After 10 years of publication, 'Northings' (the monthly arts e-magazine for the Highlands & Islands) closed down in 2013 and is archived here. High Life Highland is pleased to enable this extensive body of work to remain accessible to the public. Please note, though, that material will not be updated or added.

Terms of Use

The Northings.com web portal is a project of Highlands and Islands Arts Ltd (HI~Arts).

Access to the services of this web portal is made available to the user in accordance with the following Terms of Use:

General Use

This website may contain proprietary notices and copyright information other than the site owner’s, the terms of which must be observed and followed. Highlands and Islands Arts Ltd (hereinafter referred to as HI~Arts) does not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any of the information or content (collectively, the ‘Materials’) contained on, distributed through, or linked, downloaded or accessed from any of the services contained on this web site (the ‘Service’), nor the quality of any information or other materials displayed, or obtained by you as a result of information in or in connection with the Service (the ‘Products’). You hereby acknowledge that any reliance upon any Materials shall be at your sole risk. HI~Arts reserves the right, in its sole discretion and without any obligation, to make improvements to, or correct any error or omission in any portion of the Service or the Materials.

The Service and the Materials are provided by HI~Arts on an ‘as is’ basis, and HI~Arts expressly disclaims any and all warranties, expressed or implied – including, without limitation, warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with respect to the Service or any Materials or Products. In no event shall HI~Arts be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, punitive or consequential damages – of any kind whatsoever – with respect to the Service, the Materials and the Products.

Limitations of Liability

In no event, will HI~Arts be liable to any party for any direct, indirect, special or other consequential damages for any use of this website, or on any other hyper-linked website, including – without limitation – any lost profits, business interruption, loss of programs or other data on your information-handling system or otherwise, even if we are expressly advised of the possibility of such damages.

HI~Arts shall have no liability for any interruption or delay in access to its family of websites or web services.

The Materials included in the HI~Arts family of websites and web services have been compiled from a variety of sources and are subject to change without notice.  These Materials do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of HI~Arts, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Creative Scotland, or any other funder, stakeholder or partner of HI~Arts, or their staff.  The copyright on all Materials rests with HI~Arts or the Third Party contributor, except where explicitly stated.  The inclusion or exclusion of Materials in the Northings.com is at the discretion of the Editor.

HI~Arts respects the rights (including the intellectual property rights) of others, and we ask our users to do the same. HI~Arts may, in appropriate circumstances and at its sole discretion, terminate the accounts of users who infringe or otherwise violate such rights of others.

Where appropriate, and at its discretion, HI~Arts may remove any information which has been proven to infringe upon the copyright of another Third Party. Should you believe that any of the information contained within the HI~Arts family of websites is in breach of your intellectual property rights, please email us at info@hi-arts.co.uk.

Linking to Third Party Sites

In linking to Third Party Sites, HI~Arts makes no representations whatsoever about any other website which you may access through this one. When you access a non-HI~Arts website, please understand that it is independent from HI~Arts, and that HI~Arts has no control over the content on that website. In addition, a link to a non-HI~Arts web site does not mean that HI~Arts endorses or accepts any responsibility for the content or the use of such website. It is up to you to take precautions to ensure that whatever you select for your use is free of such items as computer viruses and other items of a destructive nature.

Linking to Northings.com or other HI~Arts network website domains

HI~Arts appreciates appropriate links in your own Web pages to the Northings.com website or other ‘hi-arts.co.uk’ domain websites. Permission is expressly granted to any person who wishes to place a link in his or her own page to the Northings.com website or other ‘hi-arts.co.uk’ domain web pages. However you must obtain special permission before placing a link in your own page to a portion of a HI~Arts web page e.g. a graphic.

Northings.com Databases

Any data held on the Northings.com website has been compiled from information supplied by various organisations and website users, and is held in accordance with the terms of the Data Protection Act. Care has been taken to ensure accuracy but HI~Arts cannot accept responsibility for errors or alterations to details, nor can HI~Arts accept responsibility for any claims made by contributors.

You may not create a database in electronic or any other format by downloading and storing all or any parts of the Materials from the Northings.com website or any other domain within the HI~Arts family of websites.

Copyright Notice

The Northings.com website is copyright 2001-2010 by Highlands and Islands Arts Ltd, Suites 4/5, 4th Floor, Ballantyne House, 84 Academy Street, Inverness, IV1 1LU, Scotland, UK. All Rights Reserved.

Trademarks

The HI~Arts and Northings logos and those of other HI~Arts specific programmes are all trademarks of Highland and Islands Arts Ltd. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Viruses, hacking and other offences

You must not misuse the Website by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Website, the server on which the Website is stored or any server, computer or database connected to the Website.You must not attack the Website via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack.

By breaching this provision, you might commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We may report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use the Website will cease immediately.

We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack, viruses or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material due to your use of the Website or to your downloading of any material posted on it, or on any website linked to it.

Rights to remove or reproduce material uploaded or posted to the website

By sharing any contribution (including any text, photographs, graphics, video or audio) with us you agree to grant us, free of charge, permission to use the material in any way we want (including modifying or deleting it). In order that we can use your contribution, you confirm that your contribution is your own original work, is not defamatory and does not infringe any UK laws and that you have the right to give us permission to use it for the purposes specified above.

Legal jurisdiction

The laws of Scotland shall govern your use of the site and you hereby agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Scottish courts.

Northings.com communities

You agree to use Northings.com Communities (including message boards) in accordance with the following Community Rules.

(i) About your posts:
•    Contributions must be civil and tasteful.
•    No disruptive, offensive or abusive behaviour: contributions must be constructive and polite, not mean-spirited or contributed with the intention of causing trouble.
•    No unlawful or objectionable content: unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable.
•    Be patient: users of all ages and abilities may be taking part in Northings.com communities.
•    No spamming or off-topic material: we don’t allow the submission of the same or very similar contributions many times. Please don’t re-submit your contribution to more than one discussion, or contribute off-topic material in subject-specific areas.
•    No advertising or promoting of any activity of service unrelated to the cultural sector of Scotland.
•    Contributions containing languages other than English or Gaelic may be removed.
•    No impersonation.
•    No inappropriate (e.g. vulgar, offensive etc) user names.
•    Deliberate misuse of the complaints facility is not permitted. If you persist in doing this, action may be taken against your account.

(ii) Your Northings.com Account:
All accounts must be registered with a valid personal email address that you access regularly so that moderation emails can be sent to you. Accounts registered with someone else’s email address, or with temporary email addresses may be closed without notice. We may require users to re-validate their account if we believe they have been using an invalid email address.

(iii) Safety:
We advise that you never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example: telephone number, postal address, home address or email address or any other details that would allow you to be personally identified) in any Northings.com community.

(iv) Legal requirements:
•    You may not submit or share any defamatory or illegal material of any nature in Northings.com communities. This includes text, graphics, video, programs or audio.
•    Contributing material to a Northings.com community with the intention of committing or promoting an illegal act is strictly prohibited.
•    You agree to submit to or share with Northings.com communities only contributions which are your own original work. You must not violate, plagiarise, or infringe the rights of HI~Arts or third parties including copyright, trade mark, trade secrets, privacy, publicity, personal or proprietary rights.

(v) If you’re under 16:
•    Please get a parent’s or guardian’s permission before taking part in any Northings.com community.
•    Never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example, school, telephone number, your full name, home address or email address).

(vi) If you breach these Community Rules:
If you submit or share offensive or inappropriate content to or with any Northings.com communities or anywhere else on Northings.com or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on Northings.com, and HI~Arts considers such behaviour to be serious and/or repeated, HI~Arts may use whatever information that is available to it about you to stop any further such infringements. This may include informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school or email provider about the infringement(s).

HI~Arts reserves the right to delete any contribution, or take action against any Northings.com account, at any time, for any reason.

Liability for the actions of users on the website

You must not use our website in any way which is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful, or in connection with any unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful purpose or activity. The majority of content posted on our forums/message boards/comment boxes is created by members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of HI~Arts. We accept no responsibility for any loss or harm incurred.

Data Protection

This website is owned by Highlands & Islands Arts Ltd (HI~Arts – www.hi-arts.co.uk).

We regard your privacy as important and any personal information you give us will be used in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

We do not store any personal information about individuals who visit this site except where they provide contact or profile information to allow identification through of our online services.

Any contract information you provide will only be used for the reasons specified, and it will not be shared with any third party without your consent unless required by law.

The Data Protection Act 1998 gives you certain rights including a right to request a copy of your information and to have inaccurate information corrected.

Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. This website uses cookies to help identify and track visitors, their usage of the website, and other website access preferences. Visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using the website, with the drawback that certain features of the website may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Cookies used by this website

On login, this website uses a cookie to store your authentication details. It’s use is limited to the admin area of the website, so will not be relevant to most users. After login, the website sets a further cookie, which indicates when you logged in and who you are (your user account).

These cookies contain “hashed” data, so you don’t have to worry about someone gleaning your username and password by reading the cookie data. A hash is the result of a specific mathematical formula applied to some input data (in this case your username and password, respectively). It’s very hard to reverse a hash (bordering on practical infeasibility with today’s computers). This means it is very difficult to take a hash and “unhash” it to find the original input data.

The website uses the two cookies to bypass the password entry portion of the website for users already logged in to the website. If the website recognises that you have valid, non-expired cookies when trying to access an admin page of the website, you go directly to the administration interface. If you don’t have the cookies, or they’re expired, or in some other way invalid, the website will require you to log in again, in order to obtain new cookies.

When users make a comment on articles on this website, they too get cookies stored on their computer. This is purely a convenience, so that the visitor won’t need to re-type all their information again when they want to leave another comment. Three cookies are set for commenters – their name, email address and website address (if given). These comment cookies are set to expire a little under one year from the time they’re set.

Further information

If you have any comments, questions or requests please email HI-Arts. For more information on data protection legislation and related matters please visit the Information Commissioner’s website.