Please read the following Terms of Service/Policies. They exist to protect the rights of CrunchyCo and it's users; so that you can't say we didn't tell you.

Contents:
1. Definitions
2. Company Statement
3. Compliance
4. Disclaimer
5. Prohibited Content
6. CrunchyCo's Rights
7. User Responsibility
8. Illegal Activity
9. Sales Policy
10. Shipping Policy
11. Return Policy
12. Forum, Newsletter and General Use Policy
13. Privacy Policy
14. Intellectual Property Rights
15. User Submission Policy
16. Artist Submission Policy
17. CrunchyCo/Artist Agreement
18. Contests
19. Miscellaneous



Definitions

Just to make this clear, the words "you," "your," and "yours," mentioned in the following Terms of Service and Policies will always refer to the individual who is viewing these terms or any content contained within this website.

The words "CrunchyCo," "CrunchyCo.com," "us," "we," "our," and "ours," will always refer to CrunchyCo or CrunchyCo.com as a business entity and/or CrunchyCo's staff and administration.

A "user," "member," or "subscriber," may refer to an individual who views CrunchyCo.com and/or takes active participation in it's forums, newsletters, contests, and any other services or content contained within.




Company Statement

CrunchyCo is dedicated to maintaining quality customer service and care. If you have an issue with us, please let us know right away and we will do our best to fix the problem and make up for any mistake we have made. Also know that your feedback helps us become a better company. We always welcome your questions, comments, and suggestions, so feel free to drop us a line. Visit our contact page to send us a message.

CrunchyCo does not and will not discriminate against any person or group based on gender, race, sexuality, disability, or any other immutable defining characteristic. We love you all!




Compliance

As it stands now, the CrunchyCo Terms of Service and Policies describes the ultimate laws of CrunchyCo.com. Simply by viewing this website, you the user agree to comply fully with our Terms of Service and related policies. If you do not agree to our Terms of Service and related policies, you should not be viewing our website.

All rules and regulations contained within these Terms of Service and Policies apply to the entirety of CrunchyCo.com as well as any extremely related sites (such as the CrunchyCo forum, which is hosted by a third pary but still considered by us to be a part of CrunchyCo.com).

The only person who reserves the right to ammend these Terms of Service in any manner is CrunchyCo's own president and administrator, Webmaster Gabe.




Disclaimer

If you are under the age of 13, you understand that your parents are responsible for the content you view on the world wide web. CrunchyCo will in no way be held responsible for anything on our website that warps your fragile mind. If you are 13 years of age or older, it is not likely that content on our website will warp your less-fragile mind, but if it does, we're still not responsible. Anyone who views this website understands that he or she is doing so at their own free will.

By viewing this website, you acknowledge that you may be subject to unsavory language, swear words, and a multitude of other vulgarities. You may also be subject to viewing images containing partial or complete nudity. CrunchyCo allows the use of naughty words and bare-nakedness for two main reasons:
   1. Because it's an unavoidable part of life.
   2. Because we do not wish to place restrictions on art.

Please understand that by viewing this website, you will probably see material that you may think is innapropriate, offensive, or distasteful. If you dissaprove of or are offended by any of our content, just stop viewing it.

Furthermore, although our policy prohibits certain behaviors of our visitors and forum posters, we are in no way responsible for their actions and the things they say or post. This being so, you may be subject to any multitude of objectionable or offensive material instigated by our users within our forums or elsewhere. While we cannot control our users completely, we will to the best of our ability work to moderate and prohibit certain objectionable content as described below.




Prohibited Content

CrunchyCo wishes to maintain as much artistic freedom as possible. However, we do not condone so-called "artwork" that is unlawful, pornographic, abusive towards an individual or group, defamatory, overly obscene, libelous, racist, invasive of another's privacy, hateful towards an individual or group, or objectionable for any reason CrunchyCo so decides. CrunchyCo has complete control over what is deemed unfit for posting on CrunchyCo.com and reserves the right to remove any such content as it appears by any means. If your art can be described by any of the words or phrases listed above, it probably sucks anyway.





CrunchyCo's Rights

As a visitor to CrunchyCo.com you acknowledge the following rights of Crunchyco and it's staff:

> CrunchyCo reserves the right to modify or change any part of our Terms of Service and Policies at any time and for any reason in part or in full without prior notice to you. Any changes made are effective immediately upon being posted.

> CrunchyCo reserves the right to make exceptions to our policies in special cases if we so choose.

> CrunchyCo reserves the right to make changes to CrunchyCo.com that we feel are necessary.

> CrunchyCo reserves the right to remove any content we deem objectionable from CrunchyCo.com, whether posted by us or by a user.

> CrunchyCo reserves the right to terminate users from membership to forums or subscription to our newsletter at any time and for any reason without explanation.

> CrunchyCo reserves the right to delete forum posts or block users from using the forum for any reason without explanation.

> CrunchyCo reserves the right to report serious legal offenses to proper authorities.

> CrunchyCo reserves the right to take no action in regards to compensating for lost funds, or missing or damaged merchandise due to the errors of third parties (such as PayPal or the United States Postal Service).

> CrunchyCo reserves the right to deny services to anyone for any reason without explanation. Such services may include but are not limited to the sale of merchandise, subscription to our newsletter, membership to our forums, entrance into contests, etc.

If there are any other rights CrunchyCo should reasonably have reserved that are not listed above, CrunchyCo reserves them too.




User Responsibility

As a user of CrunchyCo.com, you (or your parents if under the age of 13) assume the sole responsibility for your actions while viewing our content and participating in any and all activities contained within our site. You understand that CrunchyCo can only provide rules and guidlines and attempt to enforce them to the best of our ability, but if you so choose to go against our policies and regulations, you alone must undertake full responsibility and face any resulting consequences. CrunchyCo shall give no support to those facing legal or civil consequences due to violations of these Terms of Service and Policies.

In addition to having no control over your actions as a user, also recognize that we have no control over the actions of other users or third parties, including any artists featured on CrunchyCo. We are not responsible for petty disputes between users or artists and will most likely take no part in them if they occur.




Illegal Activity

CrunchyCo and everything contained within CrunchyCo.com is in compliance with and is bound to the laws of the United States government. We expect everyone viewing CrunchyCo.com to use our site properly and act accordingly under those same laws. This means that you may not use our website for performing or promoting any sort of illegal activity. If you choose to do so, CrunchyCo will not be held responsible for your actions and you alone will face the resulting consequences. CrunchyCo does not tolerate or support illegal acts of any kind, so just don't go there.

If you are viewing CrunchyCo.com from a country other than the United States, your actions are subject to that country's laws and regulations.




Sales Policy

When you order merchandise of any type from CrunchyCo.com, you agree to comply with the following merchandise policy, as well as all other rules and policies described within these Terms of Use and Policies.

All orders of merchandise are directed through PayPal, a third party e-commerce business completely autonomous from CrunchyCo. CrunchyCo.com does not accept any other form of payment besides PayPal for online transations. CrunchyCo is not responsible for any mistakes made by the fine people at PayPal. If such a mistake is made, CrunchyCo will try to the best of our ability to correct the error, but your complete satisfaction is not guaranteed. Complaints due to misdirection or faulty transaction of funds should be directed towards the support structure at PayPal, not us.

When you send a payment online to CrunchyCo, you understand that the total amount of the purchase in dollars, which may include the full cost of the merchandise plus any shipping, handling, and applicable taxes, is being transferred from your credit card or bank account and distributed into CrunchyCo's PayPal account, and then to CrunchyCo's bank account.

CrunchyCo accepts payments of United States Dollars (USD). If you are ordering from a country other than the United States, PayPal will handle the exchange of foreign currencies into U.S. dollars.

Transactions made in person at an event between buyers and CrunchyCo staff are to be paid for by cash only. All event sales are final.




Shipping Policy

CrunchyCo ships packages within 1-3 business days. Buyers will be notified by e-mail when an item has been shipped. If an item is going to take longer than 3 business days to ship, the buyer will be notified by e-mail about the delay.

CrunchyCo is not responsible for orders lost or damaged in transit. CrunchyCo ships First Class or Priority Mail via the United States Postal Service, or in some special cases by UPS. Once a package leaves our hands, it is no longer our responsibility, so please direct all complaints due to lost or damaged packages to the proper organization. CrunchyCo reserves the right to either make up for these losses out of goodwill or to do absolutely nothing about it. If necessary, you may request shipping information from us to help track a lost package.




Return Policy
Once your payment is sent, you may request an immediate refund before the item has been shipped. We will not typically authorize a refund for any reason after the paid merchandise has been shipped. If you request a refund, we do not guarantee that it will be approved.

CrunchyCo does not accept returns unless the item is damaged or defective. If your purchased merchandise is damaged or defective upon retreival and you wish to return it, you may send it to CrunchyCo's return address with an explanation and sufficient contact information provided. In such a case, CrunchyCo will be glad to refund the entire price paid by you for the item(s) and any applicable taxes. Shipping costs will not be refunded under any conditions.

Refunds on returns will be issued only after the returned merchandise has arrived at our shipping address. All refunds will be handled through PayPal. In extremely special cases, refunds may be issued in the form of a check by mail.

If you make a return without providing sufficient contact information, or if you return merchandise that is not damaged or defective, we do not guarantee that any refund will be made.




Forum, Newsletter and General Use Policy

As a general viewer of our website, member of our forum and/or subscriber of the CrunchyCo Weekly Newsletter, you agree to comply with the terms and conditions listed in the following Forum, Newsletter, and General Use Policy as well as all other rules and policies described within these Terms of Service.

As a general user, forum member or newsletter subscriber...

1. You may NOT upload, post, e-mail, or transmit by any means, content that is unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, overly vulgar or obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, racist, or objectionable in any way deemed so by CrunchyCo.

2. You may NOT impersonate or assume the false identity of another person, user, or staff member of CrunchyCo.

3. You may NOT upload, post, e-mail, or transmit by any means, content in which you do not have the right to do so by any binding contract or law.

4. You may NOT upload, post, e-mail, or transmit by any means, content that infringes upon a copyright, trademark, patent, or any other intellectual right of any party, including CrunchyCo, it's users and affilates.

5. You may NOT upload, post, e-mail or tranmit by any means, material containing malicious software, viruses, programs, coding, or files that are designed to disrupt, limit, destroy, or impair the functionality of any other person or party's software or hardware connected to the network.

6. You may NOT disrupt the normal exchange of dialogue and information on forum threads or through the newsletter. In other words, you are not permitted to negatively affect the enjoyment of other users in a purposeful manner, nor are you allowed to hinder a user's ability to view and enjoy the newsletter or forum posts.

7. You may NOT interfere with or disrupt any connected website, service, server, or network by any means.

8. You may NOT violate any applicable local, state, national, or international laws.

9. You may NOT collect or store the personal data of any other user for any reason.

10. You may NOT use the personal contact information contained on our web pages, mailing lists or forums to send spam, or any other form of unwanted solicitation to CrunchyCo or it's users.

11. You may NOT stalk or harass any user or CrunchyCo staff member.

12. You may NOT attempt to access the restricted pages or files contained within CrunchyCo's infrastructure, or make changes to such pages or files by any means.

13. You may NOT use, distribute, or disclose any information contained within CrunchyCo.com that will disrupt or compete with the business of CrunchyCo.com.

14. You may NOT engange in or promote any type of illegal activity. Period.

Failure to comply with any of the above regulations will result in the immediate termination of your membership to our forum, subscription to our newsletter, or any other services awarded to you as a user.

If the offense is minor, CrunchyCo may issue one warning to cease the inappropriate behavior. Failure to cease such behavior after a single warning will result in termination from membership, subscription, and/or services.

CrunchyCo is not responsible and will in no way be involved with any legal action taken against a user by another user or third party as a result of violating this policy.




Privacy Policy

CrunchyCo is committed to respecting the privacy rights of it's visitors, and maintaining the privacy of all personal information collected from it's users.

Understand that as a result of your visitation to our website, CrunchyCo may have access to internet traffic data pertaining to such visitation such as your IP address, geographical location, domain server, computer type, web browser, etc. This information is completely anonymous and does not link you to your identity in any way. Any such information is not disclosed outside of CrunchyCo and is only used for CrunchyCo's internal purposes of marketing and to help improve the quality and efficiency of our website.

Any and all personal information that does link you to your identity is only made available to us through your permissions by certain actions performed by you. These actions include but are not limited to purchasing merchandise, subscribing to our newsletter, joining our forums, participating in our contests, and submitting your artwork and articles. Personal information that comes into our possession may include but is not limited to your name, address, e-mail, phone number, screen name, age, sex, personal interests, etc. Any type of personal information given to us by any means is at your sole discression and is subject to being stored in CrunchyCo's database and/or used to send you information about our company or products. CrunchyCo will never sell or give your information to a third party for any reason. CrunchyCo will not disclose your information to any party unless absolutely and reasonably necessary in order to comply with a legal process, protect our property and rights, or enforce our Terms of Service. You may choose to not provide us with personal information, although in doing so you waive your ability to perform certain actions such as ordering merchandise, joining our forums, receiving our newsletter, or participating in our contests.

CrunchyCo has absolutely no access to your bank account or credit card information. That information is secured by PayPal.

Please understand that although we will keep your personal information private and secure to the best of our ability, we cannot guarantee complete and absolute protection from all the scoundrels, theives, and hackers existing on this earth. CrunchyCo will not be held responsible for any events resulting in the illegal theft of personal information willingly submitted by you and stored in our database.

If you wish us to make changes to or remove any of your personal information stored within our database for any reason, simply make a request and it will be done immediately.




Intellectual Property Rights

As a visitor to our site, you understand that most of the content contained within is intellectual property belonging to either CrunchyCo, CrunchyCo staff, or third party artists and users. Such intellectual property includes but is not limited to CrunchyCo logos and trademarks, CrunchyCo banners and advertisements, project titles, any music, comics, films, games, or images, other work submitted by CrunchyCo artists and staff, articles, original content posted by users, as well as any web pages and written text. This property belongs to the individual(s) from whom it originated and is not to be copied, stolen, or plagerized by any means. Reproduction, sale, commercial usage, or general usage of content contained within CrunchyCo is only permitted through the expressed permission by the owner of the content. CrunchyCo itself is not authorized to release any third party artist's content for reproduction, sale, commercial use, or general use. To sum up this section, don't steal people's work! Any existing intellectual property laws are applicable to all content on CrunchyCo. If you choose to violate these laws, you may face serious legal action. Seriously.

The same policy stated above applies to all downloadable content from CrunchyCo as well. CrunchyCo and it's artists retain full intellectual property rights over anything downloaded by you. Just because you download it, does not mean you own it. All downloadable content, whether free or paid is not to be copied or plagerized, nor is it to be reproduced, sold, or used for commercial purposes without expressed permission from the author of the material.

You as a user however, are permitted to make back-ups of downloadable content for your own personal use, or save/print out pages of our website for your own personal use. If you have any question as to whether or not what you are planning to do with our content is permitted, the best thing to do is to not do it. The second best thing to do is contact us and ask before doing anything.




User Submission Policy

Any general user or fan who is not an artist submitting work for review, who submits anything to CrunchyCo for any reason must comply with the following policy as well as all regular rules and policies described within these Terms of Service.

As a user submitting your own artwork as tribute to CrunchyCo or any CrunchyCo artists, or for any other reason, you understand that you may not submit work that violates our prohibited content policy described earlier in these Terms of Service. Any submissions that violate our policies will be disposed of promptly. You also understand that CrunchyCo does not guarantee protection against third party plagiarism or theft of any material submitted by you.

Any and all solicited or unsolicited work submitted by general users and fans becomes property of CrunchyCo upon submission. We reserve the right to post, reproduce, and use for commercial or general purposes any fan art, fan fiction, song remixes, parodies, or any other user/fan photography, images, articles or other content submitted to us by any means. We will never sell your submitted items as they stand alone, however such items are subject to being used as a part of another item or product that may be sold by us. Credit for such usage may or may not be given. To ensure that your work is not used by us in a way you do not agree with, either make sure it is something you don't mind that we use, or just don't send it. If you wish us to cease usage of your submission in any way, notify us immediately and we will be happy to wipe out all traces of it as if you had never sent it.

CrunchyCo is not responsible for the usage and treatment of your submitted materials by third parties or CrunchyCo artists.

CrunchyCo will NOT return items sent to us via mail or otherwise for any reason.

Don't submit anything that has been plagerized or copied, as we will not acknowledge such submissions.




Artist Submission Policy

Any artist submitting work for review must comply with the following policy as well as all other rules and policies described within these Terms of Use.

Upon submitting work, you may not submit work that violates our prohibited content policy described earlier in these Terms of Service. Any submissions that violate our policies will be disposed of without review.

Any materials submitted to CrunchyCo become property of CrunchyCo. We will not return any submissions sent to us by mail or otherwise for any reason. Do NOT submit precious originals.

By submitting your work for review, you as the artist understands that CrunchyCo and any CrunchyCo staff can and will view your submitted work. If for some strange reason you submit work that you do not wish us to view, contact us immediately and we will discard the submission upon your request. We do not guarantee that your work will not be viewed by us or any other person related to CrunchyCo or otherwise.

As an artist, you also understand that any work submitted will be contained within CrunchyCo's physical and/or digital archives for future reference. If you wish that we do not store your submissions within our archives, contact us immediately and we will dispose of your work properly.

CrunchyCo does not reproduce, sell, or use your initial submissions for commercial or general purposes without getting expressed permission from you.

Any artist submissions that violate these Terms of Service and Policies will be disposed of, not reviewed, and not replied to.




CrunchyCo/Artist Agreement

CrunchyCo works with artists under no binding contracts. However, to remain a part of CrunchyCo, you agree to comply with our Terms of Service and related Policies, as well as the following CrunchyCo/Artist Agreement.

As an artist who has given a verbal or written agreement to a proposal made to you by CrunchyCo regarding your cooperation with us, you are thereby granting CrunchyCo permission to promote you and any event featuring you, as well as the permission sell or make available your submitted works to the public. CrunchyCo will not provide back-up copies of your work should yours become destroyed or lost. You are responsible for keeping originals and copies of your work.

CrunchyCo does not and will not claim intellectual property rights over the work you produce unless it was produced in full or in part with our assistance. In any case, we will often surrender property rights of said work to you regardless of our level of intervention. CrunchyCo does not wish to stamp your work with our logo or claim it as our creation. Your work is yours and you may do with it what you wish. CrunchyCo will never attempt to change or modify your work other than by offering the occasional idea or suggestion, which you may choose to ignore.

CrunchyCo will work to our best ability to protect and secure your work, but we do not guarantee protection against third party plagiarism or the theft of any material submitted by you. As a CrunchyCo artist, you submit your work willingly and at your own risk.

As a part of CrunchyCo, you are giving us the rights to use and distribute your work. That is why you as the artist are responsible for making sure we understand in which manner you wish us to use or distribute it. If you do not inform us of any and all restrictions you may have as to the usage and distribution of your work, you risk your work being used or distributed incorrectly. You as the artist are responsible for updating us with any changes you wish to be made in regards to your work or profile as it is portrayed on our website. We can not read your mind, so unless you communicate with us, we can't be responsible for any negative effects regarding our usage or portrayal of your material.

CrunchyCo will never attempt to give or sell your work to another party. All artist work submitted to CrunchyCo will remain secured by us within CrunchyCo and for CrunchyCo's use only.

As the artist, you reserve the right to feature, sell, advertise, and distribute your own work elsewhere other than CrunchyCo if you choose. We shall do nothing to prevent you from doing so, although for informational purposes, we do encourage you to inform us of the other places in which your work appears.

Artists may decide what merchandise of theirs will be sold on CrunchyCo and at what price. If your work is to be sold through CrunchyCo, we require that you provide us with the merchandise in which to distribute to buyers (unless we are the ones producing it). CrunchyCo will pay for the cost of shipping the merchandise to our headquarters, but we do not pay the price of the unsold merchandise in advance. CrunchyCo artists receive payment on a sale-by-sale basis. If you sell an item, CrunchyCo will award to you the entire amount paid for the item after subtracting costs to us (such as materials costs and PayPal fees). CrunchyCo does not take any royalties from your merchandise, therefore you can expect 100% profit from anything of yours you sell through us. CrunchyCo artists are paid on a bi-weekly or monthly basis through PayPal or in rare cases a check by mail (we highly prefer to use PayPal). Every payment will include a detailed list of all items sold, money collected, costs deducted, and remaining inventory. We encourage you to keep accurate records to make sure we are paying you correctly.

If you provided us with merchandise, you can expect CrunchyCo to request a regular supply to keep up with sales demands. At any time upon your request, CrunchyCo will return back to you any quantity of your merchandise held in our inventory, along with any payment owed. If you remove your merchandise from our inventory entirely, we will no longer be able to sell it on our website.

If CrunchyCo is producing your merchandise, initial costs are typically paid by us in full. As your merchandise is sold, you are paid the full price of the item purchased minus the cost of our production materials and PayPal fees. At any time you may request to obtain a quantity of your merchandise held in our inventory, but such requests are subject to approval. If approved, the items will be released to you and our materials costs will either be charged or deducted from future payments. Merchandise that has been produced by CrunchyCo is property of CrunchyCo until it is sold or released to you upon request with materials costs paid. If you choose to cease the sale of your merchandise completely, the merchandise will only be released to you after materials costs have been paid to us in full.

Any artists after being accepted as a part CrunchyCo are subject to being dropped from CrunchyCo and erased from our records for any reason without explanation. Reasons may include but are not limited to: failure to create usable artwork, copyright infringement, plagiarism, violations of the CrunchyCo Terms of Service, just being an asshole, etc. On the other hand, CrunchyCo artists may request for any reason to be dropped and have their records erased from CrunchyCo. We will take immediate action to respect any request by the artist to do so.

Artists accepted as a part of CrunchyCo who permanately discontinue their projects, and/or fail to create any new usable material for an extended period of time are subject to a status change from "active" to "inactive" and their profile and work will be placed into the CrunchyCo archives. If your work becomes "inactive," and placed into the archives, and you wish to be removed from the archives and CrunchyCo entirely, let us know immediately and it will be done.

Any disputes between CrunchyCo and artists are to be settled privately in a civil manner through direct communication. If a dispute cannot be resolved in a timely and civil manner, CrunchyCo's final solution may be to simply cut all ties with the artist and remove all traces of them from our archives and our website.




Contests

Every contest conducted by CrunchyCo has it's own specified rules and regulations. See the Contest page for individual contest rules.

Awards and prizes won by contest participants will be sent out within 1-3 business days of a contest's end date. Normal shipping and return policies apply. CrunchyCo will always send out promised prizes as long as sufficient shipping/contact information is provided by the contest winner. CrunchyCo reserves the right to substitute a prize for a different prize of equal value.




Miscellaneous

CrunchyCo is not responsible for problems arising due to events outside of our control such as equipment failures, natural disasters, or changes in the efficiency or state of the services and conditions in which we rely upon to function. In other words, don't blame us if we don't ship your order within 1-3 business days because the post office burns down. It also means you can't blame us if your computer crashes and you lose all your data as a result of viewing our website (probably wouldn't happen in a million years, but if it does, it's not our fault).