Terms and Conditions of Use

Definitions

These Terms and Conditions of Use (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between you ("you", the "User") and Renzue Media, operating as Renzue ("we", "us", the "Owner"), for your use of https://www.renzue.com and its associated pages, features, feeds and services (the "Platform", the "Service").

• "Account" means a registered user account on the Platform.
• "Editorial Content" means articles, reports, images, graphics, video and other content created or commissioned by the Owner.
• "User Content" means content you submit or post, including comments, posts, threads, replies, images, links and profile information.
• "Intellectual Property" means patents, trademarks, copyrights, database rights, design rights, trade secrets and all other intellectual property rights, registered or unregistered.
• "Applicable Law" means the laws of India and, where relevant, of your jurisdiction, including the Information Technology Act, 2000, the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, the Copyright Act, 1957, the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and the Indian Contract Act, 1872.

Headings are for convenience only. "Including" means "including without limitation".

1. Acceptance of Terms

1.1. By accessing, browsing or using the Platform in any way, including reading articles, posting comments, creating an Account or using any feature, you confirm that you have read and understood these Terms and our Privacy Policy (incorporated by reference) and agree to be bound by them. If you do not agree, you must not use the Platform.

1.2. Your acceptance may be given electronically, by clicking "I Agree" or "Accept", by registering an Account, or by continuing to use the Platform after these Terms are presented to you. Electronic acceptance is valid and enforceable under the Indian Contract Act, 1872 and the Information Technology Act, 2000.

1.3. You represent that you have legal capacity to contract under the Indian Contract Act, 1872 or your applicable law. If you accept on behalf of an organisation, you represent that you are authorised to bind it, and "you" includes that organisation.

2. Eligibility

2.1. You must be at least 13 years old to use the Platform. You must be at least 18 years old to create an Account, post User Content requiring an Account, or enter into any transaction. We may require age verification before Account creation.

2.2. Users aged 13 to 17 may use only the non-account features of the Service (such as reading articles), and only with a parent or lawful guardian's involvement, consent and supervision. They may not create an Account or post content unless a parent or lawful guardian has created or expressly authorised the Account and accepted these Terms on their behalf.

2.3. Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, a "child" is anyone under 18. We do not knowingly process a child's personal data without verifiable parental consent as required by Section 9 of that Act. We do not track or behaviourally monitor children and we do not direct targeted advertising at them. If we learn we hold a child's data without the required consent, we will take reasonable steps to delete it and, where appropriate, suspend or close the Account. Parents or guardians who believe this has happened should contact contact@renzue.com or the Grievance Officer at grievance@renzue.com.

2.4. The Platform is operated from India for a global audience. You are responsible for complying with the laws of the jurisdiction from which you access it. Access from any jurisdiction where the Service would be unlawful is prohibited.

3. Accounts

3.1. Some features, including commenting, discussions, voting and profiles, require an Account. You agree to provide true, accurate, current and complete registration information and to update it promptly when it changes. False or impersonating information is a violation of these Terms and may lead to suspension or termination under Section 10.

3.2. Each person may maintain only one Account unless we expressly authorise otherwise. Creating multiple Accounts to evade moderation, suspension, rate limits or other enforcement is prohibited.

3.3. You are responsible for keeping your password and other credentials confidential, for using a strong unique password, and for enabling any additional security features we offer. You must not share your credentials or allow others to use your Account.

3.4. You are responsible for all activity under your Account, whether authorised by you or not, except where it results from a proven security failure on our part. If you suspect unauthorised access, notify us promptly at contact@renzue.com. We are not liable for losses caused by your failure to safeguard your credentials or to notify us promptly.

3.5. We may deactivate or delete Accounts inactive for a continuous 24 months, after reasonable notice to the registered email address, unless retention is required by Applicable Law.

3.6. Your username, display name and profile information must not be misleading, must not impersonate another person or brand, and must not contain hateful, obscene or unlawful material. We may require you to change a username that violates this clause or that infringes a third party's trademark or other rights following a valid complaint.

3.7. You may request a machine-readable copy of the User Content and Account data associated with your Account by writing to contact@renzue.com from your registered email address. We will process verified requests within 30 days, subject to Applicable Law and to the rights of other persons appearing in the data.

4. Acceptable Use and Prohibited Content

4.1. You must use the Platform only for lawful purposes. You must not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share anything described in Section 4.2. This reflects the due-diligence duties of intermediaries under Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules, 2021. Violations can lead to content removal and suspension or termination of access.

4.2. You must not use the Platform for any of the following:

4.3. You must not circumvent security, moderation, access-control or rate-limiting features, or help others violate these Terms.

4.4. Report suspected violations through the Platform's reporting tools or to the Grievance Officer at grievance@renzue.com. To help us act quickly, a report should include: the URL or location of the content concerned; a description of why you believe it violates these Terms; your contact details; and, for infringement or privacy complaints, evidence of your rights or authorisation to complain. Reports are handled under the grievance mechanism in Section 6.5, and you will receive an acknowledgement within 24 hours.

4.5. Repeated violations carry escalating consequences. A User who accumulates three separate upheld violations of Section 4.2 within any 12-month period will normally have their Account permanently terminated, even if each individual violation was minor. Violations committed through alternate or newly created Accounts to evade enforcement are treated as aggravating and lead directly to permanent termination of all related Accounts.

4.6. Responsible disclosure. If you discover a security vulnerability in the Platform, do not exploit it, do not access data beyond what is necessary to demonstrate the issue, and do not disclose it publicly before we have had a reasonable opportunity to fix it. Report it promptly and confidentially to contact@renzue.com with a description of the vulnerability and steps to reproduce it. We will acknowledge receipt within 5 working days and will not take legal action against good-faith researchers who comply with this clause.

5. User Content

5.1. You keep ownership. As between you and us, you retain ownership of the Intellectual Property in your User Content. Nothing here transfers it to us.

5.2. Licence to us. By posting User Content, you grant Renzue Media a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable and sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, display, distribute, adapt, translate, reformat and create derivative works from it, for operating, promoting, improving and protecting the Platform. This covers display on the Platform, in search results, newsletters and digests, social previews and embeds, and archival or backup copies. To the extent permitted by law, you waive moral rights (including under Section 57 of the Copyright Act, 1957, where waivable) for uses reasonably necessary to operate the Service, such as excerpting, thumbnail cropping or device reformatting.

5.3. Licence to other users.You also grant each User a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to access your User Content through the Platform and to use it as the Platform's features allow (for example, quoting with attribution in a reply, or sharing via built-in share functions) and as these Terms permit.

5.4. Duration. The Section 5.2 licence lasts while your content remains on the Platform plus a reasonable wind-down period for caches, backups and distributed copies. Copies already shared, quoted or embedded by others, or distributed through feeds or newsletters before deletion, may persist, and the licence survives for those copies. Deleting your Account does not require us to remove content others have lawfully quoted or that we must retain by law.

5.5. Your warranties.You represent that: (a) you own your User Content or have all rights needed to post it and grant these licences; (b) it complies with Section 4 and Applicable Law; (c) it does not infringe anyone's Intellectual Property, privacy or other rights; and (d) where it depicts or identifies another person, you have obtained any legally required consent.

5.6. No duty to publish. We need not publish, display or keep any User Content. We may review, refuse, edit for formatting, remove or restrict any User Content we reasonably believe violates these Terms, is subject to a valid complaint or legal order, or exposes us to legal risk, under Section 6. Keep your own backups; we do not guarantee indefinite storage.

5.7. Removing your own content. You may delete your own User Content at any time through the available Platform tools, or request deletion by writing to contact@renzue.com from your registered email address. We will action straightforward deletion requests within 15 days. Deletion removes the content from public view on the Platform, but copies already shared, quoted, embedded or archived by others, and copies we must retain under Applicable Law (including the 180-day preservation duties under the IT Rules, 2021), are not affected, as described in Section 5.4.

6. Community Rules and Moderation

6.1. Discussion features exist to foster informed public debate around news and current affairs. Participation is conditional on compliance with these Terms. Beyond Section 4, participants must stay reasonably on topic, engage in good faith, not flood threads with repetitive posts, follow moderators' lawful instructions, and not advertise without our prior written permission.

6.2. Moderation rights. We may, but are not obliged to, moderate. Actions include editing or removing content; moving, merging, locking or closing threads; warnings; posting limits; temporary or permanent visibility restrictions (including limited-distribution review measures); suspension; and permanent termination. We may act with or without prior notice where reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms, comply with law, or protect the Platform and its Users.

6.3. Enforcement ladder. For ordinary violations we apply proportionate enforcement: content removal and a warning first, then temporary restrictions or suspension for repeats, then permanent termination for persistent or egregious conduct. Severe violations - CSAM (Section 4.2(b)), non-consensual sexual content (4.2(d)), malware (4.2(i)), and threats or incitement to violence (4.2(m)) - may bring immediate permanent termination and referral to law enforcement, with no prior warning.

6.4. Grievance redressal. Under Rule 3(2) of the IT Rules, 2021, we have appointed a Grievance Officer whose details are published on the Platform:

The Grievance Officer acknowledges complaints within 24 hours and resolves them within 15 days of receipt. Complaints about content exposing private areas or showing sexual acts (including morphed images) are acted on within 24 hours; complaints prima facie involving child sexual abuse are treated as emergencies and disposed of within 72 hours. If we need more information from you, we will tell you, and the time you take to respond may extend these timelines.

6.5. Appeals. If you believe a moderation action was wrongly taken, appeal to the Grievance Officer at grievance@renzue.com within 30 days, identifying the content or Account, quoting any reference number we gave you, and explaining with any supporting evidence why the action was incorrect. We will review the appeal afresh, including any context you provide, and respond within 15 days with a reasoned decision: upheld, reversed, or varied. The action stays in place during the appeal unless we decide interim restoration is appropriate.

6.6. Takedown on actual knowledge. Where we receive actual knowledge through a court order or a notification from the Appropriate Government or its agency under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, we remove or disable access within 36 hours and preserve related records for 180 days (or longer if required), as the IT Rules, 2021 require.

6.7. We do not pre-screen everything before publication. The absence of action on any content is not endorsement and does not waive our right to act later.

7. Intellectual Property of the Platform

7.1. The Platform, its design, software, databases, graphics, logos, the "Renzue" name and marks, and all Editorial Content are owned by or licensed to Renzue Media and protected under the Copyright Act, 1957, the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and other Applicable Law. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

7.2. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Platform for personal, non-commercial use. This does not include copying, republishing, distributing, adapting or creating derivative works from Editorial Content beyond what ordinary browsing inherently requires.

7.3. Do not systematically copy, scrape, harvest, frame, mirror or republish Editorial Content or substantial parts of the Platform without our prior written permission. Brief attributed quotations with a link to the original, for criticism, review or news reporting within Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957 (fair dealing), are permitted. Licensing or syndication requests go to contact@renzue.com.

7.4. Do not use the "Renzue" name, logo or other marks in ways likely to cause confusion, imply endorsement or harm the brand, without prior written permission.

7.5. Feedback you send us may be used freely: you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use it without compensation or attribution, and agree it is non-confidential.

7.6. Where we offer RSS feeds, newsletters or embed codes, you may use them for personal, non-commercial purposes with attribution and without modification or removal of branding. We may change or discontinue feeds and embeds at any time.

8. Copyright and Repeat-Infringer Policy

8.1. We respect others' Intellectual Property and expect Users to do the same. We respond to infringement notices that comply with Applicable Law and terminate the Accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

8.2. Our Copyright Policy at https://www.renzue.com/copyright sets out the notice and counter-notice procedure. A notice to copyright@renzue.com must identify the copyrighted work, identify the allegedly infringing material with enough detail to locate it (including URLs), give your contact details, state your good-faith belief that the use is unauthorised, and state, under penalty of perjury or equivalent, that the information is accurate and you are authorised to act for the rights owner.

8.3. On a valid notice we act expeditiously to remove or disable the material, notify the posting User, and allow a counter-notice under the Copyright Policy. A valid counter-notice must identify the restored material and its prior location, state under penalty of perjury or equivalent that the removal was a mistake or misidentification, provide the sender's name, address and contact details, and consent to the jurisdiction of the courts at Bengaluru, Karnataka, India for disputes arising from the notice. If a valid counter-notice arrives and the complainant does not show within 14 days that court proceedings have begun, we may restore the material.

8.4. A User subject to three valid, unrebutted infringement notices in 12 months, or otherwise found to be a repeat infringer, will be permanently terminated and barred from new Accounts.

8.5. Knowingly filing a false or bad-faith notice or counter-notice violates these Terms, may create liability under Applicable Law, and may lead to termination of your Account.

9. Third-Party Services, Links and Advertising

9.1. The Platform may link to third-party sites, services and resources. These are for convenience only; we do not control, endorse or take responsibility for them. Use them at your own risk under their own terms.

9.2. The Platform may carry advertisements from us or third-party networks, and sponsored or branded content. Advertisements are visually distinct from Editorial Content and do not reflect our views. Sponsored content is labelled with clear terms such as "Sponsored", "Advertisement" or "Paid Partnership" at the top of the content, in compliance with Applicable Law including the misleading-advertisement guidelines under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. We are not party to transactions between you and advertisers and are not responsible for advertised products or services; verify claims independently before purchasing.

9.3. Third-party integrations (sharing buttons, embedded players, analytics, payment interfaces) operate under their own privacy policies; we are not responsible for their acts or omissions.

10. Termination and Suspension

10.1. You may stop using the Platform at any time and may request Account deletion at contact@renzue.com or through your Account settings. We process deletion requests within 30 days, subject to Section 10.3.

10.2. We may suspend or terminate your access or Account, with or without prior notice, if you violate these Terms, if required by law or a court or government order, if your Account is inactive for 24 months, if we reasonably suspect fraud, abuse or a security risk, or if we discontinue the Platform or a material feature. Where practicable and lawful, we will state our reasons and, for non-severe violations, give you 7 days to remedy the breach.

10.3. On termination: your access ends immediately; we may delete or restrict your User Content under Sections 5.4 and 5.6; amounts you owe become due; and the Section 5.2 licence survives for content already distributed, quoted or archived. We may retain Account information and records as required by law, including the 180-day preservation duties under the IT Rules, 2021.

10.4. Sections 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 16 survive termination.

11. Disclaimers

11.1. The Platform is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express, implied or statutory, to the maximum extent permitted by law. We do not warrant uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free operation.

11.2. Editorial Content is for general information and discussion only. We aim for accuracy but do not warrant completeness, accuracy, reliability or timeliness, and Editorial Content is not legal, financial, medical or investment advice. If you spot a material factual error in an article, write to contact@renzue.com with the article URL and the correction; we review such requests within 7 days and publish a correction or clarification where we agree an error occurred.

11.3. User Content is third-party material and does not represent our views. We do not endorse or guarantee it and are not liable for reliance on it, except as Applicable Law requires. We are likewise not responsible for the offline or online conduct of Users; you interact with others at your own risk.

11.4. Nothing here excludes warranties or rights that cannot be excluded under Applicable Law, including consumer rights under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

12. Limitation of Liability

12.1. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Renzue Media and its proprietors, officers, employees, contributors and agents are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or business opportunity, arising from your use of or inability to use the Platform, even if advised of the possibility.

12.2. To the maximum extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability for all claims relating to these Terms or the Platform will not exceed the greater of the fees (if any) you paid us in the preceding 12 months or INR 5,000.

12.3. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited under Applicable Law, including for fraud, wilful misconduct or gross negligence, or consumer remedies under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 that cannot be contracted out of.

12.4. You acknowledge that the limitations in this Section 12 are a fundamental part of our bargain, that the Platform is offered free of charge, and that it would not be provided on these terms without them.

13. Indemnity

13.1. You will indemnify, defend and hold harmless Renzue Media and its proprietors, officers, employees, contributors and agents against all claims, losses, damages, liabilities, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your User Content, your use of the Platform, your violation of these Terms or Applicable Law, or your infringement of third-party rights.

13.2. We will give you prompt written notice of any claim, let you control its defence and settlement (no settlement imposing duties on us without our written consent), and cooperate reasonably at your expense. Late notice does not end your duty except to the extent you are materially prejudiced. We may assume our own defence at our expense, and you will cooperate.

14. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

14.1. These Terms and any related dispute or claim are governed by the laws of India.

14.2. Before formal proceedings, the parties will try to resolve disputes through good-faith negotiation. Either party starts this by written notice describing the dispute, the relevant facts, and the remedy sought (to contact@renzue.com for us), and the parties negotiate for 30 days from receipt. Each party will designate a representative with authority to settle, and both will participate honestly in at least one substantive discussion during this period.

14.3. If negotiation fails, the courts at Bengaluru, Karnataka, India have exclusive jurisdiction, and you consent to it. We may still seek interim or injunctive relief in any competent court.

14.4. Unresolved disputes may be finally settled by arbitration seated at Bengaluru, India, in English, by a sole arbitrator under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The award is final and binding.

14.5. Nothing here limits your consumer rights under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 or other non-excludable remedies.

15. Changes to These Terms

15.1. We may amend these Terms to reflect changes in the Platform, our practices or Applicable Law. For material changes we give at least 15 days' advance notice by posting the updated Terms with a revised Effective Date and, where appropriate, emailing registered Users or showing a prominent Platform notice.

15.2. Continued use after the updated Terms take effect is acceptance. If you disagree, stop using the Platform and request Account deletion under Section 10.1 before the changes take effect.

15.3. Non-material clarifications, typo corrections and contact-detail updates may be made without advance notice; the revised Effective Date appears at the top.

15.4. We maintain a version history of material changes to these Terms. You may request a copy of a prior version by writing to contact@renzue.com.

16. General Provisions and Contact

16.1. Severability. An invalid or unenforceable provision is severed or reformed to the minimum extent needed, and the rest of the Terms remain in force.

16.2. Entire agreement. These Terms, with the incorporated Privacy Policy and Copyright Policy, are the entire agreement on use of the Platform and supersede prior agreements on the same subject.

16.3. No waiver. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver; waivers must be written and signed by us.

16.4. Assignment. You may not assign your rights or obligations without our prior written consent. We may assign ours, including in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, provided the assignee honours these Terms.

16.5. Notices. Formal notices to us go to contact@renzue.com or Bengaluru, Karnataka, India - 560034.

16.9. Language. These Terms are drawn up in English. Any translation provided is for convenience only, and the English version prevails in case of inconsistency.