User generated content ("UGC"), also commonly known as 'social media', refers to a wide variety of media content that is produced by our members as opposed to content made by PVEC themselves, or individual contributors commissioned by PVEC.
In recent years UGC has expanded due to developing technologies that are now readily available, including digital video and images, mobile text messages, blogging, message boards, emails and audio submissions.
'UGC', as referred to in these FAQs and covered by PVEC's Terms of Use, includes any content produced by our audiences/users which is submitted to or shared with PVEC either directly or indirectly.
You are granting PVEC a licence, or permission, to use your work, but you still own the work. Further, the rights to use UGC granted to PVEC are non-exclusive which means that you can continue to use your content as you like including the ability to also allow others to use it.
PVEC's Terms of Use provide PVEC with permission to use any UGC submitted to/shared with PVEC free of charge across any of its services both in the UK and worldwide.
While these may seem like quite wide rights, PVEC operate a large number of services and these are PVEC's standard terms covering the wide variety of types of UGC submitted to PVEC for a large number of purposes. To be able to use your content (such as showcasing a photo on pvec.net or a short video clip, PVEC needs sufficient rights to use the material as proposed by individual UGC projects.
The terms also include the ability for PVEC to be able to sub-license UGC. If PVEC shares any of your content with any of its trusted partners, it will endeavour to ensure that they do not alter your material in any way or allow them to provide it to any other UK based organisation.
If you submit any content to or share any material with PVEC (including any text, photographs, graphics, video or audio) you will retain the copyright in your work. As the non-exclusive licence to PVEC is only a permission for PVEC to use the content you can also continue to use your content in any way you wish including using it yourself and/or allowing others to use it.
When you submit content to or share material with PVEC, you must only submit/share your own original content or if your content does contains the work(s) of others (e.g. music, images and/or video) you must have obtained the necessary rights or permissions to use that material.
If your content clearly identifies anyone else you will need to ensure that they have consented to the content being used by PVEC for the purposes for which you submitted it and/or any other uses by PVEC. Where your content clearly identifies children under the age of 16 you must ensure that their parent or guardian has provided the consent set out above.
PVEC also requires that you do not submit/share any content that is defamatory, offensive or unlawful in any way. Any inappropriate content will be rejected or taken offline by PVEC. If you are in any doubt, please do not share your content with PVEC.
PVEC will endeavour to credit any UGC submitted to or shared with it where that content features in or is showcased on any PVEC services. Unfortunately for operational and technical reasons this is not always possible.
Where you share your content with PVEC that is located on a third party website such as Flickr, YouTube or MySpace PVEC will also endeavour to link back to the original location of that content where technically and editorially possible. PVEC also reserves the right to take a backup image of your content that is hosted elsewhere in case of any technical problems with links etc.
If you would prefer for PVEC not to credit you for whatever reason please let us know when submitting your material.
In the majority of instances, PVEC does not amend, edit or alter any material submitted to or shared with PVEC. Due to technical or operational limitations PVEC may have to slightly amend content such as cropping images to be able to use them. PVEC will endeavour not to make any significant editorial amendments to your work without your consent.
Where PVEC shares any UGC with any trusted third parties it will also endeavour to ensure that they do not alter your material in any material way.
PVEC will keep your contributions indefinitely. Where they may not be used on pvec.net or in any current PVEC publication, will will keep them for archive purposes.
PVEC may need to contact you to authenticate or verify your content and/or obtain further information about your work. If we are unable to contact you we may be unable to use your content for the particular purpose for which it was submitted. If, for whatever reason, PVEC cannot accept your content or has to reject it if it breaches the Terms of Use, PVEC will endeavour to let you know.
For more information about PVEC contacting contributors, please see PVEC's Privacy Policy.
No, PVEC does not pay for any user generated content.
PVEC receives a large amount of content in various forms from our members, and others, every day. Given the large quantities of content submitted/shared, unfortunately PVEC can not use every individual piece of content. We therefore try to take a selection of the content that is submitted or shared with us and showcase as much of the best content as possible on the various PVEC services. That said, where possible we will try to put up everything submitted such as with the PVEC Forum.
PVEC will endeavour to only use your content for the specific purpose, and any reasonably related purposes, for which it was submitted. If for example you submit a photo as part of a competition, PVEC may showcase that image on pvec.net and on other PVEC services for promoting that competition such as public exhibitions of the winning competition photos.
PVEC's Terms of Use governing the submission, acceptance and use of UGC will apply to the majority of UGC regardless of how it is submitted to or shared with PVEC. Some specific PVEC UGC initiatives may have their own specific terms that vary from the standard terms, however, these will be made clear to you on the specific web pages or by other relevant means.
Please make sure that you are aware of the relevant terms that apply before submitting any content to PVEC.
Any submission of your content to any non-PVEC website will be subject to that website's terms of use and privacy policy. Please be aware of a website's terms and privacy policy, which are likely to differ from PVEC's, when submitting your content to it. For example, some websites include a provision so that you assign all your rights in your content to the website owner. Some large UGC websites are also based in the US so your personal information may be stored outside the EU where different laws apply.
By sharing your content with PVEC via a third party website or sending us a link to your content located elsewhere, you are also granting PVEC the rights to be able to use your content in accordance with PVEC's standard Terms of Use.
If you see some user generated material on pvec.net that you think is offensive, infringes your or anybody else's copyright, is defamatory or is unlawful in any way the best way to let us know is by any local site specific methods such as the 'contact us' links.