CommSy / AGORA

For Participants:

• Interaction, discussion, and academic exchange
• Illustrate own work and perspectives
• Time- and location-independent access to information and resources
• Publish materials
• For Communities:

Access-protected virtual project workspace:

• Communication and cooperation support for participants
• Visible group structure with separate group work in sub-workspaces
• Project documentation and material management
• Schedule overview and current announcements
• Messaging feature

Last changed: 11.09.2025

You must agree to our terms and conditions to use the digital platform https://www.commsy.uni-hamburg.de/portal/show. The button to do so can be found at the bottom of the page.

If you need time to think about it, you can cancel the process. Should you do so, the prompt to agree to our terms and conditions will reappear upon your next login.

Please note: If you already have an account and explicitly do not accept the new user agreements, your account will be deleted. For data protection reasons, posts and files in virtual workspaces will also be deleted.

Please note: Compared to the previous version from 2016, the terms and conditions have essentially been brought up to date with the legal status and improved in terms of transparency.

The platform "CommSy" is called "Agora" at the faculty of humanities, so we refer to it using the double designation "CommSy/Agora".

Virtual Workspace

CommSy/Agora is the web-based communication platform for the faculties and affiliated institutes of the Hamburg University. In CommSy/Agora, project rooms can be set up independently to support teaching programs or research projects, as long as these are within the thematic and institutional range of the respective faculty. Rooms with comparable purposes may be permitted. The moderators reserve the right to block or delete misused workspaces. The use of CommSy/Agora is free of charge for registered users.

Commercial use of CommSy/Agora is excluded and strictly prohibited.

What needs to be considered?

Login data

CommSy/Agora is used for scientific purposes within a university context. For this reason, their real name is required when creating a new account. The moderators check newly created accounts in respect to this rule and inform users, should the need arise, about a necessary change. If this demand is not complied with within a specified time, the account will be deleted without further notice by the moderators.

Inactive accounts and rooms can be affected by automated blocks and deletions. These take place after a defined period of time (as a general rule: after more than one year of inactivity). Users are notified by e-mail beforehand. Within a specified period (usually 30 days), blocking can be prevented by logging in, and deletion can be prevented by unblocking.

If a user's login data for CommSy/Agora falls into the wrong hands (or if this appears to be the case), there is an obligation to change the password in the system immediately or to contact the moderator by e-mail. This is important to prevent any criminal offenses that may be committed by others from falling back on users.

The users themselves are in charge of ensuring they do not violate any applicable law while using CommSy/Agora. In particular:

Copyright

The users must observe and comply with the applicable paragraphs of German copyright law and jurisdiction, particularly §§ 106 ff. Urheberrechtsgesetz (UrhG) on the unauthorized use of protected works. If indicated, the legal rules of the Creative Commons Public License (CCPL).

If a document or file is neither in the public domain nor explicitly distributed under the CCPL, the German copyright law and jurisdiction apply. In this case, the document or file may only be redistributed or republished with explicit permission of the author(s) or authorized licenser. For exceptions to these rules please refer to German Copyright law (UrhG), in particular in Sections 60a ff. for teaching and science.

Please note: For this reason, you may not publish materials from CommSy/Agora on other websites or make them accessible to third parties in any other way without the permission of the authors! If several people have created a uniform work together, they are co-authors. Then you need the permission of all co-authors. However, a co-author may not refuse permission contrary to good faith (§ 8 UrhG).

Please note: The distribution of these works is exclusively permitted for scientific or teaching purposes within limited groups!

Please note: Copyright law protects not only the materials from the study portals in CommSy/Agora, but all data posted by users. It is therefore not permitted, for example, to post a presentation handout on a public website without consulting the author. The same applies to a range of materials from the study portals for self-study. These may only be distributed if they are explicitly distributed under the CCPL.

Illegal contents

CommSy/Agora may not be used to distribute materials and contents that are subject to prosecution, regardless of their technical implementation, be it in text, graphic or audio format, e.g. pornographic content, §§ 184 ff. Strafgesetzbuch (StGB); propaganda materials of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations, § 86 StGB; sedition, § 130 StGB.

Protection of personal rights

Users may not post or distribute any personally offensive, defamatory, harassing, insulting, slanderous or threatening contents via CommSy/AGORA (Art. 2 i.c.w. Art. 1 Grundgesetz; §§ 185 ff. StGB).

The right to one's own image must be respected; no images may be posted or distributed without the consent of the person depicted (§§ 823 ff. Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, § 22 KunstUrheberGesetz).

Each user's privacy is to be respected. Actively spying out closed data is strictly prohibited (§ 202a StGB).

Protection of technical infrastructure

No applications may be executed that are capable of changing or breaching the technical structure of the CommSy/Agora network facilities (§ 303a/b StGB).

Invoking action by moderators and admins / user liability

If the moderators get any information that raises suspicion about possible breaches to the above rules and procedures, normally the user in question will receive a warning via email first. In case the user continues to violate the terms of use, the moderators are authorized to terminate the user’s access to CommSy/Agora.

Furthermore, content that is part of this violation can be made inaccessible until the legal status of the material is clarified.

If a violation causes serious damage to the technical equipment of the CommSy/Agora system or the University Computer Center (RRZ) or if the rights of other persons are unlawfully affected, the respective users are liable if they are at fault.

Disclaimer

All information within the public sections that CommSy/Agora accounts for are being controlled and revised thoroughly for accuracy and completeness. Nevertheless, there may still be some errors. CommSy/Agora is not liable for any damage or disadvantages that may result from using the information delivered. CommSy/Agora performs no content review for information provided by links on pages on other servers. CommSy/Agora is not liable for content on pages on other servers it may link to.

For technical reasons, content posted by users in CommSy/Agora can usually not be checked by the moderation. Therefore, content reviews do not take place. CommSy/Agora is not liable for any violation of the law committed by users.

CommSy/Agora at the University Hamburg as well as the University Hamburg Rechenzentrum are also not liable for indirect damages or consequential damages resulting from the use of the CommSy/Agora.

No liability is assumed for functions of CommSy/Agora to meet the user's requirements or to work together.

To ensure the proper operation of CommSy/Agora (maintenance work), downtimes of the website can be announced anytime.

Data protection

In accordance with the Hamburg Data Protection Act (Hamburgisches Datenschutzgesetz) and the principle of data economy, only the user data required for operation is processed. Information on data processing can be found in the data protection declaration.