Terms of Use

1. Agreement and eligibility

By accessing or using Comal.News, you agree to these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use account, submission, newsletter, or other interactive features. You may still have rights that cannot lawfully be waived.

Comal.News is a general-audience service. You must be at least 13 to create a reader account. If you are under the age of legal majority where you live, a parent or legal guardian must approve your use of interactive features. A person using the service for an organization represents that they are authorized to bind that organization.

2. News, alerts, and public information

Comal.News provides journalism, public-record material, summaries, data, event information, and alerts for general informational purposes. Public records can be amended, meeting proposals can change, and breaking information can be incomplete. Read each story’s date, status, sourcing, corrections, and links to underlying records.

We work to correct material errors. A correction request should identify the story, disputed statement, and supporting evidence and be sent to corrections@comal.news. A request does not guarantee a change, removal, or response on a particular schedule.

3. Reader accounts, newsletters, and alerts

You are responsible for providing accurate account information, protecting access to your email and devices, and notifying us of suspected unauthorized use. We may suspend or restrict an account to protect the service, comply with law, investigate abuse, or enforce these terms.

Newsletter and alert preferences can be changed through the available account or unsubscribe controls. Some service, security, authentication, correction, or transaction messages are necessary and may not include a marketing opt-out. Commercial email will identify its sender accurately and include the disclosures and choices required by applicable law.

If Comal.News later offers a paid membership or product, price, renewal, cancellation, refund, and billing terms presented at checkout will supplement these terms. An advertising order, sponsorship, data license, or other business agreement is governed by its separate written terms.

4. Acceptable use

You may not use Comal.News to:

• violate law, another person’s rights, a court order, or a binding duty;
• impersonate another person, misrepresent your authority, or submit information you know is materially false;
• upload malware, probe for vulnerabilities without authorization, evade access controls, overload the service, or disrupt another user;
• harass, threaten, dox, stalk, exploit, or unlawfully discriminate against another person;
• harvest personal information, account credentials, source details, or nonpublic newsroom data;
• reproduce, scrape, index, or extract substantial portions of our articles, original graphics, databases, or site at a volume that substitutes for the service, except for ordinary search indexing expressly allowed by our technical controls or under written permission;
• use our protected expression, article archive, or original datasets to train or evaluate a commercial machine-learning system without written permission.

These restrictions do not claim ownership of public facts, government records, ideas, or uses protected by law, including fair use. They protect our original reporting, selection, organization, presentation, systems, and service from misuse.

5. Ownership and permitted use of our content

Comal.News and its licensors own the site software, branding, original articles, headlines, photographs, audio, graphics, compilations, and other protected material, except where a source or credit states otherwise. Public records linked or reproduced on the site remain subject to the rights and rules that apply to those records.

We grant you a limited, revocable, nonexclusive license to access the service and use its content for personal, noncommercial purposes. You may link to our reporting and quote limited portions with clear attribution when the law permits. Republishing a complete article, stripping credits or notices, selling our content, building a substitute archive, or commercially redistributing our original data requires written permission from legal@comal.news.

“Comal.News,” its logo, desk names, and related branding may not be used in a way that falsely implies endorsement, affiliation, or sponsorship.

6. Tips, photos, comments, and other submissions

What you promise

You keep ownership of material you submit. You represent that the information is accurate to the best of your knowledge, that you have the right to provide it, and that our permitted use will not violate another person’s copyright, privacy, publicity, confidentiality, contractual, or other rights. Tell us clearly about uncertainty, restrictions, safety concerns, embargoes, or attribution conditions before sending material.

Permission to evaluate and publish

When you submit material for possible coverage or publication, you give Comal.News a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to receive, store, copy, verify, edit, format, translate, publish, display, perform, distribute, archive, and promote that material in connection with our journalism, website, newsletters, audio, and social channels. This license lets us use service providers for those purposes and lasts as long as reasonably necessary for the publication and its archive. A separate written agreement can narrow or replace these terms.

For a photograph or video obtained through direct outreach, a written reply agreeing that Comal.News may use it with credit is permission for use in the related coverage and its promotion on Comal.News, newsletters, Instagram, and Facebook, unless the messages agree on a different scope. We will use the credit agreed with the contributor when reasonably practicable. Editing may include cropping, sizing, captions, accessibility text, and formatting, but not a materially deceptive alteration.

No automatic confidentiality or payment

Sending material does not require us to publish, return, preserve, or pay for it, and does not create employment, agency, attorney-client, fiduciary, or other professional relationship. Ordinary email and social-media direct messages are not secure tip channels. We do not promise anonymity, confidentiality, or off-the-record treatment unless an authorized Comal.News representative expressly agrees before disclosure. If sharing could put you or someone else at risk, first contact investigations@comal.newswithout attaching the sensitive material and ask about a safer method.

7. Advertising, links, and third-party services

Comal.News may link to government records, maps, social platforms, advertisers, sponsors, and other services we do not control. A link is not a guarantee, endorsement, or adoption of everything on that service. Your interaction with a third party is governed by its terms and privacy practices.

Advertising and sponsored material will be labeled in a manner intended to distinguish it from independent editorial coverage. Purchasing advertising does not purchase favorable reporting, removal of accurate coverage, or access to confidential newsroom information.

8. Copyright and rights concerns

If you believe material on Comal.News infringes a copyright or another legal right, email legal@comal.news with your contact information, the protected work, the exact Comal.News URL, the disputed material, the basis for your claim, and documentation of your authority. Knowingly making a material misrepresentation about infringement can have legal consequences.

This contact route is not a claim that Comal.News has registered a designated agent under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If a formal statutory agent is designated, its current details will be published here and filed through the appropriate federal directory.

9. Disclaimers, responsibility, and limits on liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the service is provided “as is” and “as available.” Comal.News disclaims implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and noninfringement. We do not warrant uninterrupted access or that every record, link, alert, transcript, calculation, or third-party item is complete, current, or error-free.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Comal.News and its owner, contributors, licensors, and service providers will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, goodwill, or opportunity arising from the service. Their aggregate liability for a claim relating to the service will not exceed the greater of $100 or the amount you paid Comal.News for the affected service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers or limits, so they apply only to the extent lawful. Nothing in these terms excludes liability or a right that cannot lawfully be excluded. You are responsible for losses and reasonable costs arising from your unlawful misuse of the service or a submission that violates the promises you made above, but only to the extent permitted by applicable law.

10. Changes, suspension, and termination

We may modify, suspend, or discontinue features, and may update these terms as the service changes. The date at the top identifies the current version. Material changes will receive notice appropriate to the feature and legal requirement. Continued use after an updated version takes effect means you accept it; if you do not accept it, stop using the affected interactive features.

We may restrict access for abuse, security, nonpayment, legal compliance, or violation of these terms. Provisions that by their nature should survive—such as ownership, submission permissions for already published material, disclaimers, liability limits, and dispute terms—continue after termination.

11. Texas law, general terms, and contact

Texas law governs these terms without regard to conflict-of-law rules, except where federal law or nonwaivable law applies. Any court proceeding concerning these terms or the service must be brought in a state court located in Comal County, Texas, or a federal court with jurisdiction over Comal County, and each party consents to that venue and jurisdiction.

If a provision is unenforceable, it will be narrowed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest will remain in effect. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not transfer your account or these terms without our consent; we may transfer them as part of an organizational transaction. These terms, the Privacy Policy, and any feature-specific written terms form the agreement concerning your use of the service.

Legal notices: legal@comal.news
Privacy requests: privacy@comal.news
General newsroom contact: news@comal.news