indietorrent.org Terms of Use
Last Revised May 7, 2008
Index
- Terminology
- Use of Pronouns
- Copyright Holder Requirements for All Music Uploads
- Permission for Us to Distribute Your Music & Licensing Terms
- Your Right to Vary the Terms of the License that Governs Your Music, as the Copyright Holder
- Our Duty to Compensate You for Sales That We Make on Your Behalf
- Your Privacy and Custodian of Records' Requirements
- Compliance with Law Enforcement Agencies
- Indemnification
- Removal of "Offensive" Material from this Website
Terminology
The term
"website" is used herein to refer to indietorrent.org — the domain name to which
this Web server's IP address is bound (not to be confused with the legal entity's
proper name, indietorrent.org, LLC).
The term "music" is used herein to refer
to any original, creative audio work, regardless of the particular medium or
"file format" from which the music is composed.
The terms "artist" and "musician"
are used herein to refer to Users (see Use of Pronouns) who visit this website
and subsequently upload digital audio files for the sole purpose of distributing
those files, either for sale/profit, or gratis (free of charge).
The terms "fan" and
"customer" are used herein to refer to Users (see Use of Pronouns) who visit
this website and subsequently download digital audio files for the sole purpose
of using those files in accordance with the governing license under which the
files on this website are distributed.
The term "donator" is used herein to refer
to Users (see Use of Pronouns) who visit this website and subsequently make
charitable, financial donations to musicians using the "Feed a Starving Artist"
feature of this website.
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Use of Pronouns
The pronouns "we" and "us" are used
herein to refer to indietorrent.org, LLC, which is the legal business entity
responsible for operating this website.
The pronouns "you" and "user" are used
herein to refer to the entity who is accessing this website via a connection
from a computer with network/Internet access (most likely through a Web browser).
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Copyright Holder Requirement for All Music Uploads
You must own the exclusive
copyright to an original creative work (Music), or you must be an authorized
representative to the copyright holder (or holders, if multiple individuals share
copyright ownership) to upload digital audio files (Music) to this webserver.
You are not permitted to upload any music to which you do not own the copyright.
If you do not hold the copyright to a given original, creative work (Music),
you are not permitted to upload that work to this website for any purpose.
If
you violate this Copyright Holder Requirement and we are able to demonstrate
the fact (we may use any and all of the data you have provided to us through
the use of this website), we reserve the right to take the following actions
against you:
-
Immediately terminate your indietorrent.org account and permanently
destroy any or all content (audio files, pictures, textual contributions, etc.)
that you may have uploaded to the website.
-
Seize any balance in your indietorrent.org
account that has not yet been paid to you; you may or may not be paid the remaining
balance, depending on the nature of the violation, and we are in no way obligated
to return the funds to you.
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Permission for Us to Distribute Your Music & Licensing Terms
You grant us permission to distribute, electronically, any original, creative
works (Music) that you willfully upload to this website and for which you meet
the Copyright Holder Requirement described in this document.
Your music will
be distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No
Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License (available for review at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
This license can be summarized as thus, quoting directly from the license terms:
"[The user] is free to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work", but
only provided that the user: "attribute[s] the work in the manner specified by
the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that [the author or
licensor] endorse[s] [the user] or [the user's] use of the work); [the user]
may not use the work for commercial purposes; [the user] may not alter, transform,
or build upon [the] work."
This license differs significantly from other licenses
that prevent the sharing of an original, creative work; if you are an artist
who willfully uploads his or her music to this website, it is assumed that you
have read and understand the license under which this website distributes your
music to its customers and visitors. A hyperlink to the presently-applicable
license will always be provided in the page footer of every page on this website,
and it is assumed that you accept whatever licensing terms are in effect per
the applicable hyperlink in the footer of each page on this website.
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Your Right to Vary the Terms of the License that Governs Your Music, as the Copyright Holder
We use the most "restrictive" license that we feel constitutes the degree of
freedom required to allow customers to listen to the music they buy on whatever playback device
they choose. If you wish, you may elect to grant any individual rights that extend beyond those granted
in the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported
License under which we distribute your music.
Stated another way, while you cannot
revoke the rights granted to those who purchase and/or download your music from
this website, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative
Works 3.0 Unported License, you may absolutely grant additional rights to any
individual you so choose. While we will not negotiate licensing terms with any
entity on your behalf, we do provide a mechanism by which interested parties
may contact you through your Artist Profile page on this website; you are responsible
for securing any third party's written agreement to abide by whatever terms you
specify in your own dealings with that individual.
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Our Duty to Compensate You for Sales That We Make on Your Behalf
When artists upload their music to this
website, members of the general public are given the opportunity to purchase
the right to download that music an unlimited number of times and use said music
in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative
Works 3.0 Unported License.
If you register as an artist on this website (which
you must do if we are to distribute your music on your behalf), you will be asked
to provide your contact information (or that of an appointed representative).
On the 28th day of each month, we will postmark a paper check in whatever amount
is owed to you at that time.
The amount that is owed to you at the end of each month will be calculated
on a rolling basis (and is updated in real-time after each transaction that we
conduct on your behalf). Before each month begins, we study our website's operational
cost for the month prior and determine what percentage of each sale we will need
to retain for ourselves in order to remain in operation into the upcoming month.
The percentage of each sale that we reserve for site operations will not exceed
10% of the transaction total. Our payment processor charges 2.9% of the transaction
total, plus a flat $0.30, which equates to about 5% for the average customer
transaction amount (between $10 and $20). In consideration of the amounts
that indietorrent.org, LLC and our payment processor withhold from each transaction,
you, as the Artist, will be entitled to approximately 85% of each sale, which is
essentially 100% of the profit; we do not profit from each sale (we only pay our bills).
You can view detailed statistics about
your sales figures/performance at any time from within the My Account area of
this website.
We will send the check to the address (even if the
address is outside of the U.S.) that is provided during the "Request an Artist
Profile" application submission process that any user is able to initiate on
this website.
In addition, we will provide a summary of your transactions, as
well as a detailed/itemized statement of your sales for the month prior.
We cannot
guarantee the timely arrival of the checks that we send to Artists, although,
checks should arrive within the expected delivery time for competitive mailing/shipping
service providers in the United States, such as the United States Postal Service
(though, we do not guarantee that we will use the USPS to send paper checks).
Artists who do not receive checks after a reasonable period of time (three weeks)
are entitled to a replacement check and must contact Customer Care through the
Contact Us area of this website to initiate the re-issuance of the check.
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Your Privacy and Custodian of Records' Requirements
When you create an account on this website, we retain certain information about you. If you create an account
but never buy anything (and never offer any monetary donation to an Artist),
we only keep track of your chosen user name, your account password, and other
data items required to allow you access to your account. If, however, you conduct
any financial transaction on this website, we are forced to retain certain information
about the transaction, for accounting and tax purposes.
Any non-personally-identifiable
information that you provide on this website will be kept indefinitely, and becomes
property of indietorrent.org, LLC at the moment you offer the information. "Non-personally-identifiable
information" is defined as any information from which it would be impossible
for an entity to whom you are unknown to identify you. For example, such information
includes song lyrics that you may have transcribed for the benefit of the indietorrent.org
Community. We consider song lyrics to be non-personally-identifiable and we will
therefore keep the lyrics on-file for as long as this website is in operation,
for the informational benefit of other visitors to this website (Users).
We do
not preserve any association between your personal account identifier (your "user
ID" or "account number") and any non-personally-identifiable information you
submit on this website.
You have the explicit right to review whatever personally-identifiable
(in contrast to non-personally-identifiable) information we have about you at
any time you request. You must direct inquiries for such requests to our offices,
the address for which can be found on-file with the Secretary of State in the
State of California, United States of America.
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Compliance with Law Enforcement Agencies
We may be asked to comply with law enforcement agencies that provide
authentic warrants or other applicable documents in the course of an ongoing
investigation related to activity on this website. We cannot guarantee that governmental
authorities will not access your personal information (including your financial
details, purchase history, content contributions to this website, etc.) without
your knowledge and explicit consent.
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Indemnification
We are not responsible for
any content that is uploaded to this website. This website merely provides the
hardware and program code required for diverse communities of sentient human
beings to share the music that they create with one another. It would be an impossible
task for us to monitor every file, every image, every comment, and every transaction
that occurs on this website. We expect those who use the system we have designed
to govern themselves and behave responsibly and within the confines of established
U.S. Law. indietorrent.org is registered in and is operated from the State of
California, which requires the organization to abide by any applicable laws that
are enforced in the United States of America.
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Removal of "Offensive" Material from this Website
We will take reasonable measures to remove "offensive" material from this website,
but we are in no way obligated to do so unless the presence of said material
is in violation of established U.S. Law. For example, we would consider removing
racist remarks from a user's profile, but we would not be obligated to do so.
In contrast, if a user uploads child pornography as his avatar image, we would
immediately remove the image and report the offender to the authorities.
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