Terms of use

The use of this web site constitutes acceptance of these Terms of Use:

1. File sharing, hiring, buying and/or selling through the RiffTrader.com music collaboration system is available only to individuals who can form legally binding contracts under applicable law.
   
2. RiffTrader.com reserves the right to modify the terms of use at any time and without prior notice to its users. The service may be temporarily unavailable from time to time for maintenance or other reasons.
3. RiffTrader.com is not involved in any transaction between any parties who use the site.
4. If there is a dispute between participants on this site, RiffTrader.com is under no obligation to become involved. In the event that users have a dispute with one or more users, users hereby release RiffTrader.com, their officers, employees, agents and successors in rights from claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind or nature, known or unknown, suspected and unsuspected, disclosed and undisclosed, arising out of or in any way related to such disputes and/or our service.
5. The RiffTrader.com music collaboration system and classified ads service may be used only for lawful purposes. Transmission, distribution or storage of material or conduct in violation of any applicable local, state, federal or foreign law or regulation is prohibited. This includes without limitation any unauthorized use of material protected by patent, copyright, trademark or other intellectual property right, material that is obscene, defamatory or libelous, constitutes an illegal threat, or violates rights of privacy or publicity, or violates export control laws. You may use the information on our site only to the extent necessary to facilitate RiffTrader.com related transactions.
6. RiffTrader.com strongly opposes spam, which floods the internet with unwanted and unsolicited email and deteriorates the performance and availability of the RiffTrader.com service. All forms of spam, and all activities that have the effect of facilitating spam, are strictly prohibited.
7. If RiffTrader.com, in its sole discretion, determines that a violation of the terms of use has occurred, RiffTrader.com may pursue any of its legal remedies, including but not limited to the immediate deletion of any offending material from its site, cancellation of the user's account and/or the exclusion of any person(s) who may have violated any terms of use. RiffTrader.com could also pursue violators with claims that they have violated various criminal and/or civil laws as applied by the relevant jurisdiction. RiffTrader.com will cooperate with any investigation by any federal, state, or local body or any court or tribunal legitimately exercising its rights. Such cooperation may be without notice to the user. If RiffTrader.com believes in its sole discretion that any ad may create liability for RiffTrader.com, RiffTrader.com may take any actions that it believes are prudent or necessary to minimize or eliminate its potential liability, including but not limited to, the release of user information. In sum, RiffTrader.com reserves the right to refuse service to anyone at any time, and to remove any listings or any advertisements for any reason, and without notice.
8. User understands and agrees that user is responsible for all applicable taxes and for all costs that are incurred in using the RiffTrader.com classified ads service. We may also, in our sole discretion, add or delete fees associated with the service.
9. Disclaimer of warranties. Users agree that use of the service is at user's sole risk. The service is provided on an "as is" and on an "as available" basis. RiffTrader.com expressly disclaims all warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.
10. RiffTrader.com makes no warranty that the service will meet user's requirements, that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error free; nor does RiffTrader.com make any warranty as to the results that may be obtained from the use of the service or as to the accuracy or reliability of any information obtained from the service.
11. User understands and agrees that any information or material and/or goods or services obtained through the service is done at user's own discretion and risk and that user will be solely responsible for any damage resulting from any transaction.
12. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by user from RiffTrader.com or through or from the service shall create any warranty.
13. Limitation of liability. User agrees that neither RiffTrader.com nor any of its providers of information shall be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, resulting from the use or the inability to use the service or for cost of procurement of substitute goods and services or resulting from any goods, data, information or services purchased or obtained or messages received or transactions entered into through or from the service or resulting from unauthorized access to or alteration of user's transmissions or data or arising from any other matter relating to the service, including but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, use, data or other intangible, even if RiffTrader.com has been advised of the possibility of such damages. User further agrees that RiffTrader.com shall not be liable for any damages arising from interruption, suspension or termination of service, including but not limited to direct, indirect, incidental, special consequential or exemplary damages, whether such interruption, suspension or termination was justified or not, negligent or intentional, inadvertent or advertent. User agrees that RiffTrader.com shall not be responsible or liable to user, or anyone, for the statements or conduct of any third party of the service. In sum, in no event shall RiffTrader.com's total liability to users for all damages, losses, and causes of action exceed the amount paid by user to RiffTrader.com, if any, that is related to the cause of action.
14. Some jurisdictions do not allow the limitation or exclusion of warranties or of liability for incidental or consequential damages so some of the above limitations may not apply to you. This does not eliminate the balance of stated limitations.
15. Users maintain full copyright of all music and lyric content uploaded to the site, whether displayed or secure. User grants RiffTrader.com only those rights necessary to display the ads, projects and listings in the manner originally executed by the user. User grants RiffTrader.com the right to utilize posted photos, and descriptive text in promotional efforts it may undertake, excepting of course, the actual musical and lyrical content, the copyright of which remains uncompromised and controlled by the owner of such works.
16. No resale or unauthorized commercial use. You agree not to resell or assign your rights or obligations under these terms of use. You also agree not to make any unauthorized commercial use of the service.
17. Others' information. You agree not to make use of anyone else's information other than as necessary to complete any RiffTrader.com transactions in which you are involved.
18. No agency. There is no agency, partnership, joint venture, employee-employer or franchiser-franchisee relationship between RiffTrader.com and any user of the service.
19. Notice. Any notice to you or to us shall be made by either email or regular mail. We may also give notice of changes to these terms of use or other matters related to RiffTrader.com by displaying notices to users on the service, like on this page.
20. This agreement is the complete and exclusive agreement between the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof, superseding any prior agreements and or communications regarding such subject matter. This agreement may only be modified, or any rights under it waived, by a written document executed by both parties.
21. These terms of use and the relationship between user and RiffTrader.com shall be governed by the laws of the state of Washington without regard to its conflict of law provisions. User and RiffTrader.com agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located within the county of King, Washington.
22. The failure of RiffTrader.com to exercise or enforce any right or provision of these terms of use shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any provision of these terms of use is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of these terms of use shall remain in full force and effect.
23. User agrees that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of the service or these terms of use must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred.
24. The section titles in these terms of use are for convenience only and have no legal or contractual effect.

RiffTrader.com respects the privacy of visitors to our site. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully so that you understand our privacy practices.

Questions regarding privacy issues should be directed to RiffTrader.com at .

Children should always get permission from their parents before sending any information about themselves (such as their names, email addresses, and phone numbers) over the Internet, to us or to anyone else. We won't knowingly allow anyone under 13 to register with any of our sites or to provide any other personally identifying information.

The information gathered by RiffTrader.com falls into two categories: (1) information voluntarily supplied by visitors to our websites when they register or initiate transactions, and (2) tracking information gathered as visitors navigate through our sites. Third party providers featured on or linked to by our websites, such as vendors of products and services offered through our sites, may be gathering the same kinds of information.

To make use of certain features on our websites (such as LockBox, RiffTrader Direct, RiffCity Forums) visitors need to register and to provide certain information as part of the registration process. We may also ask for information from those who buy products or services or conduct other transactions on our websites. (We may ask, for example, for your name, email address, sex, age, zip code or credit card number, and we might request information on your interest in the performing arts, and the like.) The information you supply will help us to offer you more personalized features, to tailor our sites to your interests and make them more useful to you, and to process e-commerce transactions.

From time to time, we may offer contests, sweepstakes or other promotions on our sites. If you enter one of these promotions, you'll have to provide information about yourself (such as your name, address, telephone number and email address) so that we can contact you if you win. We may share this information with any co-sponsor of the promotion, which we will identify in the official rules. If you don't want us to collect the information requested in the registration form or to provide it to contest co-sponsors, please do not enter the contest or sweepstakes.

Of course, even if you want to remain completely anonymous, you're still free to take advantage of the wealth of content available on our sites without registration.

To help make our sites more responsive to the needs of our visitors, we invoke a standard feature of browser software, called a "cookie," to assign each visitor a unique, random number, a sort of user ID, if you will, that resides on your computer. The cookie doesn't actually identify the visitor, just the computer that a visitor uses to access our site. Unless you voluntarily identify yourself (through registration, for example), we won't know who you are, even if we assign a cookie to your computer. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply. A cookie can't read unrelated data off your hard drive. Our advertisers and the third parties that provide products or services through our sites may also assign their own cookies to your browser, a process that we don't control.

We use cookies to help us tailor our site to your needs, to deliver a better, more personalized service. In addition, we may use cookies to track the pages on our sites visited by our users. We can build a better site if we know which pages our users are visiting and how often. Of course, you can set your browser not to accept cookies, but if you do, you may not be able to take advantage of the personalized features enjoyed by other visitors to our sites.

Our web servers automatically collect limited information about your computer's connection to the Internet, including your IP address, when you visit our sites. (Your IP address is a number that lets computers attached to the Internet know where to send you data -- such as the web pages you view.) Your IP address does not identify you personally to us. We use this information to deliver our web pages to you upon request, to tailor our sites to the interests of our users, and to measure traffic within our sites.

To make our sites more valuable to our visitors, we offer some features in conjunction with other providers. And, of course, our sites include links to plenty of other websites, and provide access to products and services offered by third parties, whose privacy policies we don't control. When you access another website or purchase products or services or conduct other transactions through our websites, use of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the site you're visiting or the provider of such products or services. And when you provide information in the course of obtaining products or services through one of our sites, use of any information you provide may be governed by the privacy policy of the provider of those products or services, even if it appears that you're on RiffTrader-branded pages throughout the transaction. The provider's privacy policy may differ from ours. If you can't find the privacy policy of any of our provider partners via a link either from the site's homepage or from the pages on which the products or services are offered, you should contact the provider directly for more information.

We may occasionally release information about our visitors when release is appropriate to comply with law, to enforce our Visitor Agreement, or to protect the rights, property or safety of visitors to our sites, the public, or RiffTrader.com. As our business grows, we may buy or sell various assets. In the unlikely event that RiffTrader.com, the bulk of our assets, or one or more of our sites is acquired by another company, information on our visitors would be among the transferred assets.

A final note: The Web is an evolving medium. If we need to change our privacy policy at some point in the future, we'll post the changes before they take effect. By visiting any of our sites, you agree that your visit, and any dispute over our privacy practices, is governed by this Privacy Policy and our Visitor Agreement.

Protect Your Copyright

In this day and age, creative freedom isn't as easy as it sounds. There are many frauds who do enjoy posing as creative thinkers, by stealing other people's work. This is why we urge musicians and lyricists to copyright all work before submitting it to the site. There are two different ways to go about this.

a. Send copies of all original work to yourself via certified mail. Simply go to the post office and fill out a certified mail form addressing all work to your home, p.o. box, or private mailbox. If you want to be extra secure, include a letter within your package explaining that the work enclosed is yours and yours only. Be sure to date and sign inside the package as well as all copies of your work. Also, ask your local postmaster to certify your package as a "return receipt" package. This will allow you to sign for the delivery of your package, and have the receipt sent back through the post office and sent to your home. Have as many different signatures as possible to back up your claim.

b. The previously explained way is rather inexpensive, and effective. But if you want to officially copyright your work, you can do this by visiting the United States Copyright Office website at http://www.loc.gov/copyright/. This is where you can obtain the "how to copyright" information. The procedures are relatively simple. You have to send them a copyright application (attainable at the website), a copy of your work, as well as a filing fee. Here is their contact information.

Public Information Office:
(202) 707-3000

Forms and Publications Hotline:
(202) 707-9100

Protect your art with the law!

Please help us keep the RiffTrader.com site an enjoyable experience for all users, if you observe material or behavior that may violate one of the RiffTrader.com terms of use, please contact RiffTrader.com.