Terms of Service

In short

• Sphere Cinema is a service operated by SPHERE.ART LLC, a limited liability company registered in Georgia under identification code 416396983, with its legal address at 14 Megobroba Avenue, 8th floor, apartment 27, Rustavi, Georgia.
• These Terms apply to every User; further Legal Documents cover buying, selling, casting and signing (section 1).
• You must be 16 or older to hold an Account. At 16 or 17 you need a Guardian's agreement to use the Service, and a Guardian's express consent to pay, to send or accept Offers and to sign agreements (section 3).
• You own your Content and give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, show and promote it to run the Service (section 6).
• Georgian law and the courts of Georgia apply. As a Consumer, you keep the mandatory protections of the law of your country of residence (section 14).

1. About these Terms

1.1 Who we are

Sphere Cinema is a service operated by SPHERE.ART LLC, a limited liability company registered in Georgia under identification code 416396983, with its legal address at 14 Megobroba Avenue, 8th floor, apartment 27, Rustavi, Georgia. Our company details also appear in the website footer and on the Company Details page.

1.2 Accepting these Terms

These Terms are a contract between you and SPHERE.ART LLC. If you use the Service without an Account, they apply to that use as far as the law allows. You accept them in full when you create an Account: you must tick a box on the sign-up form that links to these Terms and the Privacy Policy, and the Service refuses sign-up without it. We record which version of these Terms you accepted and when, as the Electronic Agreements and Signatures, section 9 "Accepting the Legal Documents" explains.

These Terms replace the terms previously published on our website. For Accounts created earlier, section 15 applies to this change, and we plan to ask for acceptance at a later sign-in.

1.3 The Legal Documents

The other Legal Documents apply to the Users and activities they name and form one agreement with these Terms:

• Privacy Policy: Personal Data and your rights.
• Cookie Policy: cookies and embedded players.
• Community Guidelines: rules for Content and conduct, Reports and Appeals.
• Copyright and IP Complaints: Notices and Counter-notices.
• SPHERIK AI Assistant Terms: using SPHERIK.
• Casting and Hiring Terms: casting, hiring and Project work.
• Electronic Agreements and Signatures: signing in the Service.
• Purchases, Cancellations and Refunds: buying, withdrawal, Refunds and Complaints.
• Payment Policy: payments, fees, Payouts and Chargebacks.
• Delivery Policy: access to what you buy.
• Transaction Security Policy: protection of payments and Accounts.
• Legal Compliance Policy: sanctions and prohibited business.
• Creator and Organizer Terms: selling.
• Festival Submission Terms: Festivals and Submissions.
• Company Details: our company and contacts.

1.4 Which document prevails

On its own subject, the more specific Legal Document prevails over these Terms. Mandatory law prevails over every Legal Document. Engagement Terms and other agreements between Users bind only the Users who make them.

1.5 Languages

The Legal Documents are written in English and published in Russian. Before the first paid feature opens, we also publish in Georgian these Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Company Details and the Purchases, Cancellations and Refunds, Payment, Delivery, Transaction Security and Legal Compliance policies. Each document page lists the language versions it has. If language versions differ, a Consumer may rely on the version that is more favourable to them. In all other cases the English text prevails.

1.6 Paid features and festival submissions

Paid features open in stages. Section 8 and the Payment Policy apply to each paid feature from the moment the Service offers it with a price and a checkout. Festival submissions are not yet open in the Service. The Festival Submission Terms apply from the day the feature opens.

2. Definitions

These definitions apply in all Legal Documents.

"Working day" means Monday to Friday except public holidays in Georgia; "days" alone means calendar days; deadlines run in Georgian time (UTC+4).

3. Who can use the Service

3.1 Minimum age

You must be 16 or older to hold an Account. When you sign up, you confirm that you are 16 or older and, if you are under 18, that a Guardian agrees. Age is self-declared: we do not verify it. Accounts of people under 16 are closed when we learn of them, and their data is deleted except what we must keep. Data of Minors is covered in the Privacy Policy, section 5 "Data of minors".

3.2 Users aged 16 or 17

If you are 16 or 17, a Guardian must know of and agree to your use of the Service, including your Applications, and your acceptance of these Terms is given with your Guardian's consent. You also need a Guardian's express consent for paid features, and express written consent for sending or accepting Offers and for signing any agreement; for an Engagement your Guardian gives signed consent, as the Electronic Agreements and Signatures, section 6 "Signing for an Organization or a Minor" describes. We may ask for proof of that consent, for example before casting or paid features, and restrict features or close your Account while a required consent is missing (section 12).

3.3 Children under 16

Children under 16 take part in casting only through a Guardian acting from the Guardian's own Account, for Casting Calls that say Minors may apply (Casting and Hiring Terms, section 11 "Minors in casting and production").

3.4 Acting for an Organization

If you use the Service for an Organization, you confirm that you may act for it and accept the Legal Documents on its behalf, and the Organization is bound by them. Without that authority, you are personally responsible for what you do in its name. Signing for an Organization follows the Electronic Agreements and Signatures, section 6 "Signing for an Organization or a Minor".

3.5 Consumers and professional Users

Consumer rights in the Legal Documents and under consumer protection law apply only when you act as a Consumer, for example when you watch or buy a Film for yourself. When you act for your trade, business or profession, for example as a Seller, a Festival or a company hiring for a Project, you are a professional User and the terms written for professional Users apply. Each activity is judged by its purpose, whatever kind of Account you hold.

3.6 Sanctions

You may not buy, sell, use paid features or receive Payouts if you are a Sanctioned Person or are located or ordinarily resident in a country or region under comprehensive sanctions, as the Legal Compliance Policy, section 2 "Sanctions and export controls" defines them. By using paid features, you confirm that neither applies to you.

4. Your Account

4.1 Your details and security

Keep your details true and up to date, especially the email address we use for notices (section 16). An Account is for one person: do not share, sell or transfer it, and keep your password and two-factor codes secret. You are responsible for activity on your Account, except activity that you could not have prevented with reasonable care or that happens after you told us of misuse. If you suspect misuse, write to support@sphere.art at once. Account protections are described in the Transaction Security Policy, section 3 "Account protection".

4.2 Your profile

Your Talent profile becomes public only when you publish it. What others can see, including details visible before you publish, is set out in the Privacy Policy, section 6 "What other Users and the public can see"; uploaded files follow section 6.3 of these Terms.

4.3 Closing your Account

You can close your Account yourself: in Settings, Account, choose Delete account and confirm with your password (for an Account that signs in with Google only, with its email address). You can also write to support@sphere.art from the email address of your Account. From the moment you ask, you are signed out on every device and your Talent profile is hidden. For 30 days you can sign in and choose Keep my account, and everything returns as it was; after those 30 days the Account closes. Closing cancels every Sphere Plan and Fan Subscription from its next renewal and ends access to everything bought with the Account. Access that ends because you closed your Account is not refunded under the Refund Floor; other Refunds follow the Purchases, Cancellations and Refunds policy.

Projects you run alone are deleted with the Account; a Project with other Team Members stays with them, and you are shown there as a deleted user. We delete or anonymise your Account data within 30 days after closure, except records we must or may keep under the Privacy Policy, section 9 "How long we keep data". Signature Records and signed Engagement Terms stay after closure (Electronic Agreements and Signatures, section 7 "Copies, storage and evidence"). Closing counts as a request to remove the files you uploaded from storage, except files that other Users must keep, such as signed contract copies, and backup copies until they are overwritten.

To get a copy of your data or have it deleted without closing your Account, write to privacy@sphere.art as the Privacy Policy, section 10 "Your rights" explains.

5. Our role

5.1 What we provide

We run the Service as a platform that connects Users. Today it offers Talent profiles, Projects and teams, Casting Calls and Applications, Offers and signing, the Project Workspace, free Films in the Catalog for signed-in Users, messages, a forum and SPHERIK.

When you buy from a Seller, the Seller is the party you contract with. Sphere Cinema collects your payment as the Seller's Limited Payment Collection Agent, and paying Sphere Cinema counts as paying the Seller.

Sphere Cinema provides tools for casting, Offers and signing. The Producer and the Talent are the only parties to their Engagement. Sphere Cinema is neither an employer, an agency nor a party to it, and it does not guarantee work, selection or payment.

We also make no promise that you will find Talent, an audience, Buyers or a festival selection.

5.2 No prior checks

We do not review Content before it appears, apart from automatic checks such as file type checks and the forum word filter, and our review of paid Listings before they go on sale (Creator and Organizer Terms, section 4 "What you may sell and what a Listing must say"). We have no general duty to monitor Content. We act on Reports, Notices and orders of courts and authorities, as the Community Guidelines, section 8 "How we moderate" explains.

5.3 Verification

We may verify a User's identity, Organization or credits on request, and we verify Sellers and Festivals as their own terms require. A Verification badge confirms only what we checked, on the date we checked it. It is no endorsement and no promise about the User's work, conduct or reliability. We may refuse Verification or remove a badge when the facts change or prove false, or when the User breaks the Legal Documents.

6. Your Content and the licence you give us

6.1 Ownership

You keep all rights in your User Content. We receive only the licence in section 6.2 and the narrower licences that other Legal Documents set for selling (Creator and Organizer Terms, section 6 "The licence you give us for selling"), Festival screeners (Festival Submission Terms, section 6 "Screeners and confidentiality") and SPHERIK (SPHERIK AI Assistant Terms, section 4 "What you put into SPHERIK").

6.2 The licence

You give SPHERE.ART LLC a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use your User Content on these terms:

• Uses: to host, store, copy, transcode and reformat it; to display and stream it to the people you allow to see it; to show it in search and discovery in the Service; and, for Content you have made public, to use thumbnails, stills, trailers and profile excerpts, including your name and photos, to promote the Service.
• Media: the Service (websites, web app and emails) and, for promotion, our social media accounts, press materials and the channels of our promotion partners.
• Territory: worldwide.
• Sublicences: to our service providers as far as they need it to run the Service (hosting, storage, delivery, the AI providers when SPHERIK is used on your Content, the Payment Processor), and to our promotion partners (festivals, media and distribution partners that promote the Service with us), only for that promotion.
• Term: while the Content is in the Service. After you delete it or close your Account, only as long as needed to overwrite backup copies (within 30 days), to keep records the law requires, to keep access Buyers have already bought (Creator and Organizer Terms, section 6 "The licence you give us for selling") and, until we remove it on request, to keep the stored file at its web address (section 6.3).

You can tell us at privacy@sphere.art at any time that you do not want your name, image or voice used in promotion outside the Service. We then make no new use and remove existing uses that we control. We do not use a Minor's name, image or voice in promotion outside the Service.

6.3 Deleted Content and stored files

Deleting Content removes it from the pages where it appeared; the stored file stays until we remove it on request. Files you upload (photos, videos, audio, documents and attachments) are stored at web addresses that anyone who has the link can open. Do not upload anything that must stay secret. To have a file removed from storage, write to privacy@sphere.art.

6.4 Your promises

When you share User Content, you promise that you hold the rights needed to share it and to give the licence in section 6.2, that it is lawful and follows the Legal Documents, and that every person who can be recognised in it, or whose voice or name it uses, has given the consent the law requires (a Guardian gives it for a Minor). We may remove or restrict Content that breaks the Legal Documents or the law, as the Community Guidelines explain.

7. Rules for using the Service

Follow the Community Guidelines, which set the rules for Content and conduct, including zero tolerance for sexual content involving Minors, the ban on scams and how to send a Report, and the Legal Compliance Policy on sanctions, fraud and lawful use. Send copyright and other intellectual property complaints under the Copyright and IP Complaints policy.

8. Paid features

8.1 Status and kinds of sale

Paid features open in stages. This document applies to each paid feature from the moment the Service offers it with a price and a checkout.

There are two kinds of sale:

• Sphere Paid Services: Sphere Plans, paid SPHERIK features and Promotion, which we sell in our own name.
• Third-Party Sales: Rentals, Purchases, Tickets, Fan Subscriptions and Submission Fees, which Sellers sell while we collect the payment as their Limited Payment Collection Agent (section 5.1).

The price shown before checkout includes taxes where they apply and, for Third-Party Sales, the Platform Fee, with no surcharge (Payment Policy, section 3 "Prices, currencies and taxes"). Payments for work between Producers and Talent are agreed and made directly between them, outside the Service (Payment Policy, section 12 "Payments between Producers and Talent").

8.2 Where the rules are

The detailed rules are in the Purchases, Cancellations and Refunds policy, the Payment Policy, the Delivery Policy, the Transaction Security Policy, the Legal Compliance Policy and, for selling, the Creator and Organizer Terms.

9. SPHERIK

SPHERIK is an AI system. Its answers are generated automatically by third-party AI models and can be wrong, so check them before you rely on them. SPHERIK is free at the effective date. Which AI providers receive your messages and files, and what they receive, is set out in the SPHERIK AI Assistant Terms, section 2 "AI providers and what SPHERIK sends them". SPHERIK alone never makes a decision about you with legal or similarly significant effects.

10. Our intellectual property

The software, design and texts of the Service and the names and logos Sphere Cinema and SPHERIK belong to us or our licensors. You get a limited, revocable, non-exclusive and non-transferable right to use the Service for its purpose. Do not copy, scrape or resell the Service, or reverse engineer it except where the law allows. Other Users' Content belongs to them or their licensors. We may use your feedback and ideas freely and without payment.

11. Third-party services and links

The Service embeds video and audio players from YouTube, Vimeo and similar services, shows links that Users add and, once payments open, sends you to the payment page of the Payment Processor. These services run under their providers' own terms and privacy policies, and we are not responsible for them beyond our own payment duties in the Payment Policy. Embedded players load only after you allow external media in the cookie banner or click "Load video" (Cookie Policy, section 4 "Embedded players from YouTube and Vimeo").

12. Suspension, termination and ending the Service

12.1 Leaving the Service

You may stop using the Service and close your Account at any time (section 4.3).

12.2 Measures we take

We may restrict features, suspend or close an Account for a breach of the Legal Documents or the law, a risk to other people or the Service, fraud or a well-founded suspicion of it, or a demand of a court, an authority or the Payment Processor. Our procedure, reasons and Appeals follow the Community Guidelines, sections 8 "How we moderate", 9 "Decisions and reasons" and 10 "Appeals". Prepaid amounts follow the Purchases, Cancellations and Refunds policy, section 8 "Refunds for Sphere Paid Services".

12.3 Ending without cause

We may also close an Account, end a Seller relationship, end a paid feature or end the whole Service without a breach on your part, with at least 30 days' notice and our reasons. The unused prepaid part is then refunded pro rata, and Buyers keep the Refund Floor (Purchases, Cancellations and Refunds policy, section 9 "Refund Floor for purchases from Sellers").

12.4 After closure

After closure, the licences needed for access already sold to Buyers, the licence term in section 6.2, payment duties and amounts owed, and sections 13, 14, 16 and 17 continue to apply.

13. Liability

13.1 What is never limited

Nothing in the Legal Documents limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury, for intent or gross negligence, or any Consumer right that the law protects.

13.2 Our responsibility and other Users

We are responsible for performing our own obligations and for loss we cause by breaching them, as the law provides. We do not guarantee that the Service will always be available or free of errors, so keep your own copies of important Content. Other Users are responsible for their own Content, conduct and agreements, and Sellers for what they sell. We are not liable for them beyond our duties as Limited Payment Collection Agent and the Refund Floor (Purchases, Cancellations and Refunds policy, section 9 "Refund Floor for purchases from Sellers").

13.3 Sellers, Festivals and businesses

If you use the Service as a Seller or a Festival, or for a registered business or an Organization:

• our total liability to you is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, including Platform Fees, and excludes lost profit and loss that could not be foreseen when the contract was made;
• you compensate us for losses, including reasonable legal costs, from third-party claims caused by your Content or your breach of the Legal Documents or the law, except as far as we caused the loss. We tell you of such a claim promptly and let you take part in the defence. This indemnity does not apply to Minors.

In all other cases the law sets our liability, and these Terms do not cap it. Sellers give a further indemnity in the Creator and Organizer Terms, section 12 "Your responsibility and ours".

14. Complaints, disputes and governing law

Complaints about an Order, a Seller or the Service follow the Purchases, Cancellations and Refunds policy, section 14 "Complaints", which also covers the Georgian Competition and Consumer Protection Agency (GCCA). Disputes between Producers and Talent are for the parties (Casting and Hiring Terms, section 14 "Disputes between Producers and Talent").

Before going to court, please write to us (section 18) so that we can try to settle the matter; this voluntary step leaves your right to go to court or to the GCCA intact.

The law of Georgia governs the Legal Documents and any dispute about them or the Service, and the competent courts of Georgia decide disputes. If you are a Consumer, you keep the mandatory protections of the law of your country of residence and may bring proceedings where that law allows.

15. Changes to the Service and the Legal Documents

15.1 Notice of changes

We tell you about material changes to the Legal Documents (changes that reduce your rights or add to your duties) by email and in the Service at least 14 days before they take effect. Changes to any Legal Document that applies to Sellers or Festivals take effect for them at least 30 days after we tell them. Our notice describes the change, the date it takes effect, your right to close your Account before that date, and that using the Service after that date means you accept the change. Changes required by law, or needed to stop abuse or a security threat, may apply sooner, with notice as soon as possible. Changes in your favour and corrections that change no rights need no advance notice.

15.2 Your choices

If you do not agree to a change, you may close your Account before it takes effect. If a material change is to your disadvantage, you may also end a Sphere Plan with a pro-rata Refund of the unused period (Purchases, Cancellations and Refunds policy, section 8 "Refunds for Sphere Paid Services"). If you keep using the Service after the effective date, the changed document applies to you. A change never applies to Orders placed or disputes raised before it takes effect.

15.3 Versions

Each Legal Document shows its version and effective date. Earlier versions of each Legal Document are available on request at legal@sphere.art.

15.4 Changes to features

We may add, change or remove features of the Service. Ending a paid feature needs at least 30 days' notice and a pro-rata Refund (section 12.3).

16. Notices

We send notices to the email address of your Account and, where useful, show them in the Service. You and we agree that email counts as written notice under the Legal Documents, unless the law requires another form. Send formal legal notices to legal@sphere.art or by post to SPHERE.ART LLC, 14 Megobroba Avenue, 8th floor, apartment 27, Rustavi, Georgia.

17. General provisions

• Transfer. We may transfer the Legal Documents and our rights and duties under them to a successor that runs the Service, with notice to you and with your rights as a Consumer intact, and you may close your Account before the transfer takes effect. You may not transfer your Account or your rights without our written consent.
• Severability. If a court finds part of a Legal Document invalid, the rest stays in force.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a right at once, we keep it.
• Force majeure. Neither you nor we are responsible for a failure caused by events beyond reasonable control, for as long as they last. Refunds owed for things that could not be delivered stay due.
• Whole agreement. The Legal Documents that apply to you are the whole agreement between you and us on their subjects.

18. Contact

Our postal address is on the Company Details page. Changes to these Terms follow section 15.