Terms of Service

1. The Service

Cinematix is an online platform where independent filmmakers ("Creators") publish films and series and where viewers ("Users") watch them and support the Creators they follow. Content on the Service ("Films") may be of any length, format, or aspect ratio, and may be published as a single film, a series of episodes, or a "Coming Soon" page showing a poster and trailer before release. Many Films on the Service are made with the help of AI tools.

By default, Films are free to watch. Users may support Creators through Fan Support (a one-time payment or a Monthly Subscription), and Creators may optionally make some content available only to subscribers ("Supporter-only Content") or require Coins to unlock an episode ("Coin Unlock"). Monthly Subscriptions and Supporter-only Content are offered where available. The Service is accessed through a web browser.

The Service is not tailored to comply with industry-specific regulations such as HIPAA, FISMA, or GLBA. If your use would be subject to such laws, you may not use the Service.

2. Eligibility & Account

2.1 You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are under the age of majority in your jurisdiction, you may use the Service only with the involvement of a parent or legal guardian. Certain content may be age-restricted.

2.2 You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity under your account. Notify us immediately of any unauthorized use.

2.3 You agree to provide accurate information and to keep it up to date.

2.4 To publish Films, receive Fan Support, or use any Creator feature, you must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract. Payouts are made through our payment partner, which independently verifies your identity and age.

3. License & Acceptable Use

3.1 We grant you a personal, non-transferable, non-exclusive, revocable license to access and use the Service for your own personal, non-commercial enjoyment, subject to these Terms.

3.2 You may not: (a) share, sell, rent, sublicense, or redistribute access to the Service or to any Content; (b) reverse engineer, decompile, scrape, or attempt to derive source code or extract media files except as expressly permitted; (c) circumvent, disable, or interfere with any security, access-control, paywall, watermarking, or digital-rights features; (d) download, copy, re-record, re-upload, or redistribute any Episode or other paid or protected Content; (e) remove any proprietary notices; or (f) use the Service in violation of any applicable law or third-party terms.

3.3 Violations may result in suspension or termination of your account and may be subject to legal action and damages.

3.4 We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time.

4. User-Generated Contributions

The Service may allow you to create, upload, post, comment, or otherwise make available content ("Contributions", including video, audio, images, text, and comments). Contributions may be visible to other users. When you make any Contribution, you represent and warrant that:

1. Your Contributions do not and will not infringe any third party's intellectual property, privacy, publicity, or moral rights.
2. You are the creator/owner of, or have all necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to use and to authorize us and other users to use, your Contributions as contemplated by the Service and these Terms.
3. You have written consent/release from every identifiable person appearing in your Contributions to use their name and likeness.
4. Your Contributions are not false, inaccurate, or misleading.
5. Your Contributions are not unsolicited advertising, spam, pyramid schemes, or solicitation.
6. Your Contributions are not obscene, lewd, violent, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable.
7. Your Contributions do not contain pornography or sexually explicit content, including depictions of sexual acts or nudity presented for sexual gratification, whether live-action, animated, or AI-generated.
8. Your Contributions do not ridicule, mock, disparage, intimidate, or abuse anyone.
9. Your Contributions do not harass, threaten, or promote violence against any person or group.
10. Your Contributions do not violate any applicable law, regulation, or rule.
11. Your Contributions do not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party.
12. Your Contributions do not violate any law concerning child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or the protection of minors, and do not sexualize, endanger, or exploit any minor in any way.
13. Your Contributions do not contain hateful content connected to race, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or similar protected characteristics.
14. Your Contributions, including any AI-generated or AI-assisted material, comply with Section 8 (AI-Generated Content) and all applicable laws.

Any violation may result in immediate removal of the Contribution and suspension or termination of your account, and may be reported to the relevant authorities (including, where applicable, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children). We may, but are not obligated to, monitor, screen, edit, recategorize, or remove any Contribution at our discretion.

5. Content License

5.1 You retain ownership. You retain ownership of your Contributions and all intellectual property rights in them. We do not claim ownership of your Contributions and will not sell, assign, or license them to any third party except as described in this Section 5.

5.2 Non-exclusive. Any license you grant us under these Terms is non-exclusive. You may publish, distribute, license, or sell the same Contribution anywhere else, at any time, including on other platforms and in film festivals and competitions. There is no exclusivity period, no holdback, and no obligation to publish on the Service.

5.3 License to operate and promote. By making a Contribution available on the Service, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable (to our service providers only) license to:

(a) host, store, cache, reproduce, transcode, publicly display, stream, and distribute your Contribution on the Service;

(b) create promotional materials from your Contribution, including thumbnails, posters, stills, previews, short clips, and excerpts, and to make light edits for promotional purposes only, such as cropping, resizing, adding captions or subtitles, and selecting scenes ("Promotional Materials"). A trailer you upload yourself is part of your Contribution, not Promotional Materials;

(c) display your Contribution and the Promotional Materials on the Service (including featured placements), on our official social media accounts, in our community spaces (such as Discord), in newsletters, and in other marketing of the Service, crediting you by the name or channel name on your account wherever the format allows.

5.4 No AI training. We will not use your Contributions, or any part of them, to train, fine-tune, or evaluate artificial intelligence or machine learning models, and we will not permit any third party to do so through the Service. This does not restrict automated processing needed to operate the Service, such as transcoding, thumbnail generation, content moderation, and recommendation.

5.5 Duration. The license in 5.3 continues for as long as your Contribution remains on the Service. If you remove a Contribution, we stop streaming it and stop creating new Promotional Materials from it. Promotional Materials that we already published before removal (for example, a social media post) may remain where they were published. We may keep backup copies for up to 90 days after removal, or longer only where required by law.

5.6 Your responsibility. You are solely responsible for your Contributions. You release us from any responsibility for your Contributions and agree not to bring claims against us regarding them, except for our breach of this Section 5.

6. Creator Terms

This Section applies to Creators. The Creator Agreement restates these terms in plain language and adds detail; where they differ, the Creator Agreement governs.

6.1 Nature of Fan Support. Fan Support is money a User chooses to send to a Creator through the Service. We collect it on the Creator's behalf, deduct the fees described below, and pass the remainder to the Creator. Fan Support is not a payment by us for the Creator's Contributions and is not a license fee or royalty.

6.2 Fan Support split. For each one-time payment or Monthly Subscription payment:

(a) any sales tax, VAT, or similar tax required by the User's jurisdiction is added to the price, paid by the User, and excluded from the amounts below;

(b) we retain a platform fee of 10% of the payment amount before tax;

(c) the payment-processing fees charged by our payment processor on the full amount the User pays (including tax) are deducted and borne by the Creator. These currently include a per-payment percentage and fixed fee, a surcharge for cards issued outside the United States, fraud-screening fees, and, for subscriptions, recurring-billing fees. The processor may change its rates;

(d) the remainder is credited to the Creator's balance.

6.3 Coin Unlock split. Where a Creator enables Coin Unlock, the Creator is credited 70% of the Coin price of each unlock. Payment-processing fees on Coin purchases are borne by us within our 30% share. Coin Unlock is off by default and is enabled per Film or episode at the Creator's choice.

6.4 Payouts. Payouts are made through Stripe Connect to the bank account on the Creator's connected account, in US dollars, once per month on the first business day of the month (a weekday that is not a US Federal Reserve holiday). Each payment is held for 14 days after the User pays before it becomes available. The minimum payout is $20, or the higher minimum our payment processor sets for payouts to the Creator's country, as shown in the Creator studio; a lower balance rolls over to the following month. The Creator bears the per-payout transfer fee charged by the processor (currently $0.25, plus a percentage for accounts outside the United States); we bear the processor's monthly account fee. Currency conversion, where applicable, is performed by the Creator's bank or the processor at their rates. Where Stripe Connect is unavailable in the Creator's country, we will arrange a manual payout on the same terms.

6.5 Tax and identity documentation. Before the first payout, the Creator must complete identity verification with our payment processor and provide tax information: US persons give their US taxpayer identification number through our payment processor's account setup, which serves as Form W-9; non-US persons complete Form W-8BEN / W-8BEN-E in the Creator studio. We may withhold tax where the law requires it and will notify the Creator before doing so. Creators are responsible for all taxes on amounts they receive. The first payout is subject to a one-time account review; thereafter payouts run automatically, except that we may hold a payout for review where activity appears unusual or fraudulent, in which case we notify the Creator within 5 business days.

6.6 Refunds and chargebacks. For payments made on or after the Creator's acceptance of the Creator Agreement, if a payment is refunded or reversed by the User's bank, the Creator's earnings from that payment are removed from the Creator's balance. Only the earnings from that specific payment are affected. If the amount was already paid out, it is deducted from the Creator's future earnings; we do not reclaim funds from the Creator's bank account. A balance below zero pauses payouts until new earnings bring it to the minimum payout or more. If a chargeback dispute is later resolved in the Creator's favor, the amount is restored. For payments made before the Creator accepted the Creator Agreement, we absorb refund and chargeback losses. We may suspend accounts that abuse refunds or chargebacks.

6.7 Monthly Subscriptions and Supporter-only Content (where available). Where enabled, a Creator may set a monthly subscription price from the options we offer and may designate Films or episodes as Supporter-only Content. A User who cancels keeps access to the end of the paid period. A Creator may switch content between free and supporter-only at any time; making content free does not entitle existing subscribers to a refund. If a Creator disables subscriptions, new subscriptions stop, existing subscriptions do not renew, subscribers keep access to the end of the paid period without a refund, and the Creator must keep Supporter-only Content available until those periods end. If a Creator removes all Supporter-only Content while subscribers have paid time left, those subscriptions end and subscribers are refunded pro rata for the unused period; those refunds are deducted from the Creator's balance under 6.6. Where the estimated refund total exceeds the Creator's available balance, the Creator must contact us before removing that content. If a Creator closes their channel, the Creator's Films are taken off public view, existing subscriptions end immediately, and subscribers are refunded pro rata for the unused period; those refunds are deducted from the Creator's balance under 6.6. A Creator may change the subscription price. New subscribers pay the new price immediately. For existing subscribers, a price decrease takes effect at their next billing date. A price increase takes effect at their first billing date that is at least 14 days after we email them notice of the change; a subscriber who cancels before that date keeps access at the old price until the end of the paid period. If you do not cancel before the new price takes effect, you agree to the new price. A Creator may raise the price for the same subscriber at most once every 30 days.

6.8 Changes to economic terms. We will not change the platform fee in 6.2(b), the Coin share in 6.3, or the refund rules in 6.6 except by publishing a new version of the Creator Agreement and obtaining the Creator's acceptance. Earnings accrued before acceptance of a new version are paid under the version in force when they accrued.

6.9 Content warranties and indemnity. The Creator warrants that each Contribution is lawful, that the Creator holds all rights needed to grant the license in Section 5, and that it complies with Sections 4 and 8. The Creator agrees to indemnify and hold us harmless against third-party claims, including reasonable legal fees, arising from the Creator's breach of these warranties, of these Terms or the Creator Agreement, or of applicable law or third-party rights. The Creator has no obligation under this Section for any claim that does not arise from such a breach, including claims found to have no basis and claims caused by our own breach of these Terms or of law.

6.10 Removal and enforcement. We may remove Contributions, hold payouts, or suspend Creator status for violations of these Terms or applicable law, subject to the notice and appeal process in Section 13.4. Creators may unpublish or remove their own Contributions at any time. Content a User has already unlocked with Coins stops being viewable when removed, and those Coins are not refunded (Section 7.4); Creator earnings already recorded are unaffected.

7. Coins, Payments & Refunds

7.1 Coins are a virtual, prepaid currency used solely within the Service to unlock episodes that a Creator has chosen to offer through Coin Unlock, and to access certain features. Coins have no monetary value outside the Service, are not redeemable for cash, and are not transferable except as expressly permitted by us.

7.2 You may purchase Coins through our payment provider (currently Stripe). Prices and Coin packages are displayed at the point of purchase and may change. We do not store your full payment card details; payments are processed by our payment provider.

7.3 Refund policy. Purchases of Coins may be refunded only to the extent of Coins that remain unused in your balance at the time of the refund request. Coins that have already been spent to unlock an Episode or access a feature are non-refundable, because the corresponding digital content has already been delivered and consumed. By purchasing Coins, you acknowledge and consent that digital content is delivered immediately upon unlocking and that, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, spent Coins are final and non-refundable. You also acknowledge that continued access to unlocked content depends on the creator keeping that content available on Cinematix (Section 7.4).

7.4 Episodes you have already unlocked stay unlocked. A refund of Coins does not revoke access to Episodes you unlocked before the refund: if Coins are returned to you or reversed from your balance, the Episodes already unlocked with them are not taken back. A refund affects your Coin balance only. Unlocked Episodes remain available in your account for as long as the creator keeps them available on Cinematix. If a creator unpublishes or removes an Episode or Series, it may no longer be viewable, and spent Coins are not refunded.

7.5 Refunds, where applicable, are processed back to the original payment method. Refunds are issued in the original transaction currency (USD). Due to exchange-rate differences between purchase and refund, the amount in your local currency may vary slightly. We may decline refunds in cases of suspected fraud or abuse.

7.6 You are responsible for all charges incurred under your account and for any applicable taxes.

8. AI-Generated Content

8.1 Content on the Service may be created or assisted by artificial intelligence. Where required by law or our policies, AI-generated or AI-synthesized media will be appropriately disclosed or labeled.

8.2 You may not upload AI-generated or AI-assisted Content that: (a) depicts a real, identifiable person without their consent (including deepfakes of their face, voice, or likeness); (b) is designed to deceive, defame, or impersonate; (c) sexualizes or endangers minors; or (d) otherwise violates Section 4, applicable law, or third-party rights.

8.3 Creators are solely responsible for ensuring their AI-generated Content is lawful and that they hold all necessary rights, including rights in any underlying models, prompts, training data, or source material as applicable.

9. Use of Data & Privacy

You acknowledge that we may access, process, and store your account information and Content as necessary to operate the Service. Our collection and use of personal information is governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. We may collect and use technical data about your device, system, and usage to provide support, deliver updates, prevent fraud, and improve the Service, consistent with our Privacy Policy and applicable law.

10. Intellectual Property

Except for your Contributions, all rights, title, and interest in and to the Service, including software, design, trademarks, logos, and the "Cinematix" name, are owned by the Company or its licensors. In the event of any third-party claim that the Service infringes intellectual property rights, the Company will be responsible for investigation, defense, and settlement, except where the claim arises from your Contributions or misuse. We comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); copyright complaints may be sent to the contact in Section 17.

11. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Company and its officers, employees, and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, data, or goodwill, arising out of or relating to your use of (or inability to use) the Service. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Company's total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the amounts you paid to us in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars ($100). Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited under applicable law. The Service is not responsible for damages arising from your violation of these Terms, your Contributions, unauthorized account access caused by your failure to safeguard credentials, or service interruptions outside our reasonable control.

12. Disclaimer of Warranty

The Service is provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement, to the maximum extent permitted by law. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure. Please report any defects without undue delay to the contact in Section 17.

13. Termination

13.1 These Terms remain in effect until terminated by you or by us. You may stop using the Service, or close your account, at any time. We may suspend or terminate your account for violations of these Terms, suspected fraud, or as required by law. Upon termination, you must stop using the Service. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 4, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 6.5, 6.6, 6.9, 10, 11, 13.2, 13.3, 15, and 18) will survive.

13.2 Creator balance on termination. When a Creator's account is closed or terminated for any reason, Fan Support and Coin earnings recorded before that date remain payable on the normal schedule and after the normal holding period, provided the final balance is at or above the minimum payout in Section 6.4. A final balance below that minimum cannot be paid out and is forfeited; the studio dashboard shows the balance before closure. If a balance at or above the minimum payout has not been paid out 6 months after the account is closed, we review it and may either cancel the balance or keep it open for another 6 months. Earnings connected to fraud, illegal activity, or abuse of refunds or chargebacks are not payable; only the earnings connected to that activity are withheld, and the rest of the balance remains payable.

13.3 Negative balance on termination. If a Creator's balance is below zero when the account is closed, we absorb the shortfall. The Creator owes nothing.

13.4 Notice and appeal for Creators. If we suspend a Creator account or hold a Creator's payouts for a violation, we will state the reason and the rule concerned in writing. The Creator may respond within 14 days with an explanation or a remedy. We will answer within 10 business days of the response. While the review is open, affected Contributions may remain unpublished and payouts may be held, but the balance is preserved. If the review ends in the Creator's favor, Contributions and payouts are restored. If the Creator does not respond within 14 days, we decide on the information available.

14. Legal Compliance

You represent and warrant that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as a "terrorist-supporting" country, and that you are not on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

15. Governing Law & Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware and applicable U.S. federal law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Before bringing a claim, the parties will attempt to resolve the dispute by discussing it in writing. Any dispute not so resolved will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in the State of Delaware, except where prohibited by applicable consumer-protection law or where the law of your country of residence grants you protection that cannot be waived by agreement.

16. Changes to These Terms

16.1 We may modify these Terms. Material changes will be notified through the Service or by email at least 7 days before they take effect, except where a shorter period is required by law or to address security or legal risk. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree, you must stop using the Service.

16.2 Creator economic terms. Changes to the platform fee, the Coin share, the refund and chargeback rules, or the payout schedule in Section 6 do not take effect for a Creator until that Creator accepts a new version of the Creator Agreement. Until acceptance, the previous version continues to apply to that Creator, and earnings already accrued are paid under the terms in force when they accrued.

17. Contact Information

For inquiries, complaints, or claims regarding the Service, contact:

18. Miscellaneous

18.1 If any provision is or becomes invalid, the remaining provisions remain in effect, and the invalid provision will be replaced by a valid one achieving its primary purpose.

18.2 These Terms constitute the entire agreement between you and the Company regarding the Service. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to an affiliate or successor.

18.3 Order of precedence. For Creators, the Creator Agreement supplements these Terms. If the Creator Agreement and these Terms conflict on a topic that the Creator Agreement addresses, the Creator Agreement governs for that topic. In all other respects these Terms apply. The Privacy Policy, AI Disclosure, DMCA Policy, and Refund Policy are incorporated by reference.