Acceptable Use Policy

1. What this covers

This policy applies to everyone who uses ProofMate: account holders, everyone they invite into a workspace, and anyone opening a proof link. It forms part of the Terms of Use, so breaching it breaches the agreement.

It covers everything you upload, store, generate or transmit through ProofMate — artwork, photos, mockups, job and client details, notes, comments, workspace and business names, and the emails ProofMate sends on your behalf.

ProofMate is a tool for proofing custom work with your own clients. That is what it is for, and this policy is about keeping it usable for that.

2. Your responsibility

We do not review or moderate content before it is uploaded, and we do not routinely look inside your workspace. That means you are responsible for everything in it, including anything uploaded by people you invited. If you give someone access to your workspace, their uploads are your responsibility too.

You must have the right to hold and use everything you put in — including your clients' artwork and their personal information.

3. No illegal content or activity

Do not use ProofMate to store, produce, send or arrange anything that breaks New Zealand law. That includes:

• Content that is objectionable under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 — most seriously, any material that sexually exploits a child, or that promotes or supports terrorism or extreme violence.
• Committing or helping to commit an offence under the Crimes Act 1961, including fraud, theft, blackmail, threats, or unauthorised access to computer systems.
• Counterfeiting: producing artwork for fake currency, forged identity documents, forged official seals, fraudulent certificates, or counterfeit branded goods.
• Signage, labelling or packaging artwork intended to help sell controlled drugs, unapproved medicines, or restricted weapons unlawfully.
• Money laundering, sanctions evasion, or disguising the proceeds of crime.
• Content that breaches a court order, including a suppression order.

4. No infringing content

This one catches out well-meaning shops most often, so it is worth reading properly. Do not upload, store, reproduce or send work that infringes someone else's rights, including:

• Copyright (Copyright Act 1994): artwork, illustrations, photographs, fonts, typefaces, characters, song lyrics or text you do not own and do not have a licence to use. "I found it on the internet" is not a licence, and neither is "the customer sent it to me" — though if a client supplied it, they may well be the one at fault, and you should be able to show you asked.
• Trade marks (Trade Marks Act 2002): using someone's logo, brand name or get-up in a way that is not authorised, including making unlicensed merchandise for a sports team, a band, a film, or a company.
• Designs and patents, and trade secrets or confidential information you were not permitted to hold.
• Māori cultural intellectual property. Do not reproduce a specific whānau, hapū or iwi design, a moko, or a taonga design without the permission of the people it belongs to. Treat this as a rights question, not a style question.
• Someone's name, image or likeness used commercially without their consent.

If a rights holder contacts us with a credible complaint about content in your workspace, we will pass it on to you and give you a fair chance to respond or take the content down. We are not going to adjudicate a genuine dispute between you and a third party about who owns what, but we will not host content once it is clear it is infringing.

5. No abusive content or conduct

Do not use ProofMate — including proof comments, job notes, client notes, or the emails it sends — to:

• Harass, bully, intimidate, stalk or threaten anyone. The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 applies to messages sent through ProofMate as much as anywhere else.
• Incite or encourage violence, or threaten harm to a person or property.
• Attack or demean people because of race, colour, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or age — including hate symbols and slogans presented as artwork.
• Post someone's private information in order to expose or endanger them.
• Impersonate another person or business, or misrepresent who you are.
• Publish content designed to humiliate a specific person, including a client, a competitor or a former staff member.
• Send unsolicited bulk or commercial email. ProofMate's emailing is for proofs and the job at hand, and using it for marketing lists would breach the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007.

Blunt feedback on a piece of artwork is not abuse. Sharp disagreement about a job is not abuse. This clause is about conduct directed at people.

6. No adult content

ProofMate is a workplace tool. Proofs are opened by clients on shop counters, phones and shared screens, so we keep the whole service safe for work.

Do not upload, store or send through ProofMate:

• Pornography, sexually explicit imagery, or sexual services advertising.
• Nudity presented for sexual purposes.
• Fetish or sexual content of any kind, whether photographic, illustrated or generated.
• Content that sexualises a minor in any way whatsoever. There is no grey area here and no "artistic" exception: this is the one category where we act immediately, preserve the evidence and report it to the New Zealand Police.

We know custom work is not always tidy. Artistic or anatomical nudity, tasteful figure work, and legitimate design for an adult-industry business that is itself lawful can be legitimate commercial jobs. If your work sits near this line, email us at support@proofmate.nz before you upload it and we will give you a straight answer rather than a surprise suspension later. What is never acceptable is the explicit material listed above.

7. No harm to the service

Do not:

• Upload malware, viruses, or files designed to exploit whoever opens them.
• Attempt to access another workspace's data, another user's account, or any part of the system you have not been given access to.
• Probe, scan, penetration-test or attack the service, or try to defeat its security, rate limits or plan limits.
• Overload the service deliberately, or use it as general file storage, a backup target, or a content delivery network for files that have nothing to do with proofing.
• Use automated tools to bulk-create accounts, bulk-upload, or scrape ProofMate.
• Resell or white-label ProofMate as your own product without our written agreement.
• Remove or obscure ProofMate's attribution on a public proof page.

Found a security flaw? Please tell us at support@proofmate.nz rather than exploiting it or publishing it. We will not take action against anyone who reports a genuine vulnerability in good faith, who does not access other people's data any further than needed to demonstrate it, and who gives us a reasonable chance to fix it.

8. What we do about a breach

We are a small operation and our starting assumption is that a problem is a mistake or a misunderstanding. So, for most breaches, the order is:

1. We email you, tell you exactly what the problem is, and ask you to fix it — usually within 7 days, sooner if something is live and causing harm.
2. If it is not fixed, we may remove or hide the specific content, or restrict the feature being misused.
3. If it continues or is serious, we may suspend the workspace or the account.
4. If it is repeated or deliberate, we may close the account and end the agreement under clause 12 of the Terms of Use.

We will act immediately and without notice, before contacting you, where content or conduct appears to sexually exploit a child, presents a credible threat to someone's safety, is actively attacking the service, or where the law requires us to act at once. In those cases we may also preserve evidence and report it to the New Zealand Police or another appropriate authority.

Whatever we do, we will tell you what we did and why as soon as it is safe and lawful for us to, and — except where content is unlawful or we are prevented from doing so — we will give you a reasonable opportunity to export your own data.

Suspension does not entitle you to a refund of the current month where the suspension is because of your breach. If we get it wrong and suspend you when we should not have, we will put it right and refund you.

9. If you think we have got it wrong

Reply to our email, or write to support@proofmate.nz, and tell us why. A human will reconsider it — including, where it is relevant, evidence that you had a licence or the client's authority for the work. If we were wrong, we will restore your access and say so.

10. Reporting a problem

If you have received a ProofMate proof link containing content that breaches this policy, or you are a rights holder who has found your work being used without permission, email support@proofmate.nz.

Please include:

• The proof link or the workspace name;
• What specifically is wrong, and which part of this policy you think it breaches;
• For a rights complaint, what the work is and what your rights in it are; and
• How we can contact you.

We will acknowledge your report within one working day and tell you the outcome. We will not pass your contact details to the workspace owner without asking you first, though the substance of a rights complaint normally has to be shared for them to be able to respond to it.

Content that may sexually exploit a child can also be reported directly to the Department of Internal Affairs, and any immediate threat to someone's safety should go to the New Zealand Police on 111.

11. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy as we learn what actually comes up. The effective date at the top of the page tells you which version is current, and material changes are notified as described in the Terms of Use.