Ethics Builder Terms of Service

1. Your account

You need an account to use Ethics Builder. You sign in with a link or code sent to your email address, so keep your email account secure. Your account is personal to you and cannot be shared or transferred. You are responsible for what happens under your account.

Your school, employer, or instructor may create your account or add you to a class. Some classes require payment before you can join.

2. Classes and access

Joining a class gives you access to the course material that class includes, for as long as the class is open and your account is in good standing. Instructors decide which modules, activities, and due dates apply to their class. We may change, add, or remove course content and features.

3. Course materials

The course, the book The Business Ethics Field Guide, activities, videos, slide decks, assessments, and all other materials on Ethics Builder (“Materials”) belong to or are licensed by Merit Leadership, together with its trademarks and logos.

While your access is active, Merit Leadership grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Materials your account includes, for your own education. You may not copy, modify, distribute, transmit, perform, broadcast, publish, license, reverse engineer, transfer, sell, or make derivative works from any part of the Materials, except:

• where an activity or assignment directs you to create or share work based on the Materials, and
• one printed copy and one copy on your own devices for your personal use (“Personal Copies”), made without getting around any copy protection. You may not share Personal Copies.

You may not use the Materials for any commercial purpose, including selling access to them, earning subscription or advertising income from them, or using them for competitive product research.

The Materials are for educational and informational purposes. They may link to content owned by others, which we provide as a convenience and are not responsible for.

4. Instructors

If you use Ethics Builder as an instructor:

• You may use the Materials to evaluate whether to adopt the course and to teach your classes.
• You may not give anyone access to the Materials unless they have their own Ethics Builder account.
• You may share Materials through a secure, password-protected platform that Merit Leadership approves, but only if you tell those users that their use is subject to these terms, including the need for their own account.
• You may modify Materials for your class. Modified Materials remain subject to these terms, and you may not remove notices that point to these terms.
• You will use your students' information only to teach and assess your class, and you will follow your institution's rules on student records.

5. Your work

You keep ownership of the work you submit, such as activity responses, assignments, and notes. You give Merit Leadership permission to store, copy, and display your work as needed to run Ethics Builder: saving it, showing it to you and to your instructors and institution administrators, grading it, and including it in class statistics. We do not publish your work.

Do not submit anything you do not have the right to share, or anything that is unlawful, harassing, or infringes someone else's rights.

6. The AI Ethics Advisor

The AI Ethics Advisor is an educational tool that helps you think through ethical questions using the Field Guide. Its replies are generated by an AI model and can be wrong or incomplete. They are not legal, financial, medical, or other professional advice. Do not rely on them for decisions that need professional advice, and follow your instructor's rules on using AI for graded work.

The Advisor has a daily message limit. Your conversations are processed by our AI provider as described in the Privacy Policy. Do not enter sensitive personal information.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• share your account or sign-in links, or use someone else's account;
• try to get into areas, data, or accounts you are not authorized to use;
• interfere with the platform, overload it, or probe it for vulnerabilities without our written permission;
• use automated tools to scrape or download the Materials;
• submit someone else's work as your own where your instructor forbids it; or
• use Ethics Builder to break the law or harm others.

8. Payments and refunds

Prices are shown before you pay. Payments are processed by Stripe. Paid access lasts for the class you enrolled in.

You can get a full refund within 10 days of purchase. To ask for one, email hello@meritleadership.com from the address on your account and name the class. We refund the amount you paid to the card you used; your bank may take 5 to 10 business days to show it. A refund ends your access to that class.

After 10 days, payments are not refundable, except where the law requires otherwise.

If your school or employer paid for your enrollment, its agreement with Merit Leadership governs refunds instead of this section.

If we suspend or terminate your account because you broke these terms, we will not refund payments you made.

9. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, puts other users or the platform at risk, or that your institution asks us to remove. You may stop using Ethics Builder at any time and ask us to delete your account as described in the Privacy Policy.

10. Disclaimers

Ethics Builder and the Materials are provided “as is” and “as available.” To the extent the law allows, Merit Leadership disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not promise that the platform will be uninterrupted or error-free.

11. Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, Merit Leadership will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost data or profits, arising from your use of Ethics Builder. Merit Leadership's total liability for any claim related to Ethics Builder is limited to the amount you paid for the class the claim relates to, or $100 if you paid nothing.

12. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold Merit Leadership harmless from claims, losses, damages, expenses, and liability arising from your use of the Materials in violation of these terms.

Merit Leadership agrees to indemnify, defend, and hold you harmless from claims of copyright infringement arising from your permitted use of the Materials.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms by posting a new version here and updating the effective date. If a change is material, we will notify account holders by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use Ethics Builder after that means you accept the updated terms.

14. General

These terms, the Privacy Policy, and any written agreement with your institution are the entire agreement between you and Merit Leadership about Ethics Builder. Utah law governs these terms. If any provision is held invalid, the rest remain in effect.