By using the offered services at ​ map-services.gfz-potsdam.de (“Services”) you agree to the following terms of use of Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences (“GFZ”), a Public Law Foundation under the laws of the Federal State of Brandenburg/Germany, Telegrafenberg, 14473 Potsdam, Germany, Mail: map-services@gfz-potsdam.de​.

The Services provide data and information supplied by GFZ as well as obtained on the basis of data and software provided by third parties (“third party material”). When using the Services, You always have to observe the licenses of the third party material as given by the third parties and give the according Copyright Contribution (see Art. II). In case of doubt about the allowed use, You must contact the copyright holder directly.

As far as it would not be in contrast to the licenses of used third party material, the Services and provided data can be used for scientific, educational, informational and research purposes, also on personal web pages. Within this purpose, You are requested not to make the data available for download elsewhere.

A commercial use is explicitly forbidden and would request a separate agreement; please contact GFZ or – if there is - named a separate copyright holder with the data or Services for.

The following uses of the Services are strictly forbidden and can lead to IP blocking when doing so:

• heavy use of the Services from an application or individual person; examples for heavy use are: using our Services as a fallback for your own services, more than 500 requests within one minute, more than 5000 requests within one hour ...
• seeding or crawling the Services
• sending the same request multiple times in a short amount of time
• monitoring the Services in a periodically manner
• bulk downloading, if not explicitly permitted (see next paragraph I. (3))

As a general rule, bulk downloading of larger amounts of data is ​not allowed. Smaller one-time bulk downloads may be possible if you ask the system administrators for permission to do so. For those bulk downloads following additional rules apply:

• limit your request to a single thread
• request from one machine only, no distributed scripts (for example a cluster or cloud service)
• results must be cached on your side, so clients sending repeatedly the same request may be blocked

You have to give copyright attribution accordingly when using a Service and publishing the contents in public or even for further internal use. The copyright information is referenced in the metadata of the Services itself (for example the fields “accessConstraints”, “useConstraints” or “useLimitation”) or the corresponding metadata documents. You are not allowed to remove any copyright marks.

If You use the Services and/or data sets in a presentation or publication, for instance by linking in your website, then You have to acknowledge the Sercvies as the source of the material. The Services or data sources can be cited as defined by the copyright attributions of the metadata of the Service or underlying datasets. You may not use the Services in a way that suggests any official status or that GFZ endorses any particular application of the Services by You. You may not mislead others or misrepresent the Services and its sources.

(1)  You can access the data or integrate the data via the interfaces provided by the Service. You use the Services at your own risk and under your own responsibility.

(2)  When calling the Services from a web application or by programmatic script (like Shell, Python or R) please be sure to provide a valid HTTP referer and/or user agent identifying the application or client. The HTTP requests should contain at least one of the headers “Referer” or “User-Agent” as it is shown in the following examples:

• in case of a request from a web application: Referer: example.org
• in case of a script (for example a request from cURL): User-Agent: curl/7.37.0

(1)  GFZ does not warrant that the Services will function without errors or interruptions. GFZ reserves the right at any time to change or discontinue any aspect or feature of the offered Services, including, without limitation, the content, hours of availability, and equipment needed for accessing or using the services, as well as to terminate the Services themselves.

(2)  The Services are provided “as is” ​without warranty or representation of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of accuracy, completeness, quality, topicality, fitness for a particular purpose or the absence of any infringement of any proprietary rights of third parties.

(3)  Therefore You shall in all cases be entirely and solely liable for the use to which You put such information and material. GFZ shall not be held responsible for the performance of or output obtained from the Services nor for any liability to any party arising out of use of the Services.

(4)  GFZ shall only be liable for willful misconduct and gross negligence. For slight negligence, GFZ shall only be liable in the event of breach of a material contractual obligation (cardinal obligation), the fulfilment of which is essential for the proper performance of the contract and on the enhancement of which You may regularly rely, as well as in the event of damage resulting from injury to life, limb or health or statutory liability.

(5)  In no event GFZ shall be liable to You for any incidental, consequential or indirect damages (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of data, cost of procurement of substitute services or service interruptions) arising out of the use or inability to use the Services.

The Laws of the Federal Republic of Germany apply to these Terms of Use, under exception of the regulations of the Convention of International Sales of Goods.

The Service provider automatically collects and stores information that your browser, (web) application or programmatic script automatically transmits to us in server log files. These are:

• the client's IP address
• the date and time of the request
• the client’s specific request, including the HTTP method, HTTP protocol version, and the path of the resource requested
• the status code sent back to the client by the server
• the size of the resources requested
• the URL of the website from which the user accessed the current web page or file
• the client program identifier

These data will not be combined with data from other sources or be passed to third parties.

Please be aware that these terms of use may change without notice. In particular, the definition of heavy use may need to be modified in the future and You might have to change your access to those services. Applications using the Services should keep that in mind.