User Agreement for HipHop-Battles.com
This User Agreement ("Agreement") is a contract between you and HipHop-Battles.com (hereinafter referred to as "we", "our", "us" or “HHB” as appropriate). Our main business is the provision of a free platform for the publishing of self produced music, graphics and text. This Agreement describes your and our rights and responsibilities for using the HHB service and / or any related products and services that we offer (collectively the "Service").
As HHB is constantly evolving and we are adding additional features and benefits from time to time. This makes it necessary for us to be able to amend the following Agreement and policies to reflect these changes. We may amend this Agreement and policies at any time by posting the amended terms on our site. All amended terms shall be effective after they are posted on our site.
1. Eligibility.
In order to use the Service, you must register for a user account. In order to publish music, graphics or text you need to unlock your user account separately for certain areas of HHB. You are only allowed to hold one user account. Our Services are only available to individuals that can form legally binding contracts under applicable law. Our Service is not available to individuals under the age of 18 years without approval of their legal guardian. We may refuse to provide our Service, change the qualifications for your use of the Service and/or terminate this Agreement with you at any time on giving you notice by email, such notice to take immediate effect.
2. The Legal Relationship between You and HHB
2.1. Rights regarding your published content on HHB
(sound recordings, compositions, graphics, texts and other contents)
a. With the respective publication of contents on Hiphop-Battles.com you are hereby transferring all necessary rights of use for the contents and in particular the copyright, the rights to reproduce, to perform, to propagate, to publish, to edit and to commercially and non commercially exploit your work as well as all other presently known rights necessary for a comprehensive utilization automatically and without the requirement of a further agreement by HHB. The respective transfer of rights is thereby non exclusive. However it is temporally and spatially unlimited. Enclosed are also all so called third party utilization rights, which means any kind of utilization by a third party who is not a contracting party in this Agreement but has separate Agreements with Hiphop-battles.com about utilization of HHB content.
b. If you provide HHB with content for the section “Beats” on the MC Arena, the rights specified under a. are likewise transferred to HHB. Then however the transfer takes place - regardless of a previous publication of contents on Hiphop-Battles.com - on exclusive basis.
c. With publishing your content on HHB you ensure hereby that your content does not infringe the rights of third parties (e.g. copyright, patent, registered trademarks or other property right) and that your content is not produced with products from the companies MAGIX AG (e.g. Magix Music Maker) or eJay Entertainment GmbH (e.g. HipHop eJay).
You hereby ensure that you are not member of trade groups like GEMA, GVL or RIAA. A participation in HHB is expressly not permitted for members of such trade groups.
The Contracting Parties both agree that the meaning and purpose of this Agreement is if necessary also a commercial utilization of contents by HHB and that the success of such a utilization first and foremost is the result of the utilization efforts by HHB. Apart from that, both Contracting Parties agree that especially the developemend and the maintenance and care of the Domain HipHop-Battles.com is to be seen as special utilization effort as such. This said you are at first relinquish all financial claims against HHB which result from the use and utilization of your published content on HHB. In case of a further, commercially successful marketing however only, as far as all agreements made here are deemed „appropriate“ under legal regulations of the German copyright law. With the question of the above-mentioned „appropriateness” likewise all the above-mentioned utilization efforts and investments of HHB as well as the fact that you received a permanent link to the internet address provided by you, need to be considered. Any, thereafter if necessary, appropriate payment will additionally consider the fact that – as far as applicable in individual cases - the respective remuneration are to be paid only title-proportionately or timely-proportionately. HHB thereby has the right to determine which calculation method is selected.
2.2. Responsibility for the Contents
a. HHB offers you communication services which enable you to publish and also to distribute your own information, in particular in the form of text, graphics- and audio files. The responsibility for the contents that you publish and distribute through this service shall remain strictly with you.
b. In particular, you agree to be bound by the requirement not to breach any applicable statutory provisions when using the communication services. In particular, you shall ensure that the content distributed by you does not infringe the rights of third parties (e.g. copyright, patent, registered trademarks or other property right), you shall observe the prevailing penal law and the legal provisions for the protection of children and young persons and in particular you shall not distribute any racial, pornographic, obscene, offensive content or content that is inappropriate for minors. Furthermore, you agree to be bound by the undertaking not to infringe upon the private sphere of third parties, nor to distribute any unsolicited mass mailings nor any unsolilcited advertising and to refrain from anything that may compromise the performance or the availability of the services.
c. HHB further points out that content that is received or sent and/or archived via the services, is, as a matter of principle, not checked or only within the scope of the prevailing laws.
d. HHB is authorised to forward content to third parties and/or to delete such insofar this is required under legal regulations or judicial or official rulings. This shall also apply to the release of user data.
2.3. Use.
a. You agree only to use any content from HHB exclusively for your own personal use. You are not permitted to use HHB for commercial purposes, especially not as but not limited to means of publishing and distributing advertising matter. This applies in particular to all communications services.
b. All so-called derivatives (battle audio files, etc.) from the exclusive Beats, which are made available to registered members of HHB for the use on HHB in the “Beat” section of the MC arena, may be used and/or published outside of HHB for private use only, if these derivatives were published on HHB first. The commercial use of exclusive Beats from HHB or their derivatives requires the previous expressed written permission of HHB.
2.4. No Warranty.
a. The Service is provided to you subject to your statutory rights but is otherwise provided without any warranty or condition express or implied except as specifically stated in this Agreement. You are aware that the services offered by HHB may be subject to technical limitations. This applies in particular to continuous availability, the traffic volume and to the memory capacity or maximum amount of data available at any given time. Whilst we will do our best to maintain the operation of our Service, we do not guarantee continuous, uninterrupted or secure access to the Service, and operation of our site may be affected by numerous factors outside our control. You have no right to the provision of the service of HHB. HHB reserves the right to update, to change or to terminate the functions of the individual services. HHB also reserves the right to possibly completely discontinue services. You acknowledge that your access to the site may be occasionally restricted to allow for repairs, maintenance or the introduction of new facilities or services. We will attempt to restore the site as soon as we reasonably can.
b. Should the technical limitations be exceeded, HHB is authorised to delete data and/or to refuse to store further data. This shall apply in particular in the event that you have not used one or more of the services offered by HHB for a period of more than 60 days.
2.5. Indemnification.
You agree to indemnify and hold us, our subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors and employees harmless from any claim or demand (including legal fees) made or incurred by any third party due to or arising out of your breach of this Agreement or the documents it incorporates by reference, or your breach of any law or the rights of a third party relating to your use of the Service.
2.6. Liability for Violations of the Acceptable Use Policy.
If you use the HHB service in a manner that violates the HHB Terms of use policy, your account will be subject to limitation or immediate termination. By publishing content and files in contravention of the Terms of use Policy or the Restricted Activities section of this User Agreement (currently Section 3.2), you acknowledge liability to HHB for any and all damages suffered by HHB.
3. Your Information and Restricted Activities.
3.1. Definition.
“Your Information" is defined as any information you provide to us or other users in the registration or other features of our Service. You are solely responsible for Your Information. You authorise us, directly or through third parties, to make any inquiries we consider necessary to validate your registration. This may include verifying the information you provide against third party databases. However, we cannot and do not make any representation relating to any user's identity.
3.2. Prohibited and Restricted Activities.
Your Information shall not: (a) be false, inaccurate or misleading; (b) be fraudulent; (c) violate HHB's Terms of use Policy; (d) infringe any third party's copyright, patent, trade mark, trade secret or other property rights or rights of publicity or privacy; (e) breach any law, statute, contract or regulation (including, but not limited to, consumer protection, unfair competition, antidiscrimination, or false advertising); (f) be defamatory, threatening or harassing; (g) be obscene or contain child pornography; (h) contain any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, cancelbots, "easter eggs" or other computer programming routines that may damage, interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or other personal information; and (i) create liability for us or cause us to lose (in whole or in part) the services of our Internet Service Providers or other suppliers. If you use, or attempt to use, the Service for purposes other than publishing your self produced music, graphics and texts respectively downloading the music, graphics and texts of other users, including but not limited to tampering, hacking, modifying or otherwise corrupting the security or functionality of Service, your account will be terminated and you will be subject to damages and other penalties, including criminal prosecution where available.
3.3. Terminating or Closing Your Account.
You may close your account at any time by clicking the “Close Account” link in your Settings on the HHB website. HHB may terminate this agreement with immediate effect if you have given rise to such termination for important reason. In every event of termination HHB is authorised to delete your account along with all content and to cancel access to the services. This shall apply also in the event that you do not make use of one or more of the services of HHB for a period of more than 60 days.
3.4. Password
You may not reveal your account password to anyone else, nor may you use anyone else's password. We are not responsible for losses incurred by you including, without limitation, the use of your account by any person other than you, arising as the result of misuse of passwords. HHB is authorised, upon receiving information regarding the possible misuse of any password, to undertake any necessary measures, in particular to (temporarily) refuse access to the HHB services.
4. Access and Interference.
You agree that you will not use any robot, spider, other automatic device, or manual process to monitor or copy our web pages or the content contained herein without our prior express written permission. You agree that you will not use any device, software or routine to interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of our site or any activities conducted on our site. You agree that you will not take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure. Much of the information on our site is proprietary or is licensed to us by our users or third parties. You agree that you will not copy, reproduce, communicate to the public, alter, modify, create derivative works, publicly display or frame any content (except for Your Information) from our website without our prior expressed written permission or the appropriate third party.
5. Privacy and Security.
We view protection of users' privacy as a very important principle. We understand clearly that protecting Your Information is our most important responsibility. We store and process Your Information on computers located in the Federal Republic of Germany that are protected by technological security devices. You should only log in to your account on a page which begins with ://www.hiphop-battles/, ://www.madebypeople/ or ://www.rednoize/. Our current Privacy Policy is available at ://www.hiphop-battles/p3p/.If you object to your information being transferred or used as described in the Privacy Policy, please do not use our Service.
6. Remedies and HHB's Right to Collect From You.
Without limiting other remedies, we may update inaccurate or incorrect information you provide to us, contact you by means other than electronically, immediately warn our community of your actions, limit access to your account and any or all of the account's functions, indefinitely suspend or close your account and refuse to provide our Services to you if: (a) you breach this Agreement; (b) we are unable to verify or authenticate any information you provide to us; (c) we believe that your account or activities pose a significant credit or fraud risk to us; or (d) we believe that your actions may cause financial loss or legal liability for you, our users or us.
7. Assignment.
You may not transfer any rights or obligations you may have under this Agreement without our prior written consent. We reserve the right to transfer this Agreement and all incorporated policies or any right or obligation under this Agreement without your consent.
8. Legal Compliance.
We both shall comply with all applicable laws, contracts and applicable licences regarding respectively your use and our provision of our Services.
9. Notices.
Except as explicitly stated otherwise, any notices shall be given to our online message centre (in our case) or the email address you provide to HHB during the registration process (in your case). Notice shall be deemed given 24 hours after posted or when the email is sent, unless the sending party is aware that the electronic communication was not received. Alternatively, we may give you notice by mail to the address provided to us during the registration process. In such case, notice shall be deemed given 3 days after the date of mailing. We will communicate with you in the language, or languages, in which we have made available this User Agreement to you.
10. Removal guarantee for infringements
All content of this webside was created after best knowledge and conscience in agreement with the law. If nevertheless you should find infringements of your rights, patent rights or other legal regulations, we ask you in the sense of the damage reduction obligation for a notice without cost note. We guarantee you the remedy of all infringes of your legal rights, by immediately removing or changeing all content that you rightfully complained about. The inclusion of a liable to pay the costs legal advice (“warning”) on your part is not necessary. Nevertheless if you or a third party assigned by you should provoke costs without prior contact and attempt at mediation, these costs must be rejected in its entirety by us. Besides we will reserve the right to a counter suit in such a case if necessary because of disregarding the the above mentioned removal guarantee.
11. Governing Law and Legal Disputes.
This User Agreement, and the relationship between us, shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany. Disputes between you and us regarding our Services may be reported to Customer Service under “Contact”.
12. General.
If any provision of this Agreement is held to be invalid or unenforceable, such provision shall be omitted and the remaining provisions shall be enforced. Headings are for reference purposes only and in no way define, limit, construe or describe the scope or extent of such paragraph. Our failure to act in any way in connection with a breach by you or others of the Agreement shall not be deemed or construed as a waiver of any right, power, privilege, claim or remedy of ours to act in respect of the circumstances in question or operate so as to bar the enforcement of any such right, power, privilege, claim or remedy in relation to any subsequent or similar breaches. Except insofar as this Agreement provides that a third party may in his own right enforce a term of this Agreement, a person who is not a party to this Agreement has no rights under the Rights of Third Parties to rely upon or enforce any term of this Agreement but this does not affect any right or remedy of a third party which exists or is available apart from that Act. This Agreement and the policies referred to herein set forth the entire understanding between us with respect to the subject matter of the Agreement.
Last updated: 12/11/2006
