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Independent Film Awards Terms of Service Agreement

 

Last Updated: 11 May 2020

 

This IFA Terms of Service Agreement (the “Agreement” or “Terms of Service”) is made between Independent Film Awards (“IFA,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) and you, our customer (“you” or “your”). This Agreement governs your use of IFA owned-and-operated websites, applications, and embeddable video players (collectively, the “Services”). This includes our IFA website, IFA film festivals, and IFA Film Club.

 

1. Acceptance

 

By creating an account, viewing videos, or otherwise visiting or using our Services, you accept this Agreement and consent to contract with us electronically.

 

If you are an entity other than a natural person, the person who registers the account or otherwise uses our Services must have the authority to bind the entity. In this context, “you” means both the entity and each person who is authorized to access the account.

 

We may update this Agreement by posting a revised version on our website. By continuing to use our Services, you accept any revised Agreement.

 

This Agreement includes our Privacy Policy. Please review our Privacy Policy to learn about the information we collect from you, how we use it, and with whom we share it.

 

2. Accounts

 

Registration: You may create an account to use certain features we offer (e.g. utilising Film Club or purchasing event tickets). To do so, you must provide an email address. By creating an account, you agree to receive notices from IFA at this email address.

 

Age Requirements: You must be at least 16 years old or the applicable age of majority in your jurisdiction, whichever is greater, to create an account or otherwise use our Services. If you wish to use the Services for a commercial purpose, you must be at least 18 years old. Individuals under the applicable age may use our Services only through a parent or legal guardian’s account and with their involvement. Please have that person read this Agreement with you and consent to it before proceeding.

 

Parents and Guardians: By granting your child permission to use the Services through your account, you agree and understand that you are responsible for monitoring and supervising your child's usage. If you believe your child is using your account and does not have your permission, please contact us immediately so that we can disable access.

 

Account Security: You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account, including unauthorized activity. You must safeguard the confidentiality of your account credentials. If you are using a computer that others have access to, you must log out of your account after each session. If you become aware of unauthorized access to your account, you must change your password and notify us immediately.

 

3. Copyright Policy

 

You may only submit content for review by IFA that you have the right to upload and share. You must also be the copyright owner of content that you agree to be displayed on the IFA Film Club. Submitters are personally liable for copyright infringement and IFA take no responsibility for submitters’ copyright infringements. Copyright owners may send IFA a takedown notice if they believe IFA is hosting infringing materials. We will, in appropriate circumstances, terminate the accounts of persons who infringe.

 

4. How We Use Your Data

 

We may use your data for the following purposes:

 

  • Identification and authentication: We use your data to verify you when you access your account.

  • Operating our services: We use your data to provide our services, process and fulfill orders, provide customer support, and to otherwise comply with our contractual obligations to you. We (and/or our third-party vendors) use your financial information to process purchases made by you and to pay you amounts you have earned.

  • Communicating with you: We use your data when we communicate with you (e.g., when we respond to a customer support or other inquiry).

  • Improving our services: We use your data to understand how our services are being used and how we can improve them. In general, we analyse aggregated data, rather than specific user data. We may, however, need to analyse a specific case to address a specific problem (e.g., a bug that affects only a few accounts).

  • Customizing your experience: We use your data to personalize the service to you. This may include remembering your preferences for language or volume or displaying videos that you might enjoy, based upon your viewing choices.

  • Marketing and advertising: We use your data to show you ads on third-party sites and to send you offers. We may also use your data in delivering third-party advertisements to you. This may include "targeted ads" based upon your activities.

  • Exercising our rights: Where reasonably necessary, we use your data to exercise our legal rights and prevent abuse of our service. For example, we may use your data to detect and prevent fraud, spam, or content that violates our Terms of Service.

  • Legal compliance: We use your data where we are legally required to do so. For example, we may need to gather your data to respond to a subpoena or court order.

  • Protecting your information: Where appropriate, we may anonymize, backup, and delete certain data.

 

We may use algorithms and other automated means to implement any of the above.

 

Whenever we process your data for one of these purposes, we have determined that one or more of the following lawful bases apply:

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  • Performance of a contract;

  • Legitimate commercial interest;

  • Compliance with a legal obligation; or

  • Consent

 

5. With Whom We Share Your Data

 

We share data with third parties as follows:

 

  • As you instruct: We may make your profile and videos available to others as you instruct in using our services. We may share your data with persons to whom you have granted account-level access.

  • With your consent: We may share your data with third parties where we have obtained your express consent to do so.

  • Authorized vendors: We may share your data with third-party vendors that help us operate our services, process orders, and comply with your instructions and our contractual obligations. This includes payment processors, content delivery networks (CDNs), cloud-based hosting services, monitoring services, email service providers, quality assurance and testing vendors, fraud and abuse prevention vendors, customer relations management (CRM) vendors, and shipment vendors.

  • Advertising: We may share your data with advertising companies to display relevant ads to you.

  • Analytics: We may share your data with analytics providers which help us understand how customers are using our services.

  • Affiliates and advisors: We may share your data with our auditors and advisors for planning, financial reporting, accounting, auditing, tax filings, and legal compliance. We may share your data with our affiliates to the extent necessary to provide you with the services ordered.

  • Certain legal situations: We may share your data where we believe disclosure is necessary to comply with a legal obligation or in connection with a corporate transaction as discussed in Section 6.

  • Aggregated or anonymized information: We may publicly disclose non-personal aggregated or anonymized information such as our number of visitors and registered users.

 

We use reasonable efforts to vet vendors for their privacy and data security practices. We require that such vendors agree to protect the data we share.

 

6. Data Retention

 

We retain your data for as long as you have an account. When you close an account, we will delete its content, including associated videos. We may retain logs of automatically collected information (for internal analytics and security purposes); your email address; your tax information; communications with you; and your transactional information (for auditing, tax, and financial purposes). When we no longer have a business reason for retaining data, we will delete or anonymize it.

 

Once we delete a video, we may not be able to recover it. 

 

If we receive legal process pertaining to your account, we will retain your data for as long as we in good faith believe is necessary to comply with the legal process. Similarly, if we believe that your account has been involved in wrongdoing, we may preserve your data to defend or assert our rights.

 

7. Content Restrictions

 

You may not submit any content that:

 

  • Infringes any third party’s copyrights or other rights (e.g., trademark, privacy rights, etc.);

  • Is hateful, defamatory, or discriminatory or incites hatred against any individual or group;

  • Promotes or supports terror or hate groups;

  • Exploits minors;

  • Depicts unlawful acts or extreme violence;

  • Provides instructions on how to assemble explosive/incendiary devices or homemade/improvised firearms;

  • Depicts animal cruelty or extreme violence towards animals;

  • Promotes fraudulent or dubious business schemes or proposes an unlawful transaction;

  • Makes false or misleading claims about vaccination safety;

  • Claims that mass tragedies are hoaxes or false flag operations;

  • Encourages self-harm and suicide; or

  • Violates any applicable law.

 

IFA respects creative expression above all else. Therefore, we allow depictions of nudity, sexuality and sensitive issues that serve a clear creative, artistic, aesthetic, or narrative purpose. Such works must be marked by the filmmaker at the appropriate British Board of Film Classification rating.  

 

8. Prohibited Technical Measures

 

You will not:

 

  • Except as authorized by law or as permitted by us: scrape, reproduce, redistribute, create derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, alter, archive, or disassemble any part of our Services; or attempt to circumvent any of our security, rate-limiting, filtering, or digital rights management measures;

  • Submit any malicious program, script, or code;

  • Submit an unreasonable number of requests to our servers; or

  • Take any other actions to manipulate, interfere with, or damage our Services.

 

9. Restricted Users

 

You may not create an account or otherwise interact with IFA if you are a member of a terror or hate group. You may not purchase any goods or services from us if you reside in a country subject to a comprehensive UK sanctions program. 

 

10. Licenses Granted by You

 

As between you and IFA, you own and will retain ownership of all intellectual property rights in and to the content you submit. In order to allow IFA to host and stream your content, you grant IFA the permission to stream the video to end users. The license period begins when you submit the video to IFA and ends when you or IFA delete it.

 

11. Representations and Warranties

 

For each piece of content that you submit to IFA, you represent and warrant that:

 

  • You have the right to submit the content to IFA and grant the licenses herein;

  • IFA will not need to obtain licenses from any third party or pay royalties to any third party with respect to the streaming or other permitted distribution of the content;

  • You have obtained appropriate releases (if necessary) from all persons who appear in the content;

  • The content does not, and will not, infringe any third party's rights, including intellectual property rights, rights of publicity, moral rights, and privacy rights; and

  • The content complies with this Agreement and all applicable laws.

 

12. Term and Termination

 

This Agreement begins when you first use our Services and continues so long as you use our Service or have an account with us, whichever is longer. 

 

If you breach this Agreement, IFA may, at its option: (a) terminate this Agreement immediately, with or without advance written notice; (b) suspend, delete, or limit access to your account or any content within it; and (c) to the extent permitted by applicable law, retain any amounts payable to you (which you forfeit). If IFA deletes your account for breach, you may not re-register.

 

13. Limitation of Liability

 

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW: (A) IFA SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS, PROFITS, GOODWILL, DATA, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, EVEN IF IFA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES; AND (B) IFA'S TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU, EXCEPT FOR IFA’S CONTRACTUAL PAYMENT OBLIGATIONS HEREUNDER (IF ANY), SHALL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNTS PAID BY YOU TO IFA OVER THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING YOUR CLAIM(S) OR FIFTY POUNDS (£50 GBP), WHICHEVER IS GREATER.

 

Notices: You must send any notices of a legal nature to us by email.

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