Terms of Use

These terms of use apply to the Mash Pit Comedy site; “site” therefore means the Mash Pit Comedy website at www.mashpitcomedy.com and any pages on it.

“we”, “our” or “us” means The Gibson Group Limited, which has its office at level 2, 29 Tory St, Wellington, New Zealand.

(Unless the context otherwise requires) “you” and “your” means anyone using this site.

“content” means anything loaded onto the site by a member.

By using the site you confirm your agreement to these terms of use, whether you have read them or not.

The site is aimed at people in New Zealand. We don’t mind people in other countries looking at this site, or even being members and uploading content, but you accept that New Zealand law applies to this site and to the content of it.

We might change these terms of use at any time. We might make changes without notice to you, although we’ll try to put notice of any major rule changes on our blog. We’ll update these terms of use on this page if we change them, but whether we advise you or not that they have been updated, you are still bound by them. Your continued use of this site indicates your agreement to the changed terms of use.

Links and references to external websites are provided to you as a convenience only and we do not take any responsibility for any other websites.

Membership

We welcome anyone who wants to become a member of our site. Welcome! However, once you’re in, there are a few rules you have to follow so that the community remains rock solid. We love funny, in fact we encourage it, but we do mind any of the following (either by you or by/in your content):

• swearing of the bad kind (we decide what we mean)
• bullying
• abuse, personal attacks or disrespectful behaviour (we don’t mind constructive criticism and a bit of full and frank debate, but treat others as you would like to be treated)
• racism
• profanity, vulgarity, obscenity, pornography (we know it when we see it)
• sexism
• harassment, threats
• illegal or unlawful conduct
• defamation
• cheating
• being a bad sport
• trying (or succeeding) to change the parts of our site which are not supposed to be changed by you
• pretending to be someone you’re not
• pretending to have done something you haven’t
• stealing or using someone else’s name, username or membership
• stealing or appropriating other people’s property – including intellectual property like footage, music, gags, poems, lyrics, pictures etc. Homage is OK. Stealing is not.
• uploading or use of any corrupted files, viruses, scrapers, robots, horses, spiders, crawlers or any other animal or similar device or means to undermine our site or damage anyone else’s computer or website
• hacking into our site or trying to hack into our site (no matter what you call it)
• gratuitous advertising, either of you or something else
• harvesting information about members or users of the site
• breaching the New Zealand broadcasting standards
• breaching the New Zealand Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act, or being “objectionable” under that Act
• invading the privacy of someone

If any of you behaves in a way that breaches these terms of use or uploads content that breaches these terms of use, then we can terminate your membership or punish you in another way (or not at our discretion).

In order to provide good and timely service to our users we do not monitor content before it goes live on the site. Use of the site is therefore at your own risk. However if you find any content on the site which bothers you (other than because it’s not funny) or because you think it breaches these terms of use, let us know. Either email us: admin@mashpitcomedy.com or click on the “report” button on the page that the content is on. We reserve the right to remove anything which we believe breaches these terms of use or for any other reason.

We disclaim any liability with regard to the site and any actions resulting from your interaction, participation or membership of the site. We are not responsible for any damage, injury, loss or harm you or anyone else suffers as a result of this site. This includes fancy-named damages such as consequential loss, direct and indirect loss, loss of profit, incidental loss, punitive damages and special loss, as well as any other loss or damage that those pesky lawyers or judges or politicians want to make up or name. You’re here at your own risk.

The site is provided “as is” and “as available” and we make no warranties at all about the site or the content. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we and everyone associated with us, including Sky Network Television Limited and the Broadcasting Commission, give no warranties in respect of this site. All representations, warranties or conditions implied by law, trade, custom or otherwise are expressly excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law.

In exchange for us giving you the opportunity to put your content on the site, by posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting content or anything else you:

• warrant and represent that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to your content, including all rights for us to use the content in a TV programme. This means that you own, or have a licence from whoever owns, all the material in your content – including footage, music, jokes, lines, performances, people’s images and voices, artwork, graphics etc etc. If you don’t have these rights, don’t put your content up.
• warrant that the content does not breach any of the terms of use.
• agree that anyone else who uses the site can use your content to create other content to upload back to the site.
• automatically grant us a licence to use your original non-mashed content to make a TV production. The licence is perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable and includes the right to use, reproduce, modify, edit, create derivative works, and incorporate the content into something else and to distribute, broadcast, transmit, perform it in public and otherwise exploit it for the purposes of the TV production and the site. We can do all this in any media, not just the old telly media, anywhere we like.
• automatically grant us a licence to use any content you’ve mashed from content on the site to make a TV production. The licence is perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable and exclusive (this means you cannot upload, post or screen your mashed content anywhere other than Mash Pit Comedy). This includes the right to use, reproduce, modify, edit, create derivative works, and incorporate the content into something else and to distribute, broadcast, transmit, perform it in public and otherwise exploit it for the purposes of the TV production and the site. We can do all this in any media, not just the old telly media, anywhere we like.
• automatically grant us a licence to use your content to promote, advertise, publicise and market the site and any TV production containing any content on the site in any media anywhere.
• agree that we can assign rights in your content to others to use (including but not limited to Sky Network Television Limited and the Broadcasting Commission).

We own anything that we have put on the site, including logos, words, these terms of use, our footage (but you can use it – see below), the code and meta data other than any content loaded onto the site by a member.

Once you’re a member, you agree that you are responsible and liable for any activity associated with your name. So, please be vigilant about use of your name and password and don’t share it with anyone.

Rules of the Service

These rules are part of the terms of use.

We want to make a TV production made up of content from the site. If you put funny content on the site, it might end up in the TV production and on the TV (on Prime in New Zealand) and possible elsewhere. The most popular content on the site, as determined by the various activities of the users of the site (such as numbers of views, numbers of comments, numbers of times a video has been awarded love etc) will be in with a chance to get on TV. We and Sky Network Television Limited (who own Prime) make the final decision about what gets to go into the TV production. We’ll be heavily influenced by the popularity of content on the site, but our decision is final.

This is a Social Comedy site. By this we mean:

• Any content uploaded to this site can be used to mix, mash, stir, cook, shake, bake and rock/roll with your own content and then re-upload to this site for everyone to see your efforts. Make sure that the new content you make doesn’t breach any of the terms of use.
• Please make your mashed content funny. It’s a comedy site after all.
• When you upload your mashed comedy to the site you can tell us which clips you’ve previously downloaded and used in your new mash. Simply click on the “this is a mash” check box and a list of previously downloaded clips will display. Viewers can trace back to the original clips that formed part of your mash and originators can discover what other users have done with their content.
• If you chose to download and mash up clips from this site you agree that you will only re-post these mashed clips to the Mash Pit Comedy website (ie don’t put them on YouTube). Keep the clips in the Mash Pit Comedy family. You can share your clips and embed them on other sites using the Mash Pit Comedy player.