Terms and Conditions

These Terms govern your use of Falls Discovery and your submission of reviews, photographs, corrections, and other content.

Effective date: September 28, 2026

1. Acceptance of these Terms

By accessing or using fallsdiscovery.com (the “Site”), you agree to these Terms and the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site or submit content. Falls Discovery is an independent directory created and maintained by Aleksandr Pavlov (“Falls Discovery,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).

2. Informational purpose

The Site provides general information about waterfalls, river rapids, maps, geographic features, nearby places, reported heights, access, and visitor experiences. It is not a navigation, emergency, weather, hydrology, engineering, medical, or professional safety service.

3. Assumption of outdoor risk

Waterfalls and rapids may involve cliffs, unstable ground, deep or fast-moving water, flash floods, falling rock, ice, wildlife, remote terrain, poor communications, and other serious hazards. You are responsible for assessing your abilities, equipment, route, weather, legal access, and local conditions. Never cross barriers, enter closed areas, trespass, or approach dangerous water for a photograph or a closer view.

Your use of the Site does not create a guide-client relationship, and a map marker or description does not mean that public access exists or that a route is safe.

4. Accuracy and changing information

We work to make the directory useful and accurate, but information may be incomplete, estimated, outdated, duplicated, automatically derived, or affected by source errors. Waterfall height can vary by measurement method; names and classifications can differ between sources; coordinates can identify a geographic feature without identifying a safe public approach.

Fees, permits, opening hours, closures, ownership, trail conditions, and access rules may change without notice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, availability, or suitability of any listing. You can report an issue through the Contact & Corrections page.

5. Reviews and visitor contributions

You may submit reviews, ratings, visit observations, corrections, and photographs where the Site provides that feature. You remain responsible for everything you submit. By submitting content, you confirm that:

• The information is honest and reflects your experience or a source you reasonably believe is reliable.
• You own the content or have all permissions required to submit and publish it.
• The content does not infringe copyright, privacy, publicity, trademark, or other rights.
• The content does not reveal sensitive personal information, encourage trespass, misrepresent legal access, or create a foreseeable safety risk.
• The content is not unlawful, threatening, abusive, discriminatory, deceptive, defamatory, obscene, spam, advertising, or malicious code.

6. Permission to publish submitted content

You retain any ownership rights you have in content you submit. By submitting text, ratings, or other contribution material, you give Falls Discovery a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free permission to host, store, reproduce, format, moderate, and display that material on the Site for the purpose of operating and improving the directory.

When you upload a photograph and confirm that it is yours, you give Falls Discovery permission to re-encode, resize, create display copies, store, and publish it with the name you supplied. If you separately allow gallery use, the photograph may also appear in the gallery of the relevant listing. The Site is designed to remove embedded EXIF and GPS metadata from uploaded images.

You may request future removal of your review or photograph through the Contact & Corrections page. Removal from active pages may not immediately remove temporary cached or backup copies, and it does not invalidate uses that occurred while permission was in effect.

7. Moderation

We may review, hold, edit for formatting, decline, unpublish, or remove a contribution when we reasonably believe it violates these Terms, is inaccurate, duplicates existing material, creates a safety concern, contains spam, or is not useful to the directory. We are not required to publish any submission or to explain every moderation decision.

Moderation does not mean that we endorse a contribution or guarantee that all problematic material will be detected.

8. Copyright and attribution requests

If you believe material on the Site infringes your copyright or uses incorrect attribution, send a request through the Contact & Corrections page. Include the page URL, identify the material, explain your ownership or authority to act, provide a way to contact you, and describe the requested action. We may ask for additional information needed to evaluate the request.

9. Site content, data, and third-party licences

The Site combines original writing, software, design, data organization, public geographic records, third-party sources, maps, and visitor contributions. Rights in each component remain with the applicable owner or source.

Much of the underlying geographic information begins with U.S. Geological Survey data. USGS-authored information is generally in the United States public domain, but third-party materials and some datasets may carry separate terms. Source acknowledgements or licences shown on a page continue to apply.

Maps use OpenStreetMap data, which is made available under the Open Database License and requires attribution. OpenStreetMap and its contributors are not responsible for Falls Discovery or for decisions made using the Site.

Except where a source licence or applicable law permits otherwise, you may not copy or republish substantial portions of the Site’s original writing, photography, design, compiled enhancements, or software without permission. Ordinary linking, quoting with attribution, search-engine indexing, and personal non-commercial use are permitted.

10. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Attempt to bypass security, gain unauthorized access, or interfere with the Site or its infrastructure.
• Use automated requests in a way that overloads, disrupts, or degrades the Site.
• Harvest personal information or use the Site to send spam.
• Impersonate another person or misrepresent your affiliation or rights.
• Use Site content to encourage unlawful entry, damage to natural areas, or unsafe conduct.
• Submit malware, deceptive links, fabricated reviews, or manipulated evidence.

We may restrict access or take reasonable technical and legal measures in response to misuse.

11. External websites and services

The Site may link to government agencies, parks, maps, source publications, social networks, and other third-party services. Those services are controlled by their respective operators and may have separate terms and privacy practices. A link does not guarantee accuracy, availability, safety, or endorsement.

12. Privacy

Information about server logs, cookies, reviews, visitor photographs, location features, service providers, retention, and privacy requests is provided in the Privacy Policy.

13. Disclaimer of warranties

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Site and its content are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We do not warrant that the Site will always be available, secure, error-free, or free from harmful components, or that any listing, map, route, measurement, review, or external link is accurate or suitable for your intended use.

14. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Falls Discovery and its operator will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, loss of data or profits, personal injury, property damage, access disputes, travel costs, or other losses arising from use of or reliance on the Site, visitor contributions, outdoor activity, or third-party services.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, or any mandatory consumer right available to you under applicable law.

15. Responsibility for your contribution

You are responsible for claims resulting from content you submit or from your violation of another person’s rights. To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to reimburse Falls Discovery for reasonable losses and costs caused by such a violation.

16. Changes and availability

We may modify, suspend, or discontinue features or content, and may update these Terms when the Site changes. Revised Terms apply from the effective date shown at the top of this page. Continued use after that date means you accept the revised Terms.

17. General provisions

These Terms are governed by applicable law without limiting any mandatory rights that apply to you. If one provision is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in effect. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of the right to enforce it later. These Terms and the Privacy Policy form the agreement between you and Falls Discovery concerning use of the Site.

18. Contact

Questions about these Terms, correction requests, and copyright concerns can be submitted through the Contact & Corrections page.