Updated: June 27, 2007----

Standards
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 -- and minimizing anything else.

Our obligations to both individuals and companies participating in Creative COW include the vigorous protection of your products, services, brands and reputations.

Accordingly, our primary task as the owners and management of Creative COW is providing an atmosphere conducive to generating:

• Peer-to-peer support for all professional production issues.
• A safe environment for students and other inexperienced individuals to freely enter any discussion, whether presenting questions or answers.
• Civil disagreements and reasonable criticism toward any products and services (including those offered by Creative COW advertisers, sponsors and partners), and other dissenting opinions between individuals.

Restrictions
In order to protect the interests of Creative COW members, visitors, advertisers and its community as a whole, the following activities/actions are expressly forbidden. Their occurrence will trigger flagging such posts for hand review, and subject them to likely removal. Violation will always flag a post for manual review.

• Discriminatory language regarding, but not limited to, race, national origin, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, mental or physical disability, military status or political viewpoint.
• URLs pointing to sites for warez and other software piracy, pornography, or encourage discrimination as defined above.
• Profanity.
• Other language deemed crude according to commonly accepted decency standards. 
• Abusive, derogatory, language, or any language designed to intimidate or harass.
• Reposting the same problem over and over in an attempt to discredit a company or a product. While we do not moderate or censor posts in an attempt to hide deficiencies in a product or process, we will -- in the interest of keeping a high level of signal for our users -- moderate users who persist in flooding our forums with the same topic they have already addressed on previous occasions. You can have your say but we frown on trying to commandeer our forums to make them your private whipping post on which to hang a product or company. Why? In 12 years of doing this, we have seen many members quit coming due to this kind of noise.
• Ongoing arguments, insults, and other behavior toward individuals or companies that we deem to be inciting or encouraging personal attacks typically known as "flame wars."
• Nonsense words, including single words not intended to foster polite discourse related to professional production. Words such as "Thanks" are obviously and explicitly exempted from this restriction.
• Political speech deemed disruptive to professional-level discourse. These include discussions of candidates, campaigns, and issues such as gun control, abortion, capital punishment, political parties, and the political positions of individuals or companies. These topics are best served in sites dedicated to these topics, and there are many online to choose from.
• TinyURLs. While a valuable tool in many circumstances, we do not have the resources to individually verify the propriety of their target destinations.
• "Off-topic" posts, whether started as new threads or added to ongoing threads.
  • A number of forums, including "The COWmedy Club Lounge" and "Platform Wars," are specifically provided for otherwise off-topic posting within these parameters
  • Job solicitations and offerings are limited to the "Jobs Offered, Wanted" forum.

Additionally:

• False identities used for the purpose of violating these terms are subject to public disclosure of true identities, at the discretion of site management.
• Impersonation of other members is never permitted.
  

In order to ensure that new COW members understand and are willing to abide by these Terms, their posts will be individually moderated, and, if meeting the standards described here, made public as quickly as possible. Once a pattern of posting in keeping with these standards has been established, moderation is removed so that newer members can begin posting directly to the boards.

Posts from accounts, of any duration, failing to meet these standards are subject to editing, moving, or removal. The ownership and management of Creative COW reserve the right to reinstate moderation of any accounts associated with those violations, or to close them altogether.


Newsletters and email notices
Creative COW is a community and as such, we need to communicate with our members. For this, we use our Creative COW Newsletter. In it, you will find the latest news about the industry and from the COW itself. You will also find the newest features added to the COW, new tutorials, articles and other great content. You will also learn about the upcoming events and job offerings, etc., and sponsor specials for our members. You will also learn about the new issues of Creative COW Magazine as they are released. By default, all Creative COW accounts are set to automatically receive the COW newsletters. You can opt out of the newsletters by editing your user account/profile to discontinue them. If you opt out, you will miss a lot of what makes the COW, the best media professionals site on the Internet. We hope that you will recognize the value of the newsletter but if you do not, you can easily turn them off by links on the newsletters or by editing your user account settings.


Participation in Creative COW forums by individuals, other companies, websites, and online communities
Creative COW welcomes the participation of any individual and/or all companies providing products and services to the professional production industry, without regard to their status as advertisers, sponsors, or participation in other partnerships.

This welcome extends to all industry websites and online communities.

• We actively solicit material that you create for your own purposes to be reposted at Creative COW, including tutorials, articles and reviews, whether presented in static or dynamic form. We strongly believe that our dramatically higher traffic and wider variety of promotional tools will result in far greater exposure for your information, and your company, website or online community.
• We reserve the right to decline any such submission for any reason. We reserve the right to edit any accepted material, offering the opportunity for your review and approval before posting at Creative COW.
• All posts made to and original content in Creative COW is copyright by CreativeCOW.net and is the sole and exclusive property of Creative COW. All rights to all posts and original content remain with us, so if you do not wish to assign your postings, do not make them.
• Any accepted material reposted at Creative COW remains the sole property of the originating copyright holder. Creative COW explicitly makes no claims of ownership, exclusivity, or reprint rights except where specific agreements have been entered into.
• After acceptance, we will remove any material provided to us whenever requested by its owner, with no reason or explanation requested or required. We ask for a 30 day notice to facilitate their removal from our system.
• We will publicize all the material we accept in the same manner we use for publicizing material created directly by Creative COW and its members, including featuring in our newsletter and inclusion in our library.
• We will also explicitly identify the source of this material, and provide links back to the originating website as well as any other included links that meet the standards described in these Terms.
  

All companies, websites, and online communities are subject to the restrictions in these Terms, with these additional expectations

• Companies may not attempt to explicitly solicit customers or potential customers from other companies. 
• In order for COW members to evaluate potential conflicts of interest, we require that all representatives of companies, websites, and other online communities to clearly identify themselves in any posts made. This also allows COW members and visitors to evaluate the safety and validity of external links.
• We expect that the participation of representatives of companies, websites and online communities will extend well beyond the presentation of only their own products and services. We also expect them to use their expertise to provide the same kinds of non-commercial, supportive professional discourse that we expect from individual COW members.
• Rather than provide links to external websites, we require the option of hosting the intended material at Creative COW, following the guidelines above. We will expedite posting it to provide timely access to its information.
• Where hosting this material at Creative COW is not possible or declined in favor of allowing an outside link, we require a reciprocal link pointing back to Creative COW.

As with posts from individuals, posts from corporate, website, or online community employees or representatives failing to meet these standards are subject to editing, moving, or removal. The ownership and management of Creative COW reserve the right to reinstate moderation of any accounts associated with violating these Terms, or to close them altogether.

Copyrights and Ownership
We vigorously protect all copyrights and copyright holders, including our own rights. Please be aware that all content in CreativeCOW.net, its ancillary newsletters and magazine, etc., is copyright by CreativeCOW.net, with all rights reserved, unless expressly noted.

Any tutorials, reviews or other articles for which Creative COW has paid, are its exclusive property. We do not authorize the redistribution of our content in other commercial or non-commercial sites without our express written permission by postal mail. We do not grant entitlements by email to avoid confusion and/or misunderstanding.

Any tutorials, reviews or other articles that are expressly noted as not being the exclusive copyrighted property of CreativeCOW.net, will remain in the Creative COW library unless the author requests removal in writing, and will be removed within 30 days of receipt of request.

Creative COW expressly forbids posting copyrighted information from another source anywhere in Creative COW, unless permission has been expressly secured from the copyright holder.

As stated previously, any post made in Creative COW is copyright by CreativeCOW.net and all rights are reserved.

In the event that a person's words are reused elsewhere by CreativeCOW.net, in a subsequent product, etc., the words will never be used in a way that undermines the author's reputation.

Privacy Statement
Creative COW is deeply committed to protecting the privacy of its members and visitors.

With the specific exceptions noted above, Creative COW members are free to provide or not provide any information about themselves in both posts and their public member profile.

Email addresses will never be publicly disclosed except when false identities or impersonations are used for the purpose of violating these Terms.

Creative COW sets cookies for the sole purpose of preserving member choices, automatic log-in including name and email addresses, the preferred interface for reading posts, and member-selected display range (for example, showing only posts new that day, or new in the past month).

We do NOT use cookies to track page views, duration at a page, or movement throughout the site in any manner. We do not use cookies to track sites previously visited. They do not contained any information of any sort that is visible to us or reported back to us at any time.

Creative COW does not sell its membership list or share it with any outside parties. If this should ever occur, then in accordance with all applicable Federal and State of California laws under which we operate, we will make it easy and immediate to remove yourself from any mailings resulting from this.

We solicit sponsors to help support our many free services by sending out their advertising message from our site. We do not sell your names and we have not given the sponsor access to your information. The sponsored newsletter comes from our server, not their server. In accordance with all applicable Federal and State of California laws under which we operate, we make it easy and immediate to remove yourself from any such mailings.

You may be requested or required to fill out a form in a road-show or conference/expo in which Creative COW is participating. This form is often not administered by or a function of Creative COW, but by a third party. Please be aware that we do not control these companies and their email policies.


Our Legal Statement
All information in Creative COW is offered without guarantee as to its accuracy and applicability in all circumstances. Please consult an attorney, business advisor, accountant or other professional to discuss your individual circumstances. Use of the information here is not intended to replace professional counsel. Use of this information is at your own risk and neither CreativeCOW.net, its officers, directors, leaders or members assume liability for its use.

Any disputes, including with our characterization of posts or accounts violating these standards, or a desire to have membership in Creative COW reinstated after we have made these judgements, is welcome for discussion by contacting tim@creativecow.net. The decisions made by Creative COW and its management are otherwise at our discretion.