Legal Mumbo Jumbo

CORNERSTONE MEDIA GROUP TERMS OF SERVICE

Okay. So this is a legal document thingy that tells you all about why we started this website and what you can and can’t do. It is kind of like a dictatorship or that teacher who told you that you can only come to class if you wear pants. Sorry if you don’t like the terms. If you really don’t like the terms, then you can go start your own website, classroom, or oppressed nation. Sky is the limit. But if you are going to use the site, and are over the age of 13, here is what you are agreeing to:

1. Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
Cornerstone Media Group, Inc. (also known as “CMG” because writing Cornerstone Media Group, Inc. over and over is tiresome) is a website that has content related to – you guessed it – marketing and media. The site is maintained by a few different people who are all part of the Basement Mailroom Department and at times may be referred to as “we”, “us”, “CSMediaGroup.com”, or “their lordships” (that last one was just to go along with that dictator reference from earlier). People who are viewing this website are referred to as “you”, “hey you”, “whats-his/her-face”, “friend”, or, where appropriate, “scumbag” (only if you are being bad).

2. Oh no you didn’t…
We want to be friends, like the kind that have secret handshakes and don’t try to date my sister. Friends also protect each other from doing something bad, annoying, or will forever haunt them on the internet. So while we are engaging this friendship on CSMediaGroup.com, these are some rules that you have to follow for us to stay friends and continue to use the website:

• Don’t date our sisters, unless we give you our permission.
• Don’t try to hack your way into our secure mainframes or give us viruses (real or electronic).
• Don’t post your spam on our site or try to sell your useless stuff. This isn’t craigslist.
• Don’t post like an evil robot does. That means using incomprehensible sentences or writing something that is not related to the content or other comments.
• Don’t submit or post things that you don’t have legal rights or permissions for. You may have to go to jail or pay some lawyer for something you did on the website. Take a look at the boring “Contributor Responsibilities” below for more information on this.
• Don’t post anything pornographic, sexually explicit, or reference illegal goods or services.
• Don’t be someone who discriminates, hates, defrauds, blackmails or acts like a scumbag.

By using the website, you agree to the rules and can enjoy our friendship. If not, we reserve the right to delete your account, take you to court, or toilet paper your house (whichever seems suiting). Our failure to enforce against one person is not a waiver to enforce our rights at any time for the same or different offenses.

It is wise not to share your secrets like passwords with untrusted/shady individuals. By creating an account on the website, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and its content. You are also responsible for all actions taken in connection to the website for your account. By submitting, commenting, uploading, or sending content to CMG, you give us permission to use that content on our website and affiliated sites. Please ensure that anything submitted does not violate any regulations such as HIPPA, GLB, EU Data Privacy Laws, or other laws.

3. Mom said “don’t take something that doesn’t belong to you.”
This stuff is ours so don’t steal it. By stuff, we mean all of the articles, advice, pictures, videos, graphics, code, and anything else we produce (altogether known as “Content”). All of this content is protected anyways, such as by the US Copyright Law 17 USCA Section 107 and by some voodoo magic, so don’t even think about it. If you are giving us content for our website (thanks again, by the way), you are promising that you got it legally and not from some “guy who knows a guy”. You also pinky swear that you have permission to use it the way it was intended to be used and for us to use. If not, you may be responsible for anything bad that happens to us, our vendors, our advertisers, our pets, or our agents. Plus, we’ll ban you from the site. If you aren’t sure what “having permission” or “legally obtained” means, then the boring Contributor Responsibilities section below may help.

Because you are giving us the content, you are also giving us the right to use the content via a license to use it how we please. That means that we can take the content and do whatever we want with it, such as display it where we want, create derivative works from it, or use it when we are trying to impress other people. Also, you agree that these licenses granted are royalty-free, perpetual, sublicenseable, irrevocable, and worldwide.

Contributor Responsibilities:

If you operate an account, comment on a screenshot, post material to the Website, post links on the Website, or otherwise make (or allow any third party to make) material available by means of the Website (any such material, Content), You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content. That is the case regardless of whether the Content in question constitutes text or graphics. By making Content available, you represent and warrant that:

The downloading, copying and use of the Content will not infringe the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret rights, of any third party; if your employer has rights to intellectual property you create, you have either (i) received permission from your employer to post or make available the Content, including but not limited to any software, or (ii) secured from your employer a waiver as to all rights in or to the Content; you have fully complied with any third-party licenses relating to the Content, and have done all things necessary to successfully pass through to end users any required terms; the Content does not contain or install any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content; the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing); the Content is not obscene, libelous or defamatory, hateful or racially or ethnically objectionable, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party; your account is not getting advertised via unwanted electronic messages such as spam links on newsgroups, email lists, other blogs and web sites, and similar unsolicited promotional methods; your account is not named in a manner that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company. For example, your account’s URL or name is not the name of a person other than yourself or company other than your own; and you have, in the case of Content that includes computer code, accurately categorized and/or described the type, nature, uses and effects of the materials, whether requested to do so by RGE or otherwise. If you believe that some of our content has been jacked from its rightful owner without permission, and thus violates copyright laws or intellectual property laws, then please send us a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) notice. You can do this by contacting us through our contact form on the website. Please include “DMCA NOTICE” as the subject line and tell us the name of the copyright owner, the title (and preferably URL) of the work being infringed, and the location of the infringing material on our site within the body of your message. In addition to that, you also need to include the following statement and an electronic signature:

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. The information in this notification is accurate and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

4. We’re not in Kansas anymore…
Our website contains links to other websites that we do not control. We’d like to control those websites, but usually they are a lot bigger than us and we haven’t yet mastered “the force” from Star Wars. These sites include, but are not limited to, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. We have no responsibility over the content found on those third party websites and so if you have any beef with those sites you will have to take it up with them.

Also, IF YOU ARE IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES, then welcome, bonjour, hola, gutentag… We are going to transfer your information from our country to yours if requested.

5. The suit looks good on our Suit…
By “Suit”, we mean lawyer – and we have a whole slew of them willing to go all Westside Story for us. However, we’d like to resolve any disputes like gentlemen. So, if you have a problem you will first come to us and tell us about it. If we cannot resolve the problem on our own, then we can let the legal system figure it out. Sometimes people mutually agree to stuff that courts just won’t uphold. That shouldn’t affect the intent of our contract, though, so you agree that if a judge declares a portion of these Terms of Service of no effect, the rest of the Terms of Service will stay in effect as much as is still possible without the part that the judge struck down. And speaking of courts and judges, the court will be in the fine state of Georgia USA, where southern hospitality runs rampant on the streets, and also where this contract is controlled by state law. The winner of any dispute or lawsuit is entitled to have their attorneys’ fees and costs paid for by the loser, plus one glass of Southern Mint Tea for the road.

6. SORRY FOR YELLING…
SOMEONE TOLD US THAT WE NEED TO PUT THIS PORTION IN ALL CAPS. WE CAN’T GUARANTEE THAT OUR SITE WON’T BREAK YOUR COMPUTER OR THAT YOU’LL FIND IT AMUSING OR THAT IT WILL HELP YOU BECOME A BETTER EMAIL PERSON. WE WILL TRY OUR BEST, BUT THAT IS ALL YOU GET. YOU ARE VIEWING THIS SITE “AS-IS”, SO IF SOMETHING TERRIBLE AND CATASTROPHIC HAPPENS BECAUSE YOU VIEWED OUR SITE, YOU CAN’T SUE US OR ANYONE THAT IS CONNECTED TO US. IF YOU ARE IN CALIFORNIA, WE ALSO NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE LAW THAT SAYS IF YOU GIVE UP YOUR “GENERAL” RIGHTS TO CLAIMS YOU DON’T HAVE TO GIVE UP YOUR RIGHTS TO CLAIMS THAT YOU COULDN’T HAVE KNOWN ABOUT. BUT BECAUSE THIS IS OUR CONTRACT, WE ARE TELLING YOU THAT WE ARE DISCLAIMING ALL WARRANTIES AND LIABILITY FOR ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING, WHETHER OR NOT WE KNEW OR SHOULD HAVE BEEN PSYCHIC AND KNOWN. THUS, IF WE END UP BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR SOMETHING, WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR PAYING FOR THAT SOMETHING. WE WILL ONLY PAY YOU WHAT YOU PAID US IN THE PAST MONTH OR $50 – WHATEVER IS SMALLER. IF YOU ARE FROM A WEIRD STATE THAT SAYS YOU CAN’T HAVE PROVISIONS LIKE THIS IN A CONTRACT, OR THAT WE CAN’T LIMIT WHAT WE PAY, THEN OUR DAMAGES ARE LIMITED TO THE SMALLEST AMOUNT DEEMED BY THE LAW. WOMP WOMP!

7. Misc.Things
Headings to these Terms of Service sections are meant to be for entertainment purposes only and have no binding effect. We can transfer our rights and obligations in this agreement whenever we want but you are prohibited to assign any of your rights under this agreement to anyone else. We won’t be held liable for any delays or failure in performance of any part of the Service, from any cause beyond our control. This includes, but is not limited to, acts of God, changes to law or regulations, embargoes, war, terrorist acts, riots, fires, earthquakes, nuclear accidents, zombie apocalypse, floods, strikes, power blackouts, volcanic action, unusually severe weather conditions, and acts of hackers or third-party internet service providers. Also, please don’t be a scumbag.