Davies Media Design is a YouTube channel that showcases tutorials covering the open source software GIMP, and has been quickly growing over the years. The more we grow, the more we feel the need to protect not only our tutorials, which are all subject to YouTube’s, USA’s, and international copyright laws, but also protect our community and those who choose to engage with us via live chats, the comments section of our videos and social media accounts, and via direct messaging on YouTube or on any of our social media sites or email. To avoid any users being disruptive, causing physical or emotional harm, or infringing upon the rights of Davies Media Design in any way, shape, or form, we have decided to create the following rules & guidelines for our channel and website. These rules are not meant to replace any “laws of the land” or any legal rules, guidelines, or otherwise written terms & conditions from any municipalities or companies where we conduct our business (i.e. YouTube), but rather to supplement those aforementioned items to help aide us in maintaining our community.
Article I
By participating in interactions within our community, you agree to follow the terms outlined in this set of guidelines (known from here on out as “guidelines”). Any violation of these guidelines may result in removal or ban, either temporary or permanent, without notice or without any “strikes” or warnings provided, imposed on the user/channel/account that committed the violation, with that ban applying to subsidiary or associate accounts that are run by the same user. Removal will be performed by an authorized employee of Davies Media Design, as authorized by the Owner and Founder. Any attempt to further contact Davies Media Design and any of its members to contest such a ban is prohibited. Any persistent, unwanted actions to contact Davies Media Design will be considered harassment and reported to the appropriate authorities. If it is discovered that you attempt to bypass such a ban through an account under a different moniker, that account will also be subject to the same treatment as described in this Article.
Davies Media Design also reserves the right to reinstate users at any time should we deem users whom have violated these guidelines worthy of reinstatement and continued interaction with our community. However, we also reserve the right to impose a lifetime ban on users who violate our guidelines or any laws or guidelines of the countries, websites or social media platforms where we operate our business.
Article II
As a participating member of the Davies Media Design community, you agree to treat all community members with respect, including Davies Media Design’s employees and ownership, and to exercise your rights to Freedom of Speech within the confines of the laws of the United States of America. Any speech deemed outside these confines may be deemed harassment, and will be interpreted as a violation of Article I of these guidelines. You agree that hate speech, negative speech directed towards Davies Media Design or its viewers/subscribers, speech intended to provoke illegal acts of any kind including violence or tampering with our channel or subsidiary mediums, and unauthorized speech intended to promote your own channel or any other commercial entity, product, account, course/class, school, etc., will not be tolerated, and may result in invoking Article I of these guidelines.
Article III
Downloading Davies Media Design’s videos, tutorials, or any other digital content from our website, YouTube channel, online courses, or social media is strictly prohibited. Our content has never been available for download in any cases, and therefor any instance of downloading our content through personal admission of committing such an act or through the investigative findings of Davies Media Design or one of its community members will not be tolerated and will result in invoking Article I of these guidelines.
Article IV
Davies Media Design is the sole owner of its content, and any unauthorized sharing or reproduction of that content will be flagged and reported to the appropriate authorities, and will result in invoking Article I of this agreement (in addition to any of the penalties that YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, your local municipality, country, any website where you may attempt to upload the content, etc. may punish you with for violating their laws or policies or the laws or policies within the country or municipalities where they operate). Any attempt to make a profit from our content without our written consent, and without our full control, including in regards to all decision making and forms of revenue collection and disbursement, over that content, will be swiftly met with action to remove the unauthorized content and ensure the proper authorities apply the proper punishments in response to your actions.
Article V
As a private company, Davies Media Design has the right to impose temporary or permanent bans as described in Article I for any other actions it deems to have violated the rights and sanctity of Davies Media Design, its employees or ownership, its community, or the general public, even if such an action was not described in these guidelines.
Article VI
Davies Media Design reserves the right to delete any comments it deems in violation of these guidelines, or comments it feels are excessively annoying, petty, downright stupid, or generally off topic. Such comments may be considered disruptive to the community, especially if significant time is wasted by Davies Media Design employees or ownership having to read and attempt to understand the comment, or to attempt to understand why a person in their right might would even feel the urge to write and post such a comment. In essence, we reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
Final Note
If you were given these articles to read by any member of Davies Media Design, and then subsequently lost access to our YouTube channel, website, social media accounts, or any of our affiliated websites (i.e. Udemy or Skillshare), you likely violated these guidelines and had Article I invoked upon you. Please, be respectful of our community and the members within it. We spent a lot of time making this thing awesome, and we don’t want one bad actor or several ruining our company and our community for everyone – especially for Mike. If you’re reading this, its probably too late for you, but perhaps you can use this as a learning experience and change your habits online.