PAARIS Membership Types

You can qualify as a business, non-profit group, government organization, or individual. Although all membership types share common characteristics each one has its own unique features.

Businesses

To qualify as a business you must be an individual legally authorized to represent an organization that is engaged in the sale of goods or services for profit. Joining as a business allows you to use PAARIS on all content directly relevant your business including its goods, services, and select employees. Issues relevant to a business may include, but are not necessarily limited to the name of the business, the names of individuals that own the business, trademarked brand names, specific products, specific services, and partners or people employed by the business for which content relates directly to their job.

To clarify the meaning from the previous paragraph what "relates directly to their job" means that you can apply your business membership to employees or partners as long as the content you wish to apply it to relates to the business. For example if someone wrote a rant stating "John Doe at Company X is a raging alcoholic that should not be in charge of nuclear safety" you could apply your business membership to it, but if someone wrote something like "John Doe is a raging alcoholic that has no business behind the wheel" John Doe would need his own individual membership. When it comes to owners, partners, and spokespeople you can apply the package provided that the people you are applying it to are clearly identifiable as faces of your business.

To clarify the meaning of "clearly identifiable" from the previous paragraph it means that they operate publicly in a role that can be verified. For instance a spokesperson might have been interviewed by various newspapers, an owner of a small company might use a personal name as part of the business name, and a board member might be listed with other board members on a corporate website. Basically we just need to be able to verify to our satisfaction that individuals are in fact a public part of the business claiming them just to make sure businesses don’t start claiming unaffiliated individuals as employees.

Non Profit Groups

To qualify as a Non-profit organization (NPO) you must be legally authorized to act on behalf of an organization that uses surplus revenue to better achieve their goals instead of keeping it as profit. Joining as a NPO allows you to use PAARIS on all content directly relevant to the name of your NPO including any trademarked goods or services it may produce as well as select employees or volunteers.

Select employees and volunteers include contributors to your NPO that operate in an official public capacity that can be verified or whose relationship with the NPO is specified in a work. For instance if someone posted a rant to the effect of "John Doe joined that crazy cult called Religious Group X" Religious Group X could use their package to block the offending post, but if the rant were to the effect of "John Doe is involved with some crazy stuff" Religious Group X would have to show that John Doe was involved with their group in the first place to use their membership for him.

NPOs are considered the same as businesses for the most part, but may be viewed with additional scrutiny in some cases. If at any time we are convinced that a NPO was formed for the purpose of removing content using a single PAARIS membership or that it allows people to operate in a public capacity for the purpose of letting them use a PAARIS membership we may deny services.

Government Organizations

To qualify as a government organization you must be legally authorized to act on behalf of an organization owned by the state. The state for the purpose of this program may include any city, county, state, country, or other type of publicly funded entity governing a territory. Joining as a government organization allows that organization to use PAARIS on all content directly relevant to the name of the organization, goods or services it produces, and its employees.

To join as a government organization you must be able to verify your role with that government organization preferably with a .gov email address. Government organizations may at times enjoy greater freedom when applying PAARIS than other types of members including the ability to apply PAARIS to employees in cases where the content does not directly link the employee to the government organization or the employee does not operate in a public capacity. For instance if someone posted a rant saying "John Doe is an undercover cop actively collecting evidence against a violent crime syndicate as I speak" the government organization employing John Doe could apply PAARIS to mitigate risk related to the publication of the undercover officer's name even if the officer is not publicly associated with the organization. Under less risky circumstances the government organization will most likely be held to the same standard as a business or non-profit organization. For instance if someone posts a rant along the lines of "Jane Doe at the DMV is a rude chain smoking hag" the DMV could use PAARIS on that rant, but if the rant were more like "Jane Doe is a rude chain smoking hag" Jane Doe would need her own individual PAARIS package.

Individuals

To qualify as an individual you must be a person seeking to use PAARIS for your own personal use or legally authorized to act on the behalf of a single human being seeking to use PAARIS for that one person. As an individual PAARIS member you will be able to apply features of the program to content directly relevant to you. Issues relevant to you include the use of your full legal name, but can also include professional aliases.

PAARIS can be applied to one professional alias per individual if that alias is used as part of your job. For instance a local radio newsman using an alias on the air could purchase a program under his legal name for use with his alias. We may also allow multiple aliases in some cases such as recognizable nicknames or online screen names. For instance if an author has a pen name that differs from his Twitter account and separate stage name to boot we may allow use of the PAARIS in all those cases as long as we don’t have cause to believe that an alias is in fact a third party.

Under the right circumstances an individual may be allowed to change their membership type to a business or non-profit organization. These circumstances include entrepreneurship and starting your own non-profit organization, but not new employment. For instance if you buy an individual package and start your own business someday you could use your current PAARIS individual membership for that business, but if you find a new job next week you cannot use your PAARIS membership for your boss.