The "Better Times" Project

Janis Ian & Friends

Privacy Policy

Visit the About, FAQs, Credits and Special Thanks and Cookies Notice pages for more information about this site.

The Better Times Project Privacy Policy

* This privacy policy was adapted from privacy policies made available by Creative Commons and Automattic.com. We appreciate their willingness to share information and help us make this site a better, safer place for Visitors and Contributors.

We tried not to be scary, but we also tried to be thorough. 

For purposes of this Policy, the following definitions apply: 

  • “Contributors”: Any person or persons or entity that has submitted artistic material to be used on this site, including but not limited to music (with or without vocals), film, video, graphics of any sort, often referred to as “Art” or “Artists”.
  • “Visitors”: Persons visiting this site in order to listen, watch, download, build on items submitted by the Contributors.
  • “Contribution”: The material a Contributor has submitted and sent to us for use on this site, including but not limited to photographs, graphic art, music, film, video, social media and website links, personal statements the Contributor has asked to be included on their “page”, and any other items sent to us for submission, all of which Contributors have approved prior to sending them to us.
  • “The Project” and/or “Better Times Project”: The sites bettertimeswillcome.com   a/k/a thebettertimesproject.com  a/k/a bettertimesproject.com  are referred to simply as “Better Times Project” or “the Project” or “Project”.

Your privacy is very important to us. Here are our fundamental principles:

  • We deliberately do not require a log-in process to access this site, nor do we collect your email address or any other personal information through this site except as noted in this document.
  • We put a lot of thought into which applications and platforms are used by this site, and made every effort to protect any information that may be collected through the operation of our services. 
  • We store necessary personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it. (See information below on “Cookies” and “third parties”.)
  • We attempt to provide full transparency on how we gather, use, and share any of your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

The “Better Times Project” was begun by Janis Ian, and is monitored and managed by the webmaster, and by Janis Ian. The Project was not started for profit and does not charge for usage. It does not accept advertising and it does not advertise other than through free services such as social media and word of mouth. It is Janis’ hope that this Project will introduce Visitors to new artists, and that Visitors will support those artists by visiting their social media and website pages, live shows, merchandise areas, forums and the like. In a contest-driven world, Janis firmly believes that art is for everyone, and that you do not need to be a “professional” in order to sing, dance, paint, draw, or create art of any sort. Part of this Project’s goal is to encourage non-professionals to practice the arts in their daily lives, even if they’ve been told they “can’t carry a tune” or “can’t dance”. Janis was told both of those things many times, and has decided neither of them matters – the point is the practice, not how well you do it!

All costs of this site and this project have been borne by Janis Ian. For a list of volunteers who have helped create this project, please visit our Credits & Special Thanks page.

The only financial information on these pages are links to, and information about, the Pearl Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity begun by Janis and her wife in 1998 that, to date, has provided more than one million dollars in endowed scholarship funds to older students returning to college. No donation is necessary for you to use the site. Neither Janis nor her webmaster see who may donate to the Foundation. For more information, please visit The Pearl Foundation .

Contributors have agreed to allow Visitors to download their Contributions for a period of six months, after which the Contributor may request their Contribution be removed. Please see the FAQs page for more information regarding Contributions.

This Privacy Policy applies to information we collect about you when it is mandatory to ensure the smooth running of this site, when it allows us to enhance your own experience on this site (for instance, “Cookies” – see below), or by third parties required to host or create or run this site.

Third-party applications are, and have been, used to create and maintain this site. As of September 29, 2020, those third-party applications are below, along with links to their own privacy policies and information: 

We also use the following, which may help us to remain compliant with various laws governing websites and the Internet, give us insight into how this site is being used, or help us to build and maintain the site: 

From time to time, we may decide to use another third-party application in order to improve the quality of this site. That application will be added to the above list as quickly as possible.

Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Creative Commons Sharealike License
We’ve based this policy on a Creative Commons Sharealike license, and adapted it to better suit the goals and usage of this Project. You can get a copy of the basic Privacy Policy and other legal documents on GitHub. 

Information We Collect
We only collect information about you if we have a good reason to do so — for example, to provide our services, to communicate with you, or to make our services better. We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. 

Information you provide to us directly
It’s probably no surprise that we collect information you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

  • Public profile information: If you are a Contributor, any information on this site has been submitted by you for use on this site, and every effort has been made to check its accuracy before placing it on this site. Visitors may use this information to try and contact you personally; we do not ever release your personal information (email, physical address). Any personal information you have provided is stored off site as part of the archives of this project, solely in order to stay in touch with you regarding major changes to the site, personal correspondence with Janis Ian and/or her staff, or questions related to your Contribution.
  • Credentials: Depending on the services you use (e.g. your browser, your mobile phone apps and the like), you may be providing us with certain credentials. Contributors may be providing credentials for your self-hosted website (like SSH, FTP, and SFTP username and password).
  • Communications with us directly: When you email the webmaster or other email links provided on our home page for the purpose of reporting technical difficulties or asking questions not answered in this document or the FAQ, you are providing us with a multitude of data through your Internet Service Provider and method of creation (your mobile phone, computer etc.). We do not knowingly collect this data and we do not knowingly store this data except to respond to your questions. This only applies to email directed to webmaster@bettertimeswillcome.com and/or
    info@janisian.com . Your original question or request will normally be answered from an external site/ISP. Again, we will not knowingly store or access any information other than what you clearly have given us.
  • Contributors: Again, anything you’ve asked us to use as part of your Contribution becomes part of your “page” on this site.

Information We Collect Automatically – for instance:

  • Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. 
  • Usage information: We may collect information about your usage of our services. For example, we may collect information about the actions that site administrators and users perform on a site using WordPress.com or Jetpack services — in other words, who did what and when (e.g., [Anonymous user] downloaded “[I Love This Song]” at [time/date]).  We also collect information about what happens when you use our services (e.g., page views, searches, interactions with the administrators of this site) along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our services to you, and gain insight into how people use those services in order to improve the services.

Information from cookies & other technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. The applications we work with, and this site, use cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our services.

* Please note that you can change your browser settings to notify you when a cookie is being set or updated, or to block cookies altogether. Please consult the “Help” section of your own browser for more information. Important: by blocking any or all cookies, you may not have access to certain features or offerings from this site.

For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see our Cookie Notice.

How and Why We Use Information
We use information for the purposes listed below: 

  • To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve services. For example, by providing automatic upgrades and new versions of services, or by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our services so we can create new features we think our users will enjoy or make this site easier to use.
  • To protect this site, its Visitors and Contributors, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of the Project and others,.
  • To fix problems with our services. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

  1. The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or
  2. The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
  3. The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or
  4. We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our services; to improve our services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our services; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of these services to monitor and prevent any problems with our services;
  5. You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on, as described in our Cookie Policy.

Sharing Information
We make every effort not to share your information. However, here are some possible scenarios where your anonymous information may be shared, particularly as it pertains to Contributors:

  • Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like the list at the top of applications we use, cloud storage services, registrars, registries, data escrow services that allow us to provide domain registration services); those that help us understand and enhance our services (like analytics providers); those that make tools to help us run our operations (like programs that help us with scheduling, word processing, email and other communications, and collaboration); other third-party tools that help us manage operations; and information you provide us when you ask a question.
  • Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. Additionally, if you have a domain registered with WordPress.com, we may share your information to comply with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN) regulations, rules, or policies. For example, your information relating to your own domain registration may be available in the WHOIS database, or we may be required to share your information with ICANN-approved Dispute Resolution Service Providers. 
  • To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property, rights, and well-being of Janis Ian, or any website affiliated with Janis Ian, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose that information. Please see this article from WordPress.com. 
  • With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, Contributors to the Project have agreed that their work can be shared until they ask that it be removed. Any information you have provided us specifically for use as part of your Contribution may be shared and disclosed to Visitors to the site.
  • Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of this site.

We have a long-standing policy that we do not sell our users’ data. We aren’t a data broker, we don’t sell your personal information to data brokers, and we don’t sell your information to other companies that want to spam you with marketing emails.

How Long We Keep Information
We do not knowingly collect information and then keep it unless that information is part of a Contributor’s page. However, some of the applications we use do collect information for the purposes detailed here, and generally discard it when it’s no longer needed, as described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information. For instance, Ionos.com, which hosts this site, retains server logs for eight weeks.

There’s also a good deal of information on WordPress.com’s use of server logs, and why they’re important.

Security
While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks, and we use third-party applications that specialize in security measures to keep this site safe.

Choices
You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

  • Limit access to information on your mobile device: Your mobile device operating system should provide you with the option to discontinue our ability to collect stored information or location information via our mobile apps. If you choose to limit this, you may not be able to use certain features.
  • Set your browser to reject cookies: At this time, bettertimeswillcome.com does not respond to “do not track” signals across all services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using this website, with the drawback that certain features of this website may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
  • Opt out of our internal analytics program: You can do this through your user settings. By opting out, you will stop sharing information with our analytics tools about events or actions that happen after the opt-out. For more information, please see our Cookie Policy.

Controllers and Responsible Companies
This site is based in the United States. We realize different countries have different laws governing the Internet. Please understand that this is a very small site with only two people running it, and both those people have full-time careers doing other things. We will try our best to answer questions and keep your data safe, but we cannot assume liability for things that happen beyond our control. We fervently thank you for your understanding.

Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)

Transferring Information
Because this site’s services are offered worldwide, the information about you that we process when you use the services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) such as our third-party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the “How and Why We Use Information” section above. When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will always attempt to work with reputable companies that take appropriate measures to ensure that they  protect your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law. 

Services Provided by Others
As stated above, we do use analytics providers and other companies that help to ensure the safety of this site and your data. These providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and do all the other things mentioned in this Policy. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by bettertimeswillcome.com and does not cover the collection of information by any third-party and/or analytics providers. We don’t own or control these third parties, and they have their own rules about information collection, use, and sharing, which you should review before using the software or services.

Visitors to Contributors’ Websites and Social Media Sites
Please note that when you visit a Contributor’s website or leave this website, you are leaving our Privacy Policy behind as well. We encourage our Contributors to post a privacy policy that accurately describes their practices on data collection, use, and sharing of personal information.

Users control the content posted on their sites, so any disputes regarding content on a Contributor’s  site should be made directly to the site owner, through their “contact us” page, at an email address they provide, or by leaving a comment on the site.

Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, this Site may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. We encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to the Privacy Policy. Your further use of the services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy. 

Thank you for reading this far!!!