Virtual Academy is a technology platform that enables anyone anywhere to create and share educational courses. We host more than 100,000 courses on our online learning marketplace. Our marketplace model means we do not review or edit the courses for legal issues, and we are not in a position to determine the legality of course content. However, it is important to us that instructors posting courses on Virtual Academy respect the intellectual property of others. When instructors post courses on our marketplace, they make the promise that they have the necessary authorization or rights to use all the content contained in their courses.
This policy addresses what we do in the event of copyright infringement reports from content owners and trademark infringement claims from trademark owners with respect to the courses on the Virtual Academy platform. The policy also addresses what we do when Virtual Academy instructors’ courses are copied on third-party platforms without their consent.
Third-Party Copyright Infringement Reports
Virtual Academy’s policy is to remove courses from our service when they are reported as infringing in a copyright infringement notice received from the owner of the original content. It is also our policy to remove all courses from any instructor who is determined to be a repeat infringer (for whom Virtual Academy has received more than two valid takedown notices). We reserve the right to terminate an instructor’s account at any time, including when they post content in violation of the copyrights of others.
How to File a Report
If you would like to report a course on the Virtual Academy marketplace and if you are the owner or the designated agent of the owner of the rights to the content that you believe the course is infringing, the most efficient way is to use this form (form in English only).
Before you submit a copyright infringement report, please remember these important things:
- We cannot process a copyright claim that is not submitted by the owner of the copyright or its designated agent. This is because we have no way of knowing whether the instructor who published the course you are reporting has received proper permission from the owner to use the content. We will ask you to provide an electronic signature to confirm that you are the copyright owner or have authority to represent the copyright owner (including if the copyright owner is an organization).
- Your copyright claim has to be sufficiently substantiated for us be able to address it. This means:
- You provide sufficient information for us to contact you, including your full legal name, an email address, physical address, and (optional) telephone number.
- If you are filing a report on behalf of an organization, you include the name of the organization and your relationship to the organization.
- You precisely identify the original copyrighted material or, if multiple copyrighted works are covered in your notification, you provide a sufficiently representative list of such original material (such as a URL where the material is located);
- You provide sufficient information for us to locate the reportedly infringing course(s) on the Virtual Academy site (the URL on our website and the exact name of the course and instructor;
- You add a statement saying: “I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this complaint is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf and I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law”.
- Knowingly submitting a false or misleading claim of infringement is illegal and you could be held liable and have to pay damages as a result. Virtual Academy reserves the right to seek damages from anyone who submits a notification of claimed infringement in violation of the law.
- There are types of content that are not protected by copyright. Copyright law doesn’t cover short phrases (like business names, book titles, and slogans), intangible concepts (like processes, ideas, and recipes), or facts. Before you submit a copyright claim, make sure that the content copied in the course is indeed protected by copyright. If you need to report a trademark violation, please follow the steps here.
- Consider whether the use of your material in the course is “fair use”. Copyright law includes a “fair use” exception for certain uses of copyrighted content that are considered to be in the public interest. Fair use covers things like criticism, commentary, news reporting, and research. In considering whether a course’s use of your material qualifies as fair use, you should look at:
- The purpose of the use (whether the course is paid or unpaid, whether the course critiques/parodies/transforms your material)
- The type of copyrighted work being used (whether your work is factual or creative)
- The portion being used (whether the course uses small, necessary excerpts of your material or substantial portions of it)
- The effect on the market for your material (whether potential buyers would purchase the course instead of your material)
Before you submit a copyright claim, make sure that use of the content copied in the course does not qualify as fair use.
Counter-Notification
If we receive a valid copyright violation report, we will send a copy of that report to the instructor who posted the reported course along with a notification that 1) the course was reported for copyright infringement and 2) we are removing the course from the Virtual Academy service. We will also attach a form that the instructor can fill in and send back to us to submit a counter-notification. If your course has been reported for copyright infringement and removed from the Virtual Academy service, and if you believe we made a mistake or that you have permission from the owner of the reported content to use such content in your course, then you may send us a counter-notification.
The best way to provide us with a counter-notification is to fill in the form we provided you and send it back to the Virtual Academy designated agent or the copyright team member who notified you. To be effective, a counter notification must be in writing and include the following information:
- Your physical or electronic signature;
- Your name, address, and email address or telephone number,
- Identification of the course that was removed and the location (URL) at which it appeared before it was removed (you can access this information from the copyright infringement report filed against your course, we always attach a copy when we notify you);
- A statement 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; and
- A statement that you consent to (i) Virtual Academy sharing your name and contact information with the claimant; (ii) receiving service of process for any legal action by the claimant or an agent of the claimant and (ii) accepting the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the judicial district in which you reside (if in the U.S.), or if you reside outside of the U.S., the jurisdiction of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (headquarters of Virtual Academy).
Knowingly submitting a false or misleading counter-notification to a claim of infringement is illegal and you could be held liable and have to pay damages as a result. Virtual Academy reserves the right to seek damages from any party that submits a counter-notification of claimed infringement or counter notification in violation of the law.
Reports from Instructors of Infringing Content on Other Platforms
We understand that when you post and make available your courses on the Virtual Academy marketplace, you want to make sure that you will not find your courses offered on another platform without your permission. To help combat copyright infringement and piracy affecting courses of our instructors, we partnered with Link-Busters, an anti-piracy vendor, to seek out and find instances of infringement and to have any infringing content removed from third-party platforms.
In the event you find your course available on another platform without your permission, please fill out the form here. Link-Busters will file copyright infringement reports and exercise legal actions to have the infringing content removed as soon as possible. Please keep in mind that since Virtual Academy and Link-Busters don’t control the content on other sites, we may not always be successful, especially if your content is on a site outside of the US or EU. Certain countries take different approaches to copyright law; as such, we cannot guarantee the infringing party or hosting site will comply with our notices and remove the infringing content from their platform.
Virtual Academy is a technology platform that enables anyone anywhere to create and share educational courses. We host more than 100,000 courses on our online learning marketplace. Our marketplace model means we do not review or edit the courses for legal issues, and we are not in a position to determine the legality of course content. However, it is important to us that instructors posting courses on Virtual Academy respect the intellectual property of others. When instructors post courses on our marketplace, they make the promise that they have the necessary authorization or rights to use all the content contained in their courses.
This policy addresses what we do in the event of copyright infringement reports from content owners and trademark infringement claims from trademark owners with respect to the courses on the Virtual Academy platform. The policy also addresses what we do when Virtual Academy instructors’ courses are copied on third-party platforms without their consent.
Third-Party Copyright Infringement Reports
Virtual Academy’s policy is to remove courses from our service when they are reported as infringing in a copyright infringement notice received from the owner of the original content. It is also our policy to remove all courses from any instructor who is determined to be a repeat infringer (for whom Virtual Academy has received more than two valid takedown notices). We reserve the right to terminate an instructor’s account at any time, including when they post content in violation of the copyrights of others.
How to File a Report
If you would like to report a course on the Virtual Academy marketplace and if you are the owner or the designated agent of the owner of the rights to the content that you believe the course is infringing, the most efficient way is to use this (form in English only).
Before you submit a copyright infringement report, please remember these important things:
- We cannot process a copyright claim that is not submitted by the owner of the copyright or its designated agent. This is because we have no way of knowing whether the instructor who published the course you are reporting has received proper permission from the owner to use the content. We will ask you to provide an electronic signature to confirm that you are the copyright owner or have authority to represent the copyright owner (including if the copyright owner is an organization).
- Your copyright claim has to be sufficiently substantiated for us be able to address it. This means:
- You provide sufficient information for us to contact you, including your full legal name, an email address, physical address, and (optional) telephone number.
- If you are filing a report on behalf of an organization, you include the name of the organization and your relationship to the organization.
- You precisely identify the original copyrighted material or, if multiple copyrighted works are covered in your notification, you provide a sufficiently representative list of such original material (such as a URL where the material is located);
- You provide sufficient information for us to locate the reportedly infringing course(s) on the Virtual Academy site (the URL on our website and the exact name of the course and instructor;
- You add a statement saying: “I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this complaint is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf and I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law”.
- Knowingly submitting a false or misleading claim of infringement is illegal and you could be held liable and have to pay damages as a result. Virtual Academy reserves the right to seek damages from anyone who submits a notification of claimed infringement in violation of the law.
- There are types of content that are not protected by copyright. Copyright law doesn’t cover short phrases (like business names, book titles, and slogans), intangible concepts (like processes, ideas, and recipes), or facts. Before you submit a copyright claim, make sure that the content copied in the course is indeed protected by copyright. If you need to report a trademark violation, please follow the steps .
- Consider whether the use of your material in the course is “fair use”. Copyright law includes a “fair use” exception for certain uses of copyrighted content that are considered to be in the public interest. Fair use covers things like criticism, commentary, news reporting, and research. In considering whether a course’s use of your material qualifies as fair use, you should look at:
- The purpose of the use (whether the course is paid or unpaid, whether the course critiques/parodies/transforms your material)
- The type of copyrighted work being used (whether your work is factual or creative)
- The portion being used (whether the course uses small, necessary excerpts of your material or substantial portions of it)
- The effect on the market for your material (whether potential buyers would purchase the course instead of your material)
Before you submit a copyright claim, make sure that use of the content copied in the course does not qualify as fair use.
Counter-Notification
If we receive a valid copyright violation report, we will send a copy of that report to the instructor who posted the reported course along with a notification that 1) the course was reported for copyright infringement and 2) we are removing the course from the Virtual Academy service. We will also attach a form that the instructor can fill in and send back to us to submit a counter-notification. If your course has been reported for copyright infringement and removed from the Virtual Academy service, and if you believe we made a mistake or that you have permission from the owner of the reported content to use such content in your course, then you may send us a counter-notification.
The best way to provide us with a counter-notification is to fill in the form we provided you and send it back to the Virtual Academy designated agent or the copyright team member who notified you. To be effective, a counter notification must be in writing and include the following information:
- Your physical or electronic signature;
- Your name, address, and email address or telephone number,
- Identification of the course that was removed and the location (URL) at which it appeared before it was removed (you can access this information from the copyright infringement report filed against your course, we always attach a copy when we notify you);
- A statement 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; and
- A statement that you consent to (i) Virtual Academy sharing your name and contact information with the claimant; (ii) receiving service of process for any legal action by the claimant or an agent of the claimant and (ii) accepting the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the judicial district in which you reside (if in the U.S.), or if you reside outside of the U.S., the jurisdiction of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (headquarters of Virtual Academy).
Knowingly submitting a false or misleading counter-notification to a claim of infringement is illegal and you could be held liable and have to pay damages as a result. Virtual Academy reserves the right to seek damages from any party that submits a counter-notification of claimed infringement or counter notification in violation of the law.
Reports from Instructors of Infringing Content on Other Platforms
We understand that when you post and make available your courses on the Virtual Academy marketplace, you want to make sure that you will not find your courses offered on another platform without your permission. To help combat copyright infringement and piracy affecting courses of our instructors, we partnered with Link-Busters, an anti-piracy vendor, to seek out and find instances of infringement and to have any infringing content removed from third-party platforms.
In the event you find your course available on another platform without your permission, please fill out the form . Link-Busters will file copyright infringement reports and exercise legal actions to have the infringing content removed as soon as possible. Please keep in mind that since Virtual Academy and Link-Busters don’t control the content on other sites, we may not always be successful, especially if your content is on a site outside of the US or EU. Certain countries take different approaches to copyright law; as such, we cannot guarantee the infringing party or hosting site will comply with our notices and remove the infringing content from their platform.
Virtual Academy’s mission is to improve lives through learning. We enable anyone anywhere to create and share educational courses (instructors) and to enroll in these educational courses to learn (students). We consider our marketplace model the best way to offer valuable educational content to our users. We need rules to keep our platform and services safe for you, us and our student and instructor community. These Terms apply to all your activities on the Virtual Academy website, the Virtual Academy mobile applications, our TV applications, our APIs and other related services (“Services”).
If you publish a course on the Virtual Academy platform, you must also agree to the Instructor Terms. We also provide details regarding our processing of personal data of our students and instructors in our Privacy Policy.
Table of Contents:
- Accounts.
- Instructor Terms.
- Course Enrollment and Lifetime Access.
- Payments, Credits, and Refunds.
- Content and Behavior Rules.
- Virtual Academy’s Rights to Content You Post.
- Using Virtual Academy at Your Own Risk.
- Virtual Academy’s Rights.
- Accounts
You need an account for most activities on our platform. Keep your password somewhere safe, because you’re responsible for all activity associated with your account. If you suspect someone else is using your account, let us know by contact us. You must have reached the age of consent for online services in your country to use Virtual Academy.
You need an account for most activities on our platform, including to purchase and enroll in a course or to submit a course for publication. When setting up and maintaining your account, you must provide and continue to provide accurate and complete information, including a valid email address. You have complete responsibility for your account and everything that happens on your account, including for any harm or damage (to us or anyone else) caused by someone using your account without your permission. This means you need to be careful with your password. You may not transfer your account to someone else or use someone else’s account without their permission. If you contact us to request access to an account, we will not grant you such access unless you can provide us the login credential information for that account. In the event of the death of a user, the account of that user will be closed.
If you share your account login credential with someone else, you are responsible for what happens with your account and Virtual Academy will not intervene in disputes between students or instructors who have shared account login credentials. You must notify us immediately upon learning that someone else may be using your account without your permission (or if you suspect any other breach of security). We may request some information from you to confirm that you are indeed the owner of your account.
Students and instructors must be at least 18 years of age to create an account on Virtual Academy and use the Services. If you are younger than the required age, you may not set up an account, but we encourage you to invite a parent or guardian to open an account and help you enroll in courses that are appropriate for you. If we discover that you have created an account and you are younger than the required age for consent to use online services (for example, 13 in the US), we will terminate your account. Under our Instructor Terms, you may be requested to verify your identity before you are authorized to submit a course for publication on Virtual Academy.
2.Instructor Terms
When you sign up to become an instructor on the Virtual Academy platform, you agree to abide by these Instructor Terms (“Terms“). These Terms cover details about the aspects of the Virtual Academy platform relevant to instructors and are incorporated by reference into our terms of use, the general terms that govern your use of our Services. Any capitalized terms that aren’t defined in these Terms are defined as specified in the Terms of Use.
As an instructor, you are contracting directly with Virtual Academy, Inc. (a Delaware corporation in the United States), regardless of whether another Virtual Academy subsidiary facilitates payments to you.
2.1. Instructor Obligations
As an instructor, you are responsible for all content that you post, including lectures, quizzes, coding exercises, practice tests, assignments, resources, answers, course landing page content, and announcements (“Submitted Content“).
You represent and warrant that:
- you will provide and maintain accurate account information.
- you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, permissions, and authority to authorize Virtual Academy to use your Submitted Content as specified in these Terms and the Terms of Use.
- your Submitted Content will not infringe or misappropriate any third party’s intellectual property rights.
- you have the required qualifications, credentials, and expertise (including education, training, knowledge, and skill sets) to teach and offer the services that you offer through your Submitted Content and use of the Services.
- you will respond promptly to students and ensure a quality of service that corresponds with the standards of your industry and instruction services in general.
You warrant that you will not:
- post or provide any inappropriate, offensive, racist, hateful, sexist, pornographic, false, misleading, incorrect, infringing, defamatory or libelous content or information.
- post or transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, junk mail, spam, or any other form of solicitation (commercial or otherwise) through the Services or to any user.
- use the Services for business other than providing tutoring, teaching, and instructional services to students;
- engage in any activity that would require us to obtain licenses from or pay royalties to any third party, including the need to pay royalties for the public performance of a musical work or sound recording.
- frame or embed the Services (such as to embed a free version of a course) or otherwise circumvent the Services.
- impersonate another person or gain unauthorized access to another person’s account.
- interfere with or otherwise prevent other instructors from providing their services or courses.
- abuse Virtual Academy resources, including support services.
2.2. License to Virtual Academy
You grant Virtual Academy the rights detailed in the Terms of Use to offer, market, and otherwise exploit your Submitted Content, and to sub-license it to students for these purposes directly or through third parties. This includes the right to add captions or otherwise modify content to ensure accessibility.
Unless otherwise agreed, you have the right to remove all or any portion of your Submitted Content from the Services at any time. Except as otherwise agreed, Virtual Academy’s right to sub-license the rights in this section will terminate with respect to new users 60 days after the Submitted Content’s removal. However,
(1) rights given to students before the Submitted Content’s removal will continue in accordance with the terms of those licenses (including any grants of lifetime access).
(2) Virtual Academy’s right to use such Submitted Content for marketing purposes shall survive termination.
We may record all or any part of your Submitted Content for quality control and for delivering, marketing, promoting, demonstrating, or operating the Services. You grant Virtual Academy permission to use your name, likeness, voice, and image in connection with offering, delivering, marketing, promoting, demonstrating, and selling the Services, your Submitted Content, or Virtual Academy’s content, and you waive any rights of privacy, publicity, or other rights of a similar nature, to the extent permissible under applicable law.
2.3. Trust & Safety
2.3.1 Trust & Safety Policies
You agree to abide by Virtual Academy’s policies, and other course quality standards or policies prescribed by Virtual Academy from time to time. You should check these policies periodically to ensure that you comply with any updates to them. You understand that your use of the Services is subject to Virtual Academy’s approval, which we may grant or deny at our sole discretion.
We reserve the right to remove courses, suspend payouts, and/or ban instructors for any reason at any time, without prior notice, including in cases where:
- an instructor or course does not comply with our policies or legal terms (including the Terms of Use).
- a course falls below our quality standards or has a negative impact on the student experience.
- an instructor engages in behavior that might reflect unfavorably on Virtual Academy or bring Virtual Academy into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, or ridicule.
- an instructor engages the services of a marketer or other business partner who violates Virtual Academy’s policies.
- as determined by Virtual Academy in its sole discretion.
2.3.2 Co-Instructors and Teaching Assistants
The Virtual Academy platform allows you to add other users as co-instructors or teaching assistants for courses that you manage. By adding a co-instructor or teaching assistant, you understand that you are authorizing them to take certain actions that affect your Virtual Academy account and courses. Virtual Academy is not able to advise on any questions or mediate any disputes between you and such users. If your co-instructors have an assigned revenue share, their share will be paid out of your earned revenue share based on the ratios you have specified in your Course Management settings as of the date of the purchase.
2.3.3 Relationship to Other Users
Instructors don’t have a direct contractual relationship with students, so the only information you’ll receive about students is what is provided to you through the Services. You agree that you will not use the data you receive for any purpose other than providing your services to those students on the Virtual Academy platform, and that you won’t solicit additional personal data or store students’ personal data outside the Virtual Academy platform. You will indemnify Virtual Academy against any claims arising from your use of students’ personal data.
2.3.4 Anti-Piracy Efforts
We partner with anti-piracy vendors to help protect your courses from unauthorized use. To enable this protection, you hereby appoint Virtual Academy and our anti-piracy vendors as your agents for the purpose of enforcing copyrights for each of your courses, through notice and take down processes (under applicable copyright laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and for other efforts to enforce those rights. You grant Virtual Academy and our anti-piracy vendors primary authority to file notices on your behalf to enforce your copyright interests.
2.4. Pricing
2.4.1 Price Setting
When creating a course, you will be prompted to select a base price (“Base Price“) for your course from a list of available price tiers. Alternatively, you may choose to offer your course for free. As a premium instructor, you will also be given the opportunity to participate in certain promotional programs under the terms of our (“Promotional Programs“).
If you do not opt to participate in any Promotional Programs, we will list your course for the Base Price or the closest local or mobile app equivalent (as detailed below).
When a student purchases using a foreign currency, we will convert the relevant Base Price or Promotional Program price into the student’s applicable currency using a system-wide foreign currency conversion rate set by Virtual Academy and fixed periodically into a table of corresponding price tiers by currency (“Price Tier Matrix“).
When a student purchases through a mobile application, the mobile platform provider’s pricing matrix will control, and we will choose the price tier closest to the applicable Base Price or Promotional Program price. Because mobile platforms impose their own currency conversion rates, conversions for mobile app prices may not match the conversions in the Price Tier Matrix.
You give us permission to share your courses for free with our employees, with selected partners, and in cases where we need to restore access accounts who have previously purchased your courses. You understand that you will not receive compensation in these cases.
2.4.2 Transaction Taxes
If a student purchases a product or service in a country that requires Virtual Academy to remit national, state, or local sales or use taxes, value added taxes (VAT), or other similar transaction taxes (“Transaction Taxes“), under applicable law, we will collect and remit those Transaction Taxes to the competent tax authorities for those sales. We may increase the sale price at our discretion where we determine that such taxes may be due. For purchases through mobile applications, applicable Transaction Taxes are collected by the mobile platform (such as Apple’s App Store or Google Play).
2.4.3 Promotional Programs
Virtual Academy offers several optional marketing programs (Promotional Programs) in which you can choose to participate. These programs can help increase your revenue potential on Virtual Academy by finding the optimal price point for your courses and promoting them through additional marketing channels.
There is no up-front cost to participate in these programs, and you can modify your participation status at any time, though changes you make will not apply to currently active campaigns.
2.5. Payments
2.5.1 Revenue Share
When a student purchases your course, we calculate the gross amount of the sale as the amount actually received by Virtual Academy from the student (“Gross Amount“). From this, we subtract any Transaction Taxes, any mobile platform fees applied to mobile application sales, a 3% administrative and handling fee (except in Japan, where we subtract a 4% fee) for any non-mobile-app sales, and any amounts paid to third parties in connection with the Promotional Programs to calculate the net amount of the sale (“Net Amount“).
If you have not opted into any of Virtual Academy’s optional Promotional Programs, your revenue share will be 50% of the Net Amount less any applicable deductions, such as student refunds. If we change this payment rate, we will provide you 30 days’ notice using prominent means, such as via email or by posting a notice through our Services.
Virtual Academy makes all instructor payments in U.S. dollars (USD) regardless of the currency with which the sale was made. We will assume transaction processing fees, excluding foreign currency conversion fees and wiring fees. Your revenue report will show the sales price (in local currency) and your converted revenue amount (in USD).
2.5.2 Receiving Payments
For us to pay you in a timely manner, you must own a PayPal or Payoneer account in good standing and must keep us informed of the correct email associated with your account. You must also provide any identifying information or tax documentation (such as a W-9 or W-8) necessary for payment of amounts due, and you agree that we have the right to withhold appropriate taxes from your payments. We reserve the right to withhold payments or impose other penalties if we do not receive proper identifying information or tax documentation from you. You understand and agree that you are ultimately responsible for any taxes on your income.
Depending on the applicable revenue share model, payment will be made within 45 days of the end of the month in which
(a) we receive the fee for a course.
(b) the relevant course consumption occurred.
As an instructor, you are responsible for determining whether you are eligible to be paid by a U.S. company. We reserve the right not to pay out funds in the event of identified fraud, violations of intellectual property rights, or other violations of the law.
If we cannot settle funds into your payment account after the period of time set forth by your state, country, or other government authority in its unclaimed property laws, we may process the funds due to you in accordance with our legal obligations, including by submitting those funds to the appropriate government authority as required by law.
2.5.3 Refunds
You acknowledge and agree that students have the right to receive a refund, as detailed in the
If a student asks for a refund after we have paid the relevant instructor payment, we reserve the right to either (1) deduct the amount of the refund from the next payment sent to the instructor or (2) where no further payments are due to the instructor or the payments are insufficient to cover the refunded amounts, require the instructor to refund any amounts refunded to students for the instructor’s courses.
2.6. Trademarks
While you are a published instructor and subject to the requirements below, you may use our trademarks where we authorize you to do so.
You must:
- only use the images of our trademarks that we make available to you, as detailed in any guidelines we may publish.
- only use our trademarks in connection with the promotion and sale of your Virtual Academy courses or your participation on Virtual Academy.
- immediately comply if we request that you discontinue use.
You must not:
- use our trademarks in a misleading or disparaging way.
- use our trademarks in a way that implies that we endorse, sponsor, or approve of your courses or services.
- use our trademarks in a way that violates applicable law or in connection with an obscene, indecent, or unlawful topic or material.
2.7. Sanctions and Export Laws
You warrant that you aren’t restricted from using the Services under U.S. sanctions or export laws (as an individual or as an officer, director, or controlling shareholder of any entity on whose behalf you use the Services). If you become subject to such a restriction while you are subject to these Instructor Terms, you will notify Virtual Academy within 24 hours, and we will have the right to terminate any further obligations to you, effective immediately and with no further liability to you (but without prejudice to your outstanding obligations to Virtual Academy). You will not use the Services to conduct or facilitate any transaction with any other individual or entity subject to such a restriction. You may not remove, export, or allow the export or re-export of the Services (or any product thereof, including technical data) outside the U.S. in violation of any restrictions, laws, or regulations of the U.S. or any other applicable country.
2.8. Deleting Your Account
Instructions on how to delete your instructor account are available here. We’ll use commercially reasonable efforts to make any remaining scheduled payments that are owed to you before deleting your account. You understand that if students have previously enrolled in your courses, your name and that Submitted Content will remain accessible to those students after your account is deleted. If you need help or encounter difficulty deleting your account, you can contact us.
- Course Enrollment and Lifetime Access
When you enroll in a course, you get a license from us to view it via the Virtual Academy Services and no other use. Don’t try to transfer or resell courses in any way. We grant you a lifetime access license, except when we must disable the course because of legal or policy reasons.
Under our Instructor Terms, when instructors publish a course on Virtual Academy, they grant Virtual Academy a license to offer a license to the course to students. This means that we have the right to sub-license the course to the students who enroll in the course. As a student, when you enroll in a course, whether it’s a free or paid course, you are getting from Virtual Academy a license to view the course via the Virtual Academy platform and Services, and Virtual Academy is the licensor of record. Courses are licensed, and not sold, to you. This license does not give you any right to resell the course in any manner (including by sharing account information with a purchaser or illegally downloading the course and sharing it on torrent sites).
In legal, more complete terms, Virtual Academy grants you (as a student) a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and view the courses and associated content for which you have paid all required fees, solely for your personal, non- commercial, educational purposes through the Services, in accordance with these Terms and any conditions or restrictions associated with a particular courses or feature of our Services. All other uses are expressly prohibited. You may not reproduce, redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, create derivative works of, sub-license, or otherwise transfer or use any course unless we give you explicit permission to do so in a written agreement signed by a Virtual Academy authorized representative. This also applies to content you can access via any of our APIs.
We generally give a lifetime access license to our students when they enroll in a course. However, we reserve the right to revoke any license to access and use courses at any point in time in the event where we decide or are obligated to disable access to a course due to legal or policy reasons. The lifetime access is not applicable to add-on features and services associated with a course, for example translation captions of courses may be disabled by instructors at any time, and an instructor may decide at any time to no longer provide teaching assistance or Q&A services in association with a course. To be clear, the lifetime access is to the course content but not to the instructor.
Instructors may not grant licenses to their courses to student directly and any such direct license shall be null and void and a violation of these Terms.
- Payments, Credits, and Refunds
When you make a payment, you agree to use a valid payment method. If you aren’t happy with your course, Virtual Academy offers a 30-day refund or credit for most course purchases.
4.1 Pricing
The prices of courses on Virtual Academy are determined based on the terms of the Instructor Terms. In some instances, the price of a course offered on the Virtual Academy website may not be exactly the same as the price offered on our mobile or TV applications, due to mobile platform providers’ pricing systems and their policies around implementing sales and promotions.
We regularly run promotions and sales for our courses and certain courses are only available at discounted prices for a set period of time. The price applicable to a course will be the price at the time you complete your purchase of the course (at checkout). Any price offered for a particular course may also be different when you are logged into your account from the price available to users who aren’t registered or logged in, because some of our promotions are available to new users only.
If you are logged into your account, the listed currency you see is based on your location when you created your account. If you are not logged into your account, the price currency is based on the country where you are located. We do not enable users to see pricing in other currencies.
If you are a student located in a country where use and sales tax, goods and services tax, or value added tax is applicable to consumer sales, we are responsible for collecting and remitting that tax to the proper tax authorities. In certain countries, the price you see may include such taxes.
4.2 Payments
You agree to pay the fees for courses that you purchase, and you authorize us to charge your debit or credit card or process other means of payment (such as Boleto, SEPA, direct debit, or mobile wallet) for those fees. Virtual Academy works with third party payment processing partners to offer you the most convenient payment methods in your country and to keep your payment information secure. Check out our Privacy Policy for more details.
When you make a purchase, you agree not to use an invalid or unauthorized payment method. If your payment method fails and you still get access to the course you are enrolling in, you agree to pay us the corresponding fees within thirty (30) days of notification from us. We reserve the right to disable access to any course for which we have not received adequate payments.
In some cases, we may issue credits to your account. These credits will be automatically applied towards your next course purchase on our website, but can’t be used for purchases in our mobile or TV applications. Credits may expire if not used within the specified period, and have no cash value.
4.3 Refunds and Credits
If the course you purchased is not what you were expecting, you can request, within 30 days of your purchase of the course, that Virtual Academy credit/refund your account. We reserve the right to apply a credit or a refund, at our discretion, depending on capabilities of our payment processing partners or the platform from which you purchased your course (website, mobile or TV app). No credit or refund is due to you if you request it after the 30-day guarantee time limit has passed.
To request a credit/refund, follow the steps . As detailed in the Instructor Terms, instructors agree that students have the right to receive these credits or refunds.
At our discretion, if we believe you are abusing our credit/refund policy, we reserve the right to ban your account and to restrict all future use of the Services.
- Content and Behavior Rules
You can only use Virtual Academy for lawful purposes. You’re responsible for all the content that you post on our platform. You should keep the reviews, questions, posts, courses and other content you upload in line with the law, and respect the intellectual property rights of others. We can ban your account for repeated or major offenses. If you think someone is infringing your copyright on our platform, let us know.
You may not access or use the Services or create an account for unlawful purposes. Your use of the Services and behavior on our platform must comply with applicable local or national laws or regulations of your country. You are solely responsible for the knowledge of and compliance with such laws and regulations that are applicable to you. You may not access our Services if you are from a territory where U.S. businesses are prohibited from engaging in business (such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria) or if you have been designated a Specially Designated National, Denied Person, or Denied Entity by the U.S. government.
If you are a student, the Services enable you to ask questions to the instructors of courses you are enrolled in, and to post reviews of courses. For certain courses, the instructor invites you to submit content as “homework” or tests. Don’t post or submit anything that is not yours.
If you are an instructor, you can submit courses for publication on the platform and you can also communicate with the students who have enrolled in your courses. In both cases, you must abide by the law and respect the rights of others: you cannot post any course, question, answer, review or other content that violates applicable local or national laws or regulations of your country. You are solely responsible for any courses, content, and actions you post or take via the platform and Services and their consequences. Make sure you understand all the copyright restrictions set forth in the Instructor Terms before you submit any course for publication on Virtual Academy.
If we are put on notice that your course or content violates the law or the rights of others (for example, if it is established that it violates intellectual property or image rights of others, or is about an illegal activity), if we discover that your content or behavior violates our Trust & Safety Guidelines, or if we believe your content or behavior is unlawful, inappropriate, or objectionable (for example if you impersonate someone else), we may remove your content from our platform. Virtual Academy complies with copyright laws. Check out our Intellectual Property Policy for more details.
Virtual Academy has discretion in enforcing these Terms and our Trust & Safety Guidelines. We may terminate or suspend your permission to use our platform and Services or ban your account at any time, with or without notice, for any violation of these Terms, if you fail to pay any fees when due, upon the request of law enforcement or government agencies, for extended periods of inactivity, for unexpected technical issues or problems, or if we suspect that you engage in fraudulent or illegal activities. Upon any such termination we may delete your account and content, and we may prevent you from further access to the platforms and use of our Services. Your content may still be available on the platforms even if your account is terminated or suspended. You agree that we will have no liability to you or any third party for termination of your account, removal of your content, or blocking of your access to our platforms and services.
If one of our instructors has published a course that infringes your copyright or trademark rights, please let us know. Under our Instructor Terms, we require our instructors to follow the law and respect the intellectual property rights of others. For more details on how to file a copyright or trademark infringement claim with us, see our Intellectual Property Policy.
- Virtual Academy’s Rights to Content You Post
You retain ownership of content you post to our platform, including your courses. We’re allowed to share your content to anyone through any media, including promoting it via advertising on other websites.
The content you post as a student or instructor (including courses) remains yours. By posting courses and other content, you allow Virtual Academy to reuse and share it but you do not lose any ownership rights you may have over your content.
When you post comments, questions, reviews, and when you submit to us ideas and suggestions for new features or improvements, you authorize Virtual Academy to use and share this content with anyone, distribute it and promote it on any platform and in any media, and to make modifications or edits to it as we see fit. In legal language, by submitting or posting content on or through the platforms, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sub-license) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display, and distribute your content in any and all media or distribution methods (existing now or later developed). This includes making your content available to other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Virtual Academy for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication of content on other media. You represent and warrant that you have all the rights, power, and authority necessary to authorize us to use any content that you submit. You also agree to all such uses of your content with no compensation paid to you.
- Using Virtual Academy at Your Own Risk
Anyone can use Virtual Academy to create and publish courses and instructors and we enable instructors and students to interact for teaching and learning. Like other platforms where people can post content and interact, some things can go wrong, and you use Virtual Academy at your own risk.
Virtual Academy enables anyone anywhere to create and share educational courses. We host more than 100,000 courses on our online learning marketplace. Our platform model means we do not review or edit the courses for legal issues, and we are not in a position to determine the legality of course content. We do not exercise any editorial control over the courses that are available on the platform and, as such, do not guarantee in any manner the reliability, validity, accuracy or truthfulness of the courses. If you enroll a course, you rely on any information provided by an instructor at your own risk.
By using the Services, you may be exposed to content that you consider offensive, indecent, or objectionable. Virtual Academy has no responsibility to keep such content from you and no liability for your access or enrollment in any course, to the extent permissible under applicable law. This also applies to any courses relating to health, wellness and physical exercise. You acknowledge the inherent risks and dangers in the strenuous nature of these types of courses, and by enrolling in such courses, you choose to assume those risks voluntarily, including risk of illness, bodily injury, disability, or death. You assume full responsibility for the choices you make before, during and after your enrollment in a course.
When you interact directly with a student or an instructor, you must be careful about the types of personal information that you share. We do not control what students and instructors do with the information they obtain from other users on the platform. You should not share your email or other personal information about you for your safety.
We do not hire or employ instructors nor are we responsible or liable for any interactions involved between instructors and students. We are not liable for disputes, claims, losses, injuries, or damage of any kind that might arise out of or relate to the conduct of instructors or students.
When you use our Services, you will find links to other websites that we don’t own or control. We are not responsible for the content or any other aspect of these third-party sites, including their collection of information about you. You should also read their terms and conditions and privacy policies.
- Virtual Academy’s Rights
We own the Virtual Academy platform and Services, including the website, present or future apps and services, and things like our logos, API, code, and content created by our employees. You can’t tamper with those or use them without authorization.
All right, title, and interest in and to the Virtual Academy platform and Services, including our website, our existing or future applications, our APIs, databases, and the content our employees or partners submit or provide through our Services (but excluding content provided by instructors and students) are and will remain the exclusive property of Virtual Academy and its licensors. Our platforms and services are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws of both the United States and foreign countries. Nothing gives you a right to use the Virtual Academy name or any of the Virtual Academy trademarks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features. Any feedback, comments, or suggestions you may provide regarding Virtual Academy or the Services is entirely voluntary and we will be free to use such feedback, comments, or suggestions as we see fit and without any obligation to you.
You may not do any of the following while accessing or using the Virtual Academy platform and Services:
- access, tamper with, or use non-public areas of the platform, Virtual Academy’s computer systems, or the technical delivery systems of Virtual Academy’s service providers.
- disable, interfere with, or try to circumvent any of the features of the platforms related to security or probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any of our systems.
- copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, reverse assemble, or otherwise attempt to discover any source code of or content on the Virtual Academy platform or Services.
- access or search or attempt to access or search our platform by any means (automated or otherwise) other than through our currently available search functionalities that are provided via our website, mobile apps, or API (and only pursuant to those API terms and conditions). You may not scrape, spider, use a robot, or use other automated means of any kind to access the Services.
- in any way use the Services to send altered, deceptive, or false source-identifying information (such as sending email communications falsely appearing as Virtual Academy); or interfere with, or disrupt, (or attempt to do so), the access of any user, host, or network, including, without limitation, sending a virus, overloading, flooding, spamming, or mail-bombing the platforms or services, or in any other manner interfering with or creating an undue burden on the Services.