VerseDB Studio Terms

VerseDB Studio ("Studio") is the side of VerseDB for comic creators and publishers, at studio.versedb.com. Studio lets rights holders claim or create a publisher profile, upload editions of works they control, list crowdfunding campaigns, and distribute access codes. VerseDB is operated by Reggio Digital LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company ("VerseDB," "we," "us," or "our").

These Studio Terms add to the VerseDB Terms of Service, which also apply to your use of Studio. Where the two conflict, these Studio Terms control for Studio activity. Section numbers below that name the Terms of Service refer to that document.

If you use Studio on behalf of a publisher, imprint, or company, you represent that you have the authority to bind it to these Terms, and "you" refers to both you and that business. You accept these Terms when you submit an application to claim or create a publisher, and by using Studio afterwards. If you do not agree to them, do not use Studio.

To use Studio you must hold a VerseDB account in good standing and either claim an existing publisher record or create a new one. You represent that the information you provide about yourself, your imprint, or your company is accurate and that you are authorized to act on its behalf.

Every application is reviewed by a person at VerseDB. We may ask for more information or documents, keep a new publisher hidden from public listings and search until we have verified it, and decline, suspend, or revoke a publisher profile or a claim on an existing publisher at our discretion, including where we cannot confirm the claimed affiliation.

The documents, business details, and contact information you submit with an application are stored privately and are seen only by the VerseDB staff who review it. We use them to verify the application, to contact you about it, and to keep a record of the decision, and we handle them as described in our Privacy Policy. Do not upload documents you are not entitled to share.

A publisher's owner may give other VerseDB accounts a seat on the publisher. You are responsible for what the people you add do in Studio on the publisher's behalf, and for removing a seat when that person should no longer have one.

By uploading an edition to Studio you represent and warrant, for each work you upload, that:

• You own the copyright in the work, or you hold a written license or assignment from every rights holder sufficient to grant the license in Section 6
• You have cleared all contributor rights, including those of writers, artists, letterers, colorists, editors, and translators, and all rights in any licensed characters, trademarks, fonts, or third-party material appearing in the work
• The work does not infringe any copyright, trademark, publicity, privacy, or other right of any person, and does not violate any law
• Any moral rights, credit, or attribution obligations attaching to the work have been satisfied

VerseDB does not pre-verify ownership of creator-uploaded works. We rely on your attestation. You are solely responsible for the works you upload, and you agree to indemnify us as set out in Section 9.2 of the Terms of Service for any claim arising from them.

For each edition you upload, you grant VerseDB a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license, sublicensable only to our hosting, storage, content-delivery, and payment providers, for as long as the edition remains on the platform, to:

• Host, store, back up, and transmit the edition
• Reproduce, re-encode, resize, compress, and convert it into page images and other formats needed to deliver it on the web and in our mobile applications
• Display and stream the edition to users entitled to read it, and deliver downloadable copies where you have enabled downloads
• Use the title, cover art, credits, description, and short excerpts to promote the edition and VerseDB across our site, applications, newsletters, and social accounts

This license is non-exclusive. You remain free to distribute the work anywhere else, on any terms.

The license ends when you remove the edition, except that we may retain backup copies for a commercially reasonable period, we may retain records required for legal, accounting, or dispute purposes, and copies already downloaded by entitled users remain with those users, which you acknowledge we cannot recall.

Uploaded editions enter a review queue and do not become readable by others until approved. We may reject an upload, remove a published edition, or disable a publisher's access to Studio at any time, including for suspected infringement, a valid notice under Section 5 of the Terms of Service, content that breaches its Section 11, technical defects, or an unresponsive publisher. The repeat-infringer policy in Section 5.4 of the Terms of Service applies to Studio uploads.

Removal of an edition does not by itself entitle you to a refund of, or compensation for, anything.

Studio lets a publisher list an active crowdfunding campaign running on a third-party platform, and VerseDB may display that listing on relevant catalog pages.

VerseDB does not run, host, fund, endorse, or process payments for any campaign. A campaign listing is promotional only. It is not an offer, a solicitation by us, an investment recommendation, or a representation that a campaign is legitimate, adequately funded, or will deliver anything. We are not a party to any agreement between a backer and a campaign creator, and we receive no part of any pledge made through a linked campaign.

If you list a campaign, you represent that you or the publisher you act for owns the campaign, that the linked campaign is genuine and currently running, and that the details you supply, including title, description, platform, and start and end dates, are accurate and kept current. You are responsible for fulfilling every obligation you make to backers.

If you back a campaign you found through VerseDB, you do so at your own risk and under the terms of the platform hosting it. Your recourse for a campaign that is canceled, fails to fund, misses its dates, or fails to deliver is with the campaign creator and that platform, not with VerseDB. We may remove any campaign listing at any time, for any reason, without notice.

A publisher may generate access codes granting free access to specified editions, whether for backer fulfillment, review and press copies, giveaways, convention handouts, or comp copies.

Codes are issued by the publisher, not by VerseDB. A code:

• Grants a personal, non-transferable, revocable license to read the specified edition, and to download it where the publisher has enabled downloads. It does not transfer ownership of anything
• Has no cash value, is not redeemable for cash or credit, is not a gift card or stored-value instrument, and may not be sold, auctioned, or bartered
• May be single-use or limited-use, and may carry an expiry date set by the publisher
• Requires a VerseDB account to redeem, and is tied to the account that redeems it

Access granted by a code lasts only as long as the edition remains available on VerseDB. If the publisher removes the edition, or we remove it under Section 7 of these Terms or Section 5 of the Terms of Service, access ends and no refund or substitute is owed by us. A publisher's obligation to fulfill its own backer or customer promises remains its own, and generating codes on VerseDB does not transfer that obligation to us.

We may void codes and revoke access obtained through them where a code was obtained or used in breach of these Terms, including the sale or public distribution of codes intended for named recipients, automated or bulk redemption attempts, and circumvention of redemption limits.

If you supply recipient details such as names, email addresses, or backer records in order to distribute codes, that information remains yours. You represent that you collected it lawfully and have a lawful basis to share it with us for that purpose. We process it only to deliver the codes and to give you redemption reporting, and we retain it only as long as needed for those purposes. Do not upload special-category personal data, payment card details, or government identifiers.

Where Studio supports paid sales, payouts are processed by Stripe and are additionally governed by the Stripe Connected Account Agreement. You are responsible for providing accurate payout and tax details, and for all taxes arising from your sales. We may withhold a payout pending verification, an unresolved dispute or chargeback, or an open infringement claim.

We may suspend or terminate your access to Studio, with or without notice, for breach of these Terms or the Terms of Service. On termination we may remove your editions and campaign listings and void unredeemed codes. Sections 5 and 6 of these Terms, and Section 9 of the Terms of Service, survive termination to the extent stated in them.

Studio is part of VerseDB, so the disclaimers, limitation of liability, and indemnification in Section 9 of the Terms of Service, and the dispute resolution and arbitration terms in its Section 14, apply to Studio and to these Terms.

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will tell the people on each publisher's team by email or with a notice in Studio before the changes take effect. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision.

Your continued use of Studio after changes become effective constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree to them, stop using Studio and remove your editions before they take effect.

If you have any questions about these Terms, please contact us at: