Welcome to the Creative COW web site and online community.

The guiding principle of discourse within Creative COW is maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio: focusing discussion on solving specific problems related to software, hardware, and other issues surrounding professional media production. Accordingly, our primary task is trying to provide an atmosphere conducive to generating:

• Peer-to-peer support for all professional production issues;
• A forum for students and other inexperienced individuals to comfortably engage in discussions;
• A platform for constructive civil disagreements and reasonable criticism toward any products and services (including those offered by Creative COW advertisers and sponsors) as well as other dissenting opinions; and
• A platform safe for members visiting from countries where English may not be their primary language, or their second, third, or maybe even their fourth language. Please, no grammar Nazis, thank you. We ask that you consider this when reading and responding.

In order to achieve these tasks, we require some rules of the road. This Terms of Service and user agreement (the “TOS”) describes the terms on which CREATIVE COW LLC the “COW”) offers you access to www.creativecow.net (the “Site”) and the COW’s services. The TOS is a contract between you (“you” or “user”) and the COW (“we” or “us”) and applies to your entire relationship with the COW and all services that the COW provides (unless subject to another written agreement).

These TOS are an update of our terms that went into effect on February 22, 2012 and which were updated on May 15, 2018 and again on June 1, 2019 for current users. Your continued use of the Site constitutes your acceptance of our changes. If at any time you find the TOS unacceptable, you must cease all use of the Site and under the terms of our Privacy Policy and our adherence to the standards of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you may have yourself and all posts, entries, and all user data related to your presence here removed from the site. For more, please visit our privacy policy and our GDPR pages here in our About Us section of the site. YOU REPRESENT THAT BY USING THE SITE YOU ARE AT LEAST 18 YEARS OF AGE AND THAT YOU ARE LEGALLY ABLE TO ENTER INTO THE TOS.

1. Registration at and Code of Conduct at the COW’s Site. Before using certain of the COW’s services, you must read, agree with, and accept all of the terms and conditions contained in the TOS and the terms and policies link from the TOS, including, without limitation the COW’s Privacy Policy. We strongly recommend that as you read the TOS, you also access and read the linked information. All such policies contained in the linked information, as well as any other policies communicated to and accepted by you, whether by email or other methods (the “Additional Policies”) are incorporated into and made a part of the TOS. Changes to the Additional Policies may be made from time to time and, except for changes to the Privacy Policy, may be without notice. Your continued use of the Site and services shall constitute acceptance of the terms of the Additional Policies, as modified.

If you choose to open an account to access certain of the Site’s services or offerings, to register you will be asked to provide your real name and password. You are entirely responsible for maintaining the security of your password. You may not use the account or password of another persona at any time. You agree to notify the COW immediately upon any unauthorized use of your account or password. The COW shall not be liable for any loss that you incur as a result of someone else using your password or account. You may be held liable for any losses incurred by the COW, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, consultants, agents, and representatives due to someone else’s use of your account or password.

2. User Content. You acknowledge that any post made by you on the Site is public and remains public until you request such information to be deleted from our site. While it is live, you grant the COW a license to use the materials you post to the Site in our blogs and forums. By posting, downloading, displaying, performing, transmitting, streaming, or otherwise distributing information or other content (“User Content”) to the Site, you grant to the COW, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, consultants, agents, and representatives, a right to use the User Content in connection with the operation or promotion of its business (online and offline) and that of its officers, directors, employees, agents, and representatives, including without limitation, the rights to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate, and reformat such User Content. You acknowledge and agree that you will not be compensated for any User Content. You agree that the COW may publish or otherwise disclose your name in connection with your User Content. By posting User Content on the Site, you warrant and represent that you own the rights in and to the User Content or are otherwise authorized to post, distribute, display, perform, transmit, or otherwise distribute User Content.

Creative COW welcomes the participation of any and all companies providing products and services to the professional production industry, without regard to their status as advertisers or sponsors. The COW actively solicits materials that you create for your own purposes, to be reposted on the Site, including tutorials, articles and reviews. The COW reserves the right to accept or decline any submission for any reason or for no reason and to edit any accept material, offering you the opportunity to review and approve the edits prior to posting on the Site. Any tutorials, reviews or other articles for which the COW has paid will be its exclusive property. Unpaid tutorials, reviews or other articles will remain in COW’s library until the author requests its removal in writing, including via email, after which the COW will endeavor to remove such posts as quickly as possible following receipt of such request.

3. Inappropriate Content. You agree that you shall not upload, download, display, perform, transmit, or otherwise distribute any Content that (a) is libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive, or threatening; (b) advocates or encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national, or foreign law or regulation; (c) advertises or otherwise solicits funds or is a solicitation for goods or services or is an attempt to solicit customers or potential customers from other companies; (d) encourages other users to participate in surveys, contests, pyramid schemes, chain letters; and/or (e) contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, corrupted files, or similar software. Additionally you shall not use or employ metatag searches of the Site or utilize TinyURLs which ordinarily are a valuable tool in many circumstances, however, we do not have the resources to individually verify the propriety of their target destinations. The COW reserves the right to terminate your receipt, transmission, or other distribution of any such material using the Site, and if applicable, to delete such material from its servers and/or terminate your account. The COW intends to cooperate fully with any law enforcement officials or agencies in the investigation of any violation of these TOS or any applicable laws.

4. Compliance with Intellectual Property Laws. When accessing the Site, you agree to obey the law and to respect the intellectual property rights of others. The COW respects copyrights and copyright holders.

Your use of the Site is at all times governed by and subject to the laws regarding copyright and intellectual property. You agree not to upload, download, display, perform, transmit, or otherwise distribute information or content (collectively “Content”) in violation of any third party’s rights. You agree to abide by all applicable laws in your use of the Site and you shall be solely responsible for any violations of any relevant laws and for any infringements of third party rights caused by any Content that that is provided or transmitted using your user name and/or password. The burden of proving that any Content does not violate any laws or third party rights rests solely with you. For information about our DMCA Compliance, please see our DMCA Compliance page for details and contact information.

5. Copyright Infringement. The COW has adopted a policy that provides for immediate suspension and/or termination of any user who is found to have infringed the rights of COW or a third party, or otherwise violated any intellectual property laws or regulations. The COW’s policy is to investigate any allegations of copyright infringement brought to its attention. If you have evidence, know, or have a good faith belief that your rights or the rights of a third party have been violated and you want the COW to delete, edit or disable the material in question, you must provide the COW with all of the following information: (a) a physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive right that has been allegedly infringed; (b) identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works; (c) identification of the material that is claimed to be infringed or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the COW to locate the material; (d) information reasonable sufficient to permit the COW to contact you, such as an address, telephone number, and if available, an electronic mail address at which you may be contacted; (e) a statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and (f) a statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. For this notification to be effective, you must provide it to the COW’s designated agent at:

Benjamin A. Costa
Ridder, Costa & Johnstone LLP
12 Geary St., Ste 701
San Francisco, CA 94108
Email: ben[at]rcjlawgroup.com
Tel: (415) 391-3311
Fax: (415) 358-4975.

6. ALLEGED VIOLATIONS. You agree that the COW or its representatives may access your account and records on a case-by-case basis to investigate complaints or allegations of abuse, infringement of third party rights, or other unauthorized uses of the Site. The COW does not intent to disclose the existence or occurrence of such an investigation unless required by law, but the COW reserves the right to terminate your account or your access to the Site or certain of its materials immediately, with or without notice to you, and without liability to you, if the COW believes that you have violated any of the TOS, furnished the COW with false or misleading information, or interfered with the use of the Site by others.

7. NO WARRANTIES. THE COW HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES. THE COW IS MAKING THE SITE AND ALL MATERIALS CONTAINED WITHIN THE SITE AVAILABLE STRICTLY ON AN “AS IS” BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. YOU ASSUME THE RISK OF ANY AND ALL DAMAGE OR LOSS FROM THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SITE. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE COW EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, REGARDING THE SITE AND THE MATERIALS CONTAINED WITHIN THE SITE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NONINFRINGEMENT. THE COW DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SITE OR THE MATERIALS CONTAINED WITH THE SITE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS OR THAT THE OPERATION OF THE SITE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE.

8. LIMITATION OF LIABILTY. THE COW’S LIABILITY TO YOU IS LIMITED. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COW BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES OF ANY KIND (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, LOST PROFITS, OR LOST DATA, REGARDLESS OF THE FORESEEABILITY OF THOSE DAMAGES) ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECITON WITH YOUR USE OF THE SITE OR ANY OTHER MATERIALS OR SERVICES PROVIDED TO YOU BY THE COW. This limitation shall apply regardless of whether the damages arise out of breach of contract, tort, or any other legal theory or form of action.

9. AFFILIATED SITES. The COW has no control over, and no liability for any third party web sites or materials. The COW works with a number of third party affiliates whose web sites may be linked with the Site. Because neither the COW nor the Site has control over the content and performance of these affiliate sites, the COW makes no guarantees about the accuracy, currency, content, or quality of the information provided by such sites, and the COW assumes no responsibility for unintended, objectionable, inaccurate, misleading, or unlawful content that may reside on those sites. Similarly, from time to time in connection with your use of the Site, you may have access to content items (including, but not limited to web sites) that are owned by third parties. You acknowledge and agree that the COW makes no guarantees about, and assumes no responsibility for, the accuracy, currency, content or quality of this third party content, and that, unless expressly provided otherwise, these TOS shall govern your use of any and all third party content.

10. PROHIBITED USES. The COW imposes certain restrictions on your permissible use of the Site. You are prohibited from violating or attempting to violate any security features of the Site, including without limitation, (a) accessing content or data not intended for you, or logging onto an account or server that you are not authorized to access; (b) attempting to probe, scan, or test the vunerability of the Site or any associated system or network, or to breach security or authentication measures without proper authorization; (c) interfering or attempting to interfere with service to any user, host, or network, including, without limitation, by means of submitting a virus to the Site, overloading, “flooding,” “spamming,” “mail bombing,” or “crashing;” (d) using the Site to send unsolicited email, including, without limitation, promotions, or advertisements for products or services; (e) forging any TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in any email or in any posting using the Site or related services; and/or (f) attempting to modify, reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise reduce or attempt to reduce to human- perceivable form any of the source code used by The COW in providing the Site. Any violation of system of network security may subject you to civil and/or criminal liability.

11. INDEMNITY. You agree to indemnify the COW for certain of your acts and omissions. You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the COW, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, consultants, agents, and representatives from any and all third party claims, losses, liability, damages, and/or costs (including reasonable attorneys fees and costs) arising from your access to or use of the Site, your violation of these TOS, or your infringement, or infringement by any other user of your account, of any intellectual property or other right of any person or entity. The COW will notify you promptly of any such claim, loss, liability, or demand, and will provide you with reasonable assistance, at your expense, in defending such claim, loss, liability, damage, or cost.

12. GOVERNING LAW. These TOS shall be construed in accordance with and governed by the laws of the United States and the State of California, without reference to their rules regarding conflicts of laws. You hereby irrevocably consent to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state or federal courts in San Francisco, California, USA in all disputes arising out of or relating to the use of the Site.

13. SEVERABILITY; SUBJECT HEADINGS; WAIVER. If, for whatever reason, a court of competent jurisdiction finds any term or condition in these TOS to be unenforceable, all other terms and conditions will remain unaffected and in full force and effect. The subject heading at the beginning of the paragraphs in the TOS are for reference purposes only and in no way define, limit, construe or describe the scope or extent of such paragraph. No waiver of any breach of any provision of these TOS shall constitute a waiver of any prior, concurrent, or subsequent breach of the same or any other provisions hereof, and no waiver shall be effective unless made in writing and signed by and authorized representative of the waiving party.

14. NO LICENSE. Nothing contained on the Site should be understood as granting you a license to use any of the trademarks, service marks , or logos owned by the COW or by any third party.

15. MODIFICATIONS. The COW may, in its sole discretion and without prior notice, (a) revise these TOS; (b) modify the Site and/or any services or other offerings; (c) discontinue the Site, any or all services and/or offerings at any time. No amendment, modification or supplement of any provision of these TOS will be valid or effective unless made in accordance with express terms of the TOS.

16. ENTIRE AGREEMENT. These TOS (and all documents incorporated by reference) constitutes the entire agreement between the parties pertaining to the subject matter hereof and supersedes all prior agreements and understanding between the parties hereto with respect to the subject matter hereof, whether written or oral.

17. ASSIGNMENT. The COW may assign or transfer the TOS at any time. You may not assign or transfer the TOS, or any rights or obligations without the prior written consent of the COW, which we can refuse in our sole discretion. Nothing in these TOS is intended to confer benefits, rights, or remedies unto any person or entity other than the parties hereto and their successors and permitted assigns.

18. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. BY USING OR ACCESSING THE SITE, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ THESE TERMS OF USE AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THEM.

Please contact us should you have a question of site policy that is not answered in our Terms of Service. — Creative COW