Terms of Service – Maghreb NOW

Last updated: [DATE OF PUBLICATION] · Version: [1.0]

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are a legally binding agreement between you and the owner of MAGHREB NOW. They explain the rules for reading our articles, subscribing to our newsletter, creating an account and using any other part of maghrebnow.com. Please read them carefully. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the Platform.

Key points at a glance

This summary is here to help you. It does not replace the full Terms below.

Reading MAGHREB NOW is free. Some features, such as commenting, need a free account.
You must be at least [16] years old to create an account or subscribe to the newsletter.
You are responsible for what you post. Content that is illegal, hateful or abusive will be removed.
Our articles are journalism and commentary, not professional advice. See our Disclaimer.
The newsletter is free, requires double opt-in and you can unsubscribe at any time with one click.
We protect your personal data as described in our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.
Nothing in these Terms takes away the rights you have as a consumer under the law.

1. Who we are

maghrebnow.com and all related services (together, the “Platform”) are owned and operated by:

Owner: [LEGAL NAME OF THE COMPANY OR SOLE TRADER]
Tax ID (NIF/CIF): [TAX IDENTIFICATION NUMBER]
Registered address: [FULL REGISTERED ADDRESS]
Registry details: [COMMERCIAL REGISTRY, VOLUME, FOLIO, SHEET — IF A COMPANY]
Email: info@maghrebnow.com
Contact form: maghrebnow.com/contact-us

In these Terms, “MAGHREB NOW”, “we”, “us” and “our” refer to the owner identified above. “You” means any person who visits or uses the Platform. This information is provided in accordance with Article 10 of Spanish Law 34/2002 on Information Society Services and Electronic Commerce (LSSI-CE).

2. Definitions

Visitor: anyone who browses the Platform without an account.
Member: a person who has created an account on the Platform.
Subscriber: a person who has subscribed to our newsletter and confirmed the subscription.
Editorial Content: articles, analysis, opinion pieces, images, videos and other material published by MAGHREB NOW or its contributors.
User Content: anything a Member publishes or sends through the Platform, such as comments, profile information, images or messages.
Services: the blog, the newsletter, accounts and any other feature we offer through the Platform.

3. What these Terms cover

At this stage the Platform offers three main services:

The blog: news, features, analysis and opinion about Morocco, the Maghreb and its global community, free to read.
The newsletter: a free email with a selection of our stories, sent to people who subscribe and confirm their subscription.
Accounts: a free account that lets Members comment, keep a profile and take part in the features we make available to them.

We may add new features in the future, such as community spaces, groups, events or paid memberships. If a new feature needs specific rules, we will show them before you use it, and they will apply together with these Terms. If the specific rules and these Terms conflict, the specific rules apply to that feature.

4. Accepting these Terms and changes to them

By browsing the Platform, creating an account or subscribing to the newsletter, you accept these Terms. When you create an account or subscribe, we will ask you to confirm expressly that you have read and accepted them.

We may update these Terms when the law changes, when we change our services or to make them clearer. We will publish the new version on this page with its date. If the changes are significant, we will tell Members and Subscribers by email or with a notice on the Platform at least [15] days before they take effect, unless the change is required sooner by law. If you do not agree with the new Terms, you can close your account or unsubscribe at any time. Previous versions are available on request.

5. Who can use the Platform

Anyone can read the blog.
To create an account or subscribe to the newsletter you must be at least [16] years old. Under Spanish law (Article 7 of Organic Law 3/2018, LOPDGDD), people under 14 can only give consent for the processing of their data with the authorisation of their parents or guardians. We do not knowingly accept accounts or subscriptions from people under the minimum age.
You must have the legal capacity to accept these Terms, and you must not have been banned from the Platform before.
If you use the Platform on behalf of an organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to accept these Terms on its behalf.

6. Your account

6.1 Registration

To create an account you need to provide a valid email address, a username and a password, and accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy. We may ask you to confirm your email address through a link we send you. Registration may be open, closed or available by invitation only, depending on the stage of the Platform. We may refuse a registration when there are reasonable grounds, for example signs of spam, automated sign-ups or a previous ban.

To protect the Platform against bots and abuse, the registration, login and password reset pages use Google reCAPTCHA. You can find more about this in our Privacy Policy.

6.2 Accurate information

The information you give us must be true and kept up to date. You may use a pseudonym as your public username, but you must not impersonate another person or organisation, or suggest a connection with MAGHREB NOW that does not exist.

6.3 Keeping your account safe

Your account is personal. Do not share it or let anyone else use it.
Use a strong password that you do not use anywhere else. Where we offer two-factor authentication, we recommend that you turn it on.
You are responsible for activity carried out through your account, unless it happened because of a failure on our side.
Tell us straight away at info@maghrebnow.com if you think someone has accessed your account without permission.

6.4 Closing your account

You can close your account at any time from your account settings or by writing to us. When you close it we will delete or anonymise your personal data as explained in the Privacy Policy. Comments you posted may remain on the Platform in anonymised form, without your name, if removing them would break public discussions, unless you ask us to delete them.

7. The blog and our Editorial Content

We publish news, features, analysis and opinion. We work to make our reporting accurate, fair and up to date, and we follow these principles:

Editorial independence: our editorial decisions are taken independently. Sponsored or partner content, if we ever publish it, will be clearly labelled as such.
Opinion: opinion and analysis pieces reflect the views of their authors and are labelled as opinion. They do not necessarily reflect the views of MAGHREB NOW.
Corrections: if you find a factual error, please tell us through the contact page, choosing the topic “Editorial”. We will review it and, where appropriate, correct the article and say so.
Right of reply: if you are mentioned in a piece and believe the information is inaccurate and harmful to you, you may exercise the right of reply provided by Spanish Organic Law 2/1984. Send your request to info@maghrebnow.com.
Not professional advice: our content is general information. It is not legal, financial, medical, tax or any other professional advice. Read our Disclaimer for more details.

8. Comments and other User Content

8.1 Your responsibility

Members may comment on articles and, where available, publish other content. You are fully responsible for your User Content. Before posting, make sure that you have the right to publish it and that it does not break the law or these Terms.

8.2 What is not allowed

You must not publish or send content that:

is illegal, or promotes or facilitates illegal activity;
incites hatred, violence or discrimination on grounds such as origin, ethnicity, nationality, religion, belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or age;
harasses, threatens, insults or intimidates any person;
defames others or violates their honour, privacy or image;
publishes other people’s personal data without their consent (for example addresses, phone numbers or ID documents);
infringes copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property rights;
is sexually explicit, or exploits or endangers minors in any way;
glorifies terrorism or violent extremism;
is deliberately false or misleading, or impersonates other people;
is spam, unauthorised advertising, chain messages or affiliate links;
contains viruses, malicious code or links to harmful sites.

We ask everyone to debate with respect. Criticism of ideas is welcome. Personal attacks are not.

8.3 Licence you give us

You keep ownership of your User Content. By publishing it on the Platform, you grant MAGHREB NOW a free, non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, store, reproduce, display, adapt (for technical formatting only) and distribute it on the Platform and in our official channels, such as the newsletter or our social media accounts, for as long as it remains published. This licence ends when you delete your content or close your account, except for copies kept in backups for the time stated in the Privacy Policy, or where the content has already been shared by others.

8.4 Moderation

We may review, hide, edit for formatting, or remove User Content, and restrict or suspend accounts, when we reasonably believe that the content or behaviour breaks the law or these Terms. Comments may be held for review before they appear. We do not check all content before it is published, and we do not endorse the opinions expressed by Members.

When we remove content or restrict an account, we will tell the person affected, explain the reason and the rule applied, and tell them how to ask for a review, in line with Article 17 of the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065), except where the law does not allow it or the content is spam.

8.5 Reporting illegal content

Anyone can report content they believe is illegal or breaks these Terms. Use the report option next to the content, where available, or write to info@maghrebnow.com with the subject “Content report”. Please include the exact link to the content, an explanation of why you think it is illegal or breaks the Terms, your name and email (except for reports about child sexual abuse material, which can be anonymous) and a statement that the information you give is accurate and complete to the best of your knowledge. We will review every report diligently and objectively and tell you what we decided.

If you disagree with a moderation decision, you can ask us to review it within six months by writing to the same address. A different person from the one who took the original decision will review it whenever possible.

9. The newsletter

Free: subscribing to the newsletter is free.
Double opt-in: after subscribing you will receive an email asking you to confirm. Your subscription is only active once you click the confirmation link.
Content and frequency: the newsletter includes a selection of our stories and news about the Platform. We send it about [FREQUENCY, e.g. once a week].
Measuring performance: our emails contain standard technology that tells us whether an email was opened and which links were clicked. This helps us improve the newsletter. You can find more in our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.
Unsubscribing: every email includes a link to unsubscribe with one click. You can also manage your preferences from the link in the email or write to us.
Service emails: if you have an account, we may also send you emails that are needed to run it, such as account confirmation, password resets or security notices. These are not marketing and are part of the service.

10. Contact forms

When you write to us through a form on the Platform, you must give accurate information and use the form only for its purpose. We use what you send us to reply to you, as explained in the Privacy Policy. Forms are protected with anti-spam measures. Do not use them to send advertising, unsolicited offers or malicious content.

11. Intellectual property

The MAGHREB NOW name, logo and brand elements, the design of the Platform, its software and the Editorial Content are owned by [OWNER’S LEGAL NAME] or by our contributors and licensors, and are protected by intellectual and industrial property law.
You may read our content, share links to it and quote short extracts with a clear reference and a link to the original article, as permitted by the right of quotation in Article 32 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law.
Without our prior written permission, you may not copy, republish, sell, modify, frame or publicly distribute our content, in whole or in significant part.
Text and data mining: in accordance with Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 and Article 67.3 of Spanish Royal Decree-law 24/2021, MAGHREB NOW expressly reserves the use of its content for text and data mining, including the training of artificial intelligence systems. This reservation may also be expressed through machine-readable means such as our robots.txt file.
If you believe that content on the Platform infringes your rights, write to info@maghrebnow.com and we will act promptly.

12. Acceptable use of the Platform

You agree not to:

access or try to access accounts, systems or areas of the Platform you are not authorised to use;
probe, scan or test the security of the Platform without our written permission (if you find a vulnerability, please report it responsibly to [SECURITY CONTACT EMAIL]);
use bots, scrapers or automated tools to access, copy or collect content or data from the Platform, except for search engines following our robots.txt rules;
overload, interfere with or disrupt the Platform or the servers and networks connected to it;
get around security measures, rate limits, anti-spam systems or technical restrictions;
create accounts automatically or under false pretences, or sell or transfer accounts;
collect personal data of other users.

To protect the Platform we use automated security tools that record technical information about connections (such as IP addresses and the pages requested) and can temporarily or permanently block IP addresses that show abusive patterns, such as repeated failed logins or scanning for vulnerabilities. If you think you have been blocked by mistake, write to us from another connection or to info@maghrebnow.com.

13. Technology and service providers

To provide the Platform we rely on our own installation of WordPress and BuddyBoss, and on trusted service providers for hosting, email delivery, security, backups and content delivery. They include Hostinger, Google (reCAPTCHA), Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services. The full list, what each provider does and where your data is processed is in our Privacy Policy.

The Platform may include links to other websites or embedded content from third parties (for example videos or social media posts). We are not responsible for the content, availability or privacy practices of third-party sites. Embedded content may behave as if you had visited the other site.

14. Availability of the Platform

We work to keep the Platform available, fast and secure, but we cannot guarantee that it will always be available or free of errors. We may suspend access temporarily for maintenance, updates, security reasons or causes beyond our control. Where possible we will announce planned interruptions in advance.

We may change, improve or stop offering features of the Platform. If we stop offering a free feature, we will try to give reasonable notice.

15. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close an account, or limit access to the Platform, if a Member seriously or repeatedly breaks these Terms, puts other users or the Platform at risk, or if we are required to do so by law or by a competent authority. Our decision will be proportionate to the seriousness of the breach. Except in urgent cases, such as spam, fraud, security threats or clearly illegal content, we will first warn the Member.

The sections of these Terms that by their nature should continue after the end of the relationship (such as intellectual property, liability and applicable law) will continue to apply.

16. Liability

We provide the Platform with reasonable care and skill. Reading the blog and using the free services is at your own risk with regard to the decisions you take based on the information published.
We are not responsible for User Content published by Members, but we will act diligently to remove or disable access to illegal content once we have actual knowledge of it, in accordance with Article 16 of the LSSI-CE and Article 6 of the Digital Services Act.
We are not liable for damage caused by events beyond our reasonable control, by viruses or attacks we could not reasonably prevent, or by third-party websites linked from the Platform.
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, wilful misconduct or gross negligence, or your statutory rights as a consumer under Spanish Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007 (General Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users).

17. Your responsibility towards us

If you use the Platform in breach of these Terms or the law, you will be responsible for the damage this causes, including reasonable claims by third parties related to your User Content, to the extent permitted by law.

18. Personal data and cookies

We process your personal data in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Spanish Organic Law 3/2018 (LOPDGDD) and our Privacy Policy. We use cookies and similar technologies as described in our Cookie Policy.

19. Communications

You agree that we may communicate with you electronically, by email or through notices on the Platform, about your account, these Terms and the services. Notices to us must be sent to info@maghrebnow.com or to our registered address.

20. Applicable law and disputes

These Terms are governed by Spanish law.
If you are a consumer, any dispute may be brought before the courts of your place of residence, as provided by consumer protection law. If you are not a consumer, the parties submit to the courts of [CITY OF THE REGISTERED ADDRESS], Spain.
Before going to court, we encourage you to contact us so we can try to resolve the issue amicably. Consumers may also use the out-of-court dispute resolution bodies available under the law, such as the consumer arbitration system. [STATE WHETHER THE OWNER IS ADHERED TO CONSUMER ARBITRATION OR AN ADR BODY]

21. General provisions

Severability: if any clause of these Terms is found to be invalid, the rest will remain in force.
No waiver: if we do not enforce a right at a given moment, this does not mean we have waived it.
Transfer: we may transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to another entity that takes over the Platform, informing you in advance. Your rights as a user will not be reduced as a result.
Language: these Terms are drafted in English. If we offer them in other languages and there is a contradiction, the English version will prevail, unless consumer law requires otherwise.
Entire agreement: these Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Cookie Policy, the Disclaimer and any specific rules of a feature, are the complete agreement between you and us about the use of the Platform.

22. Contact

If you have any questions about these Terms, contact us:

[LEGAL NAME OF THE COMPANY OR SOLE TRADER]
[FULL REGISTERED ADDRESS]
Email: info@maghrebnow.com
Contact form: maghrebnow.com/contact-us