our best efforts, you use this Service at your own risk. For more on this topic, have a look at our privacy policy.

Brightest wants to make you happier and better - but you are in charge of your own personal agency and decisions

Actions, events, and other information on Brightest is provided for informational purposes only. We cannot verify information provided by independent third parties, and any event or action you choose to attend or participate in you do so at your own risk. We are not responsible for any decisions you make based on something you read on Brightest.

Brightest isn’t a marketplace

Brightest is not intended to be a marketplace for any goods or services. However, you may occasionally find commercial links, coupons, deals, tickets, recommended products, advertisements, and other third-party offers on Brightest. Brightest is not a party to, nor in any way responsible for, any transactions you make or enter into with any third party you discover through Brightest, even if Brightest has a relationship with such parties. For this reason, any transactions you undertake are your responsibility alone, so be careful.

You may not, under any circumstances, use Brightest to promote or conduct transactions for any illegal goods or services.

Your Brightest account

To participate on Brightest, you must create an account with a username, password and email address and/or phone number ("Your Account"). You can also browse some elements of Brightest without logging in.

You are solely responsible for the information associated with Your Account and anything that happens related to Your Account. You also may not license, transfer, sell, or assign Your Account without our written approval. We also strongly prohibit the creation of fake accounts, bot accounts, or multiple duplicate accounts expressly designed to create fake data or activity or impersonate others on our platform. Please don't do this.

Brightest content

Brightest contains graphics, text, photographs, images, video, audio, software, code, website compilation, website "look and feel," and other content, which we call "Brightest content." Brightest content is protected by intellectual property laws including copyright and other proprietary rights of the United States and foreign countries.

We grant you the right to access Brightest content in the manner described in this Agreement. You may not otherwise make unauthorized commercial use of, reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display Brightest content, except as permitted by the doctrine of fair use or as authorized in writing by us.

Your content

You retain the rights to your copyrighted content or information that you submit to Brightest ("User Content") except as described below. By submitting User Content to Brightest, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your User Content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.

You agree that you have the right to submit anything you post, and that your User Content does not violate the copyright, trademark, trade secret or any other personal or proprietary right of any other party.

We do not endorse User Content

We take no responsibility for, we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, and we do not assume any liability for any User Content submitted by you to Brightest, whether that content is submitted in a personal capacity, or on behalf of an organization or government.

Links and Brightest

Brightest is a place with many third-party hyperlinks posted by users like you. We are not responsible for the content or actions of any third party websites or services associated with posted links. You agree to take sole legal responsibility for any links you post, and neither this Agreement nor our privacy policy applies to any content on other websites related to those links. You should consult the terms and privacy policies of those other websites to understand your rights.

Brightest rules

You agree to follow the content policy outlined in this Agreement. These guidelines are intended to keep people safe, protect kids, keep Brightest running, and to encourage personal responsibility for what you do on Brightest.

Brightest is a place for communities to discuss, connect, and share in an open environment, home to some of the most interesting, helpful, and authentic content anywhere on the internet. The nature of this content might be funny, serious, offensive, or anywhere in between. While participating and using Brightest, it’s important to keep in mind this value above all others: show enough respect to others so that we all may continue to enjoy Brightest for what it is.

To this end, the following content policy rules will be strictly enforced:

While Brightest generally provides leeway in what content is acceptable, some content is not. Please keep in mind the spirit in which these were written, and know that looking for loopholes is a waste of time. Specifically, Brightest will not tolerate (and will quickly remove):

  1. Anything illegal or that violates any valid and enforceable United States law, including but not limited to copyright or trademark infringement or illegal sexual content
  2. Pornography or sexually suggestive material with no artistic merit
  3. Any hate speech or anything that incites hate, violence or ill will toward any person or community of people
  4. Private, confidential and personally identifiable information about other people (a) that is not in the public domain and (b) is posted without that person's permission
  5. Impersonates someone in a misleading or deceptive manner
  6. Is spam
  7. Contains excessive profanity
  8. Anything else we, in our sole discretion, consider unwelcome content

Additionally, you are expressly prohibited from engaging in vote or election manipulation, breaking Brightest, or doing anything that interferes with normal use of Brightest, and/or creating multiple accounts to evade punishment or avoid restrictions

Seriously, don't try to hack Brightest (please)

You agree not to interrupt the serving of Brightest, introduce malicious code onto Brightest, make it difficult for anyone else to use Brightest due to your actions, attempt to manipulate votes or Brightest’s systems, or assist anyone in misusing Brightest in any way. It takes a lot of work to maintain Brightest. Be cool.

We support the responsible reporting of security vulnerabilities. To report a Brightest security issue, please send an email to [email protected].

We encourage the creation of other ways to access Brightest, including browser extensions and mobile and desktop applications. We take no responsibility for, we do not expressly or implicitly endorse, and we do not assume any liability for any mobile or desktop application not produced by us.

If you produce or maintain a browser extension or application, you agree not to purposefully negate any user's actions to delete or edit their content on Brightest.

Brightest isn't for children

Brightest is not directed at people under the age of 13, and Brightest does not knowingly collect any personal information from such people. If you know that a user under the age of 13 is accessing Brightest, please contact us.

DMCA

We will respond to legitimate requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), and we retain the right to remove User Content on Brightest that we deem to be infringing the copyright of others. If you become aware of User Content on Brightest that infringes your copyright rights, you may submit a properly formatted DMCA request (see 17 U.S.C. § 512) to Brightest.

Misrepresentations of infringement can result in liability for monetary damages. You may want to consult an attorney before taking any action pursuant to the DMCA. Any DMCA request should be emailed to [email protected]

If you do contact us over copyright matters, please include following information:

  1. The electronic or physical signature of the owner of the copyright or the person authorized to act on the owner's behalf;
  2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or a representative list of such works;
  3. The URL or Internet location of the materials claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity, or information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material;
  4. Your name, address, telephone number and email address;
  5. A statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law; and
  6. A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.

Your right to protest a content takedown

If we remove your User Content in response to a copyright or trademark notice, we will notify you via Brightest’s private messaging system and offer to provide you with a copy of the notice. If you believe your User Content was wrongly removed due to a mistake or misidentification of the material, you can file a counter-notice with us that includes the following:

  • Your physical or electronic signature;
  • Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and where the material was located online before it was removed or access to it was disabled;
  • A statement by you, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled;
  • Your name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of federal district court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if your address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under DMCA 512 subsection (c)(1)(c) or an agent of such person.
  • Upon receiving a counter-notice we will review it and make a decision about restoring your content. We may forward it to the complaining party and tell them we will restore your content within 10 business days. If that party does not notify us that they have filed an action to enjoin your use of that content on Brightest before that period passes, we will consider restoring your User Content to the site.

    It is Brightest's policy to close the accounts of users we identify as repeat infringers. We apply this policy at our discretion and in appropriate circumstances, such as when a user has repeatedly been charged with infringing the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of others.

    Responsible use of AI

    In an effort to save you time, make your work more productive and efficient, give you better recommendations, and offer other capabilities and tools that make Brightest better for you and your organization, we have begun using machine learning and artificial intelligence ("AI") in various aspects of our Brightest, and to perform various product functions for you. This includes examples like recommending your relevant emissions factors, or helping to suggest or auto-draft you content. Furthermore, we intend to continue to develop, explore, and implement additional AI-related tools, capabilities, and offerings in the future. If you accept and make use of this content or information, it is considered User Content under this Agreement.

    All AI-powered services, tools, and capabilities within Brightest or provided through us are not intended to be used for legal or medical purposes. We do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information generated by our AI. Please always review and verify any AI-generated or AI-recommended content carefully before using it, and you should not rely on the information generated by our AI for any important decisions or regulatory filings. You also recognize and accept that AI is not perfect, and may generate inaccurate or biased results. Our goals with AI and pledge to you is to do our best to be thoughtful about its uses and potential risks, deploy it in highly controlled, deliberate, and thoughtfully-designed ways, thoroughly test it, and look to learn and improve our use, model quality and accuracy, and the benefits it provides you. Ultimately, we've made the decision to incorporate AI into Brightest because we feel it's genuinely helpful to you, and makes our product better. We take reasonable steps to prevent AI-generated content from being harmful or offensive, but we cannot guarantee that all AI-generated content will be safe.

    In some very specific cases, like helping your organization forecast a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, we may use data, information, and User Content you provide us to make recommendations, forecasts, predications, and AI-based suggestions for you and your organization through Brightest. You acknowledge and consent to this limited use of your data and User Content to provide you a better Brightest product experience and higher-quality insights.

    Like most technology, AI is and can be a double-edged sword - it offers powers that can be used for good (and more sustainable actions and decision-making), or it can be used for negative acts like profiling, mass surveillance, cybersecurity attacks, and other possible harms. We offer certain AI capabilities to you through Brightest because we believe the benefits strongly outweigh the negatives, and because we've implemented robust controls to closely monitor and channel AI-based tools in ways they can promote sustainability and positive social impact. Newer forms of AI like LLMs (large language models) are relatively new from a commercial use perspective, and, like you, we're learning and closely monitoring how to make the best use of these types of tools while diligently managing their downside risks.

    Other important legal terms of this Agreement

    Please read the following very carefully. Each of the following sections applies to the maximum extent permitted by law. Where jurisdictions do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or the limitation of liability in contracts, the contents of this section may not apply.

    Indemnity

    All the things you do and all the information you submit or post to Brightest remain your responsibility. Indemnity is basically a way of saying that you will not hold us legally liable for any of your User Content or user actions that infringe the law or the rights of a third party or person in any way.

    Specifically, you agree to hold Brightest, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents, and third party service providers harmless from and defend them against any claims, costs, damages, losses, expenses, and any other liabilities, including attorneys’ fees and costs, arising out of or related to your access to or use of Brightest, your violation of this User Agreement, and/or your violation of the rights of any third party or person.

    Disclaimer of warranties

    Brightest is provided "as is" and without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we and our affiliates and third party service providers disclaim any and all warranties, express or implied, including (but not limited to) implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement of proprietary rights, or any other warranty, condition, guarantee or representation, whether oral or electronic. You are solely responsible for any damage to your computer or mobile device, loss of use, or loss of your User Content. We do not guarantee that Brightest will always work properly, though we will always try our best.

    Limitation of liability

    We will not be liable for any special, consequential, indirect, incidental, punitive, reliance, or exemplary damages, whether in tort, contract, or any other legal theory, arising out of or in any way connected with this Agreement or your use of or attempt to use Brightest, including (but not limited to) damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, or data. This limitation on liability shall not be affected even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages. Some states do not allow for the exclusion of implied warranties or the limitation or exclusion of liability for incidental or consequential damages, so the above exclusions may not apply to you. You may have other rights that vary from state to state.

    You agree to release us, our affiliates, and third-party service providers, and each associated director, employee, agents, and officers, from claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential), of every kind and nature, known and unknown, disclosed or undisclosed, arising out of or in any way connected to your use of Brightest.

    Governing law

    We want you to enjoy Brightest, so if you have an issue or dispute, you agree to raise it and try to resolve it with us informally. You can contact us with feedback and concerns here or by emailing us at [email protected].

    The headings in this Agreement are for convenience and do not control any of its provisions.

    Any claim or dispute between you and us arising out of or relating to this User Agreement, in whole or in part, shall be governed by the laws of the State of New York without respect to its conflict of laws provisions. We agree and you agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal court located in Suffolk or Kings County, New York.

    Severability and enforcement

    If any provision of this User Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that provision will be modified to the extent necessary to render it enforceable without losing its intent. If no such modification is possible, that provision will be severed from the rest of this Agreement.

    If we do not enforce any right or provision in this User Agreement, that is not to be deemed a waiver of our right to do so in the future.

    Changes to this Agreement

    This User Agreement is the entire Agreement between you and us concerning Brightest. It supersedes all prior or contemporaneous Agreements between you and us. We may modify this User Agreement at any time. If we make changes to this Agreement that materially affect your rights, we will provide advance notice and keep this edition available as an archive on the Brightest website. By continuing to use Brightest after a change to this Agreement, you agree to those changes.

    Wow. You actually made it to the end. Congrats. We applaud your patience and thorough reading, and hope you have a splendid rest of your day. If you have any questions about this Agreement, please email us at [email protected].