### WordPress - Web publishing software
Copyright 2011-2019 by the contributors
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
This program incorporates work covered by the following copyright and
permission notices:
b2 is (c) 2001, 2002 Michel Valdrighi - m@tidakada.com -
http://tidakada.com
Wherever third party code has been used, credit has been given in the code's
comments.
b2 is released under the GPL
and
WordPress - Web publishing software
Copyright 2003-2010 by the contributors
WordPress is released under the GPL
---
### GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
### Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom
to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is
intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This
General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to
using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by
the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.
These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if
you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their
rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
(2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
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Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
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all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
modification follow.
### TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
**0.** This License applies to any program or other work which
contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be
distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The
"Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work
based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work
under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or
a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or
translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is
included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee
is addressed as "you".
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of
running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program
is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program
(independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that
is true depends on what the Program does.
**1.** You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a
fee.
**2.** You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any
portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
**a)** You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
**b)** You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part
thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties
under the terms of this License.
**c)** If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive
use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement
including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is
no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that
users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling
the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the
Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an
announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print
an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote
it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to
exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or
collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of
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**3.** You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
**a)** Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1
and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
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years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of
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**c)** Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed
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The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
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If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering
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If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under
any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to
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It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any
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to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot
impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to
be a consequence of the rest of this License.
**8.** If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in
certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the
original copyright holder who places the Program under this License
may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding
those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among
countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates
the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
**9.** The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new
versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new
versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may
differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and
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published by the Free Software Foundation.
**10.** If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other
free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to
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we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by
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free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software
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**NO WARRANTY**
**11.** BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO
WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.
EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR
OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE
PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME
THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
**12.** IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN
WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY
AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU
FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE
PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING
RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A
FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF
SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGES.
### END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
### How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these
terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to
attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) yyyy name of author
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper
mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
when it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome
to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c'
for details.
The hypothetical commands \`show w' and \`show c' should show the
appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the
commands you use may be called something other than \`show w' and
\`show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever
suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or
your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program,
if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright
interest in the program `Gnomovision'
(which makes passes at compilers) written
by James Hacker.
signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program
into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library,
you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary
applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the
[GNU Lesser General Public
License](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html) instead of this
License.
SEC investor office wants halt to mandatory arbitration - sinth.info
An investor advocacy group within the SEC is warning that advisors who use contract clauses to force client disputes into arbitration could be violating their fiduciary duty to look out for their customers’ best interests.
For that reason, the agency’s Office of the Investor Advocate recommended in a report Tuesday that regulators bring a temporary halt to the use of mandatory arbitration clauses until their benefits and drawbacks can undergo further study. Advisors often include provisions in contracts signed with clients requiring any disputes that might arise over investments or other decisions be settled before specially appointed arbitration panels.
These panels are run outside regular courts by groups like the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the broker-dealer industry’s self-regulator. Critics often complain that arbitrators in these forums are too sympathetic to the industry and that their proceedings and decisions aren’t governed by the rules that prevail in the regular justice system.
Advisors’ arbitration contracts also sometimes contain clauses setting limits on claims and damages and prohibiting investors from taking part in class-action suits. That makes them even more onerous to clients than similar agreements presented by broker-dealers, who are barred by law from imposing the same sorts of restrictions.
The SEC has previously estimated that roughly 6 out of 10 advisors have mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts with clients. That strikes Max Schatzow, a founder and partner of RIA Lawyers in Parsippany, New Jersey, as too low a percentage.
He said the provisions figure in virtually every contract he helps draw up on behalf of his RIA clients. Schatzow said an advisor would have to explicitly express discomfort with one of the clauses for him to remove it.
For Schatzow, the biggest benefit to arbitration is that the reasons for individual decisions often do not become part of the public record. In FINRA arbitration cases, for instance, the panels overseeing cases always release a document stating the outcome of a given case. But they rarely lay out the reasoning behind their decision.
“The biggest benefit is that certain arbitration findings just might not be reportable in certain places,” Schatzow said.
Schatzow disputed the notion that forced arbitration violates advisors’ fiduciary duty to investors. He said that duty applies mainly when RIAs and other wealth managers are dispensing advice on investments and similar matters, not when they are initially entering into a relationship with a client.
“It’s a weird argument,” Schatzow said. “I don’t think it carries any legal weight.”
For some advisors, the idea of forcing clients to take up a dispute in a certain forum is distasteful in itself. Laura Mattia, the CEO of Atlas Fiduciary Financial in Sarasota, Florida, said her firm never includes mandatory arbitration clauses in the contracts it signs with investors.
“Clients can have more confidence in their advisors when they know they have the right to seek legal remedies if necessary,” Mattia wrote in an email. “Lastly, it holds investment advisors to be more accountable for their actions. They must be aware that clients have the option to take legal action, which may encourage better adherence to their fiduciary duties.”
The SEC’s Office of the Investor Advocate acknowledges in its report that there’s no comprehensive database showing how many advisors use forced arbitration clauses. To reach its estimate, it reviewed 579 advisory agreements and consulted eight different stakeholder groups. The latter included the Public Investors Advocate Bar Association, a legal group representing advisory clients, and the North American Securities Administrators Association, made up of state and provincial regulators in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
PIABA has previously pressed the SEC to ban the use of mandatory arbitration clauses in client contracts. At a news conference held in Washington, D.C. in July, the group argued that arbitration proceedings can cost clients tens of thousands of dollars upfront. And when investors are victorious, FINRA and other arbitration groups offer few guarantees they’ll actually receive the money they’ve been awarded.
Joe Peiffer, the president of PIABA and the founder of New Orleans-based Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise, said the SEC’s Office of the Investor Advocate’s report is further evidence that mandatory arbitration clauses are highly dubious. Aside from the cost of arbitration proceedings, he said the hearings are at times held at a great distance from where the investors bringing charges live, forcing them to travel if they want to present their case in person.
Peiffer agreed with the SEC’s Office of the Investor Advocate that more study is warranted.
“That’s why they are calling for this temporary halt,” he said. “We don’t have our arms around how big and how bad this problem is, but we know it’s really big and really bad.”
The Office of the Investor Advocate’s report notes that the Investment Adviser Act of 1940 gave the SEC authority to place limits on arbitration proceedings to protect investors. Peiffer said he’s not entirely sure what additional steps the SEC would have to take to institute a temporary ban on mandatory arbitration. Attempts to reach the SEC were unsuccessful.
The Office of the Investor Advocate’s report does cite one case in which the SEC hit an investment advisor with penalties for a contract clause that could mislead clients into believing they had waived their right to bring legal complaints against the firm. In January 2022, the regulator imposed a $375,000 fine on Rockaway, New Jersey-based Comprehensive Capital Management, after finding that its agreements had contained an illegal “hedge clause” purporting to make the advisory firm not liable for actions taken on investors’ behalf.
“Such claims are non-waivable,” the SEC said in a release on the case.
When advisory firms do require mandatory arbitration, the SEC’s Office of the Investor Advocate found a strong tendency to also insist that cases be taken up in a particular forum. Of the 579 contracts regulators reviewed, 92% named a specific arbitration group for settling disputes.
The most popular was the American Arbitration Association, which was specified in 83% of the contracts requiring arbitration in a particular forum. Second was FINRA’s dispute resolution services, named in 10% of the contracts. Last was Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, or JAMs, which was specified in only 6% of the contracts.
Nearly 4 out of 10 of the contracts required certain arbitration rules to be in place during the proceedings. The rules most commonly insisted on were those promulgated by the American Arbitration Association.
Of the 6 out 10 agreements that specified a physical venue for mandatory arbitration proceedings, almost none took into account clients’ places of residence or business. But only 6% of the total tried to preclude investors from taking part in class-action lawsuits, and 11% sought to set a limit on damage awards.