TERMS OF USE

Copernicus Computing Terms of Service,
Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy

• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy

TERMS OF SERVICE

Welcome to the Copernicus Computing services, product offerings, websites, desktop applications or mobile applications (collectively, the "Service"). Your use of the Service is subject to these Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Policy (collectively, the “Terms of Service” or “Agreement”). These Terms of Service are a legal agreement between You (you or your Company collectively, “You”) and Copernicus Computing Ltd. ("Copernicus Computing" and “We”). "You" refers to any individual who creates an account on the Service, or, if the Service is being used on behalf of an entity by an individual authorized to agree to such terms on behalf of such entity, then "You" refers to such entity. If You are accessing the Service on behalf of Your employer, you represent and warrant that You have the authority to agree to these Terms of Service on its behalf.

Before using our Service, you should read these Terms of Service. If You do not agree with the terms of this Agreement, do not use or discontinue using the Service. Copernicus Computing reserves the right to update and change the Agreement from time to time without immediate notice or acceptance by You. The Agreement will also be applicable to the use of the Service on a trial basis. By using the Service, You signify Your irrevocable acceptance of this Agreement. The website and any downloadable software associated with the Service are protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties.

1. DESCRIPTION OF SERVICE

The Service includes, and is limited to, a service, product websites, chat, desktop applications or mobile applications that allow You access to and use of a single Copernicus Computing Account. Copernicus Computing Account allows you to use all products provided by and connected to the Service.

Registration, access, and the use of multiple Copernicus Computing Accounts by the same person or entity are prohibited. Companies and teams that require the use of multiple accounts may be exempted from this rule by prior permission granted by Copernicus Computing.

The Service may contain information, data, text, photographs, videos, audio clips, written posts and comments, software, scripts, graphics, and interactive features generated, provided, or otherwise made accessible on or through the Service. Subject to these Terms of Service, Copernicus Computing grants to You and each user of the Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable and non-transferable license to use the content of the Service for purposes of using the Service. Use, reproduction, modification, distribution or storage of any content of the Service for other than purposes of using the Service is expressly prohibited without prior written permission from us. You shall not sell, license, rent, or otherwise use or exploit any content of the Service for commercial use or in any way that violates any third party right.

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, any new features that augment or enhance the current Service, including the release of new tools and resources, shall be subject to the Agreement. In order to use the Service, You must obtain access to the World Wide Web, either directly or through devices that access web-based content, and pay any service fees associated with such access. In addition, You must provide all equipment necessary to make such a connection to the World Wide Web, including a computer and modem or other access devices.

The use of the Service for any non-3D rendering-related activity (i.e. cryptocurrency mining or cracking passwords) is prohibited. Such use is only allowed for authorized users who have received a prior written consent directly from Copernicus Computing. Please contact support before attempting to use the Service, else the machines in question will be automatically shut down upon detection.

Any use of third party software in violation of their respective contracts, end-user license agreements (EULA) or any other legally binding documents is prohibited on the Service. Any third party software that is obtained through means other than the official website, store, partners or resellers is prohibited on the Service. In case you are unsure of your software's origin, its license, and legal usage, it's your responsibility to carefully verify this information with the software developer prior to using it on the Service.

Copernicus Computing will provide the Service in accordance with this Agreement. Copernicus Computing may at its sole discretion modify the features of the Service from time to time without prior notice or acceptance, however, we will do our best to make regular announcements containing such modifications and added features.

2. REGISTRATION

In order to use the Service, You must have a valid Copernicus Computing Account (also referred to as “Account”). To acquire an Account for the Service, You must provide Copernicus Computing with an electronic mail address (email) and other information ("Registration Data"). The email address must be real and valid. The use of any instant, temporary, or fake email address to create an Account is prohibited.

In consideration of the use of the Service, You agree to:
(a) provide true, accurate, current and complete information about Yourself as prompted by the Service's registration form, and
(b) maintain and promptly update the Registration Data to keep it true, accurate, current and complete.

Copernicus Computing assumes no duty to verify such information. If You provide any information that is untrue, inaccurate, not current or incomplete, or Copernicus Computing has reasonable grounds to suspect that such information is untrue, inaccurate, not current or incomplete, Copernicus Computing has the right to suspend or terminate Your Account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service (or any portion thereof).

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of the access data for Your Account, and are fully responsible for all activities that occur under Your Account. You agree to:
(a) immediately notify Copernicus Computing of any unauthorized use of Your Account or any other breach of security, and
(b) ensure that You exit from Your Account at the end of each session. Copernicus Computing cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from Your failure to comply with this section.

By registering an Account and using the Service, You represent and warrant that you are at least 13 years of age. No one under the age of 13 may use the Service. Copernicus Computing may, in its sole discretion, refuse to offer the Service to any person or entity and change its eligibility criteria at any time.

You are solely responsible for ensuring that these Terms of Service are in compliance with all laws, rules and regulations applicable to you and the right to access the Service is revoked where these Terms of Service or use of the Service is prohibited or to the extent offering, sale or provision of the Service conflicts with any applicable law, rule or regulation.

3. COMMUNICATIONS

You understand and agree that the Service may include certain communications from Copernicus Computing, such as service announcements, product updates, and administrative messages, and that these communications are considered part of the Service and You will not be able to opt out of receiving them. Other types of communications involving marketing or promotional emails are optional and you will be given a choice to unsubscribe.

4. NO WARRANTIES OR REPRESENTATIONS BY Copernicus Computing

You understand and agree that the Service is provided "as is" and Copernicus Computing and its affiliates expressly disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including without limitation any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement or bailment of your data on Copernicus Computing's servers. Copernicus Computing and its affiliates make no warranty or representation regarding the results that may be obtained from the use of the Service, the security of the Service, or that the Service will meet any user's requirements. Use of the Service is at Your sole risk. You will be solely responsible for any damage to You resulting from the use of the Service. The entire risk arising out of use, security or performance of the Service remains with You. No oral or written information or advice given by Copernicus Computing or its authorized representatives shall create a warranty or in any way increase the scope of Copernicus Computing's obligations.

5. INDEMNITY

You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Copernicus Computing, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, and consultants from any and all third party claims, liability, damages and/or costs (including, but not limited to, attorneys fees as and when incurred) arising from Your use of the Service, Your use of Your Account, Your violation of these Terms of Service or the infringement or violation by You or any other User of Your Account, of any intellectual property relating to the Service (including without limitation Your User Content) or other right of any person or entity.

6. MODIFICATIONS TO SERVICE

Copernicus Computing reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice at any time. You agree that Copernicus Computing shall not be liable to You or to any third party for any modification, suspension, termination or discontinuance of the Service.

7. SUSPENSION OF THE SERVICE

If You breach this Agreement, Copernicus Computing may terminate this Agreement by providing You with a notice of termination. You will be deemed to be in breach of this Agreement and Copernicus Computing will have the right to terminate this Agreement upon providing notice if any monthly or other fees associated with the Software or Services are not paid within thirty (30) days of their becoming due. In addition, Copernicus Computing may terminate this Agreement and/or immediately cease to provide the Service without any liability whatsoever by providing You with notice of at least thirty (30) days. Copernicus Computing shall not have any liability to You arising from or related to the termination of this Agreement in accordance with this Section. Upon termination of this Agreement: (a) You will cease all use of the Software and, if possible, permanently delete all copies of the Software in Your possession or control; and (b) Copernicus Computing shall also have the right to cease providing the Services to You. Copernicus Computing may also temporarily suspend the Services, in whole or in part, where required by law, in the case of security violations or threats, for service maintenance or repair, or for any other reasons deemed necessary or desirable by Copernicus Computing.

8. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

Each party (You and Copernicus Computing) retains all right, title and interest in and to our respective trade secrets, inventions, copyrights, and other intellectual property. Except for the rights expressly granted herein, nothing in the Agreement or the performance thereof shall convey, license, or otherwise transfer any right, title, or interest in any intellectual property or other proprietary rights held by Copernicus Computing or its Third Party Licensors. Copernicus Computing's intellectual property and proprietary rights include any skills, know-how, modifications or other enhancements developed or acquired in the course of configuring, providing, or managing the Service. You agree that you will not, and will not attempt to, directly or indirectly, modify, alter, tamper with, repair, reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile or apply any other process or procedure to derive the source code or create derivative works of any software, information, material, services, or technology of Copernicus Computing or its Third Party Licensors.

9. LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY

Neither party will be liable for any indirect, special, incidental, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, including but not limited to damages for lost data, lost profits, lost revenue or costs of procurement of substitute goods or services, however caused and under any theory of liability, including but not limited to contract or tort (including products liability, strict liability and negligence), and whether or not such party was or should have been aware or advised of the possibility of such damage and notwithstanding the failure of essential purpose of any limited remedy stated herein.

The total aggregate liability of either party arising from or related to this agreement shall be limited to the total net payments of previous 30 days paid by You to Copernicus Computing for the affected service which gives rise to such liability in the three (3) month period immediately preceding the date in which the claim arises.

10. RETURN POLICY

Copernicus Computing provides the Service as it is. In most cases yYou have a possibility to test the Service using trial credits. You can use trial credits to get familiar with our software and to get a cost and time estimation before committing. We provide relevant documentation that is easily accessible. It covers all necessary aspects of the software to aid you in becoming a competent user of the Service. Our tech support monitors the Service and its usage to the best of its ability. Whenever We suspect any mistakes or errors, we will communicate with you. We also provide You access to Web Manager (web dashboard) with features allowing you to monitor and manage all necessary processes on the Service.

If you are not completely happy with the quality and results you obtained through the Service, you can contact our support and request an explanation within 14 days after completed usage. We will investigate your case and, no later than 14 days after we received the request, we will present our position. In case of a mistake or a technical issue on our side, we will offer you a full or partial refund or some other form of compensation. Depending on the payment provider it may take up to 5 business days for the money to return to your bank after issuing a refund. In the case of render credit refunds, they will be reflected on your Account balance almost immediately after issuing.

If the price you have been charged is the underlying reason for the requested refund, we will take the case into consideration only if the test on the job in question was performed. We cannot guarantee refunds for acts of negligence or misuse of our software and the Service.

Unused credits remaining on an account are non-refundable, except where an account and its balance have never been used.

Bonus credits received as part of our discount system are non-refundable.
Example: $2,000 payment grants $2,320 render credits, the $320 is the bonus credit that can not be refunded.

11. PAYMENTS AND CREDITS

Copernicus Computing accepts online payments, wire transfers and, in special cases upon agreement, Western Union transfers and cheques. Settlement of transactions by credit card and e-transfer is carried out through PayPal and Dotpay.pl.

Credits

‍As a new user of the Service, you are eligible to receive a one-time trial credit that enables you to test the service. The trial credit does not expire, is non-transferable, and is non-refundable. After depleting the received trial credit, you must purchase credits if you wish to continue using the Service. Credits must be purchased through the dedicated payment system available in the application. 

To receive all benefits of the Service and all standard account features, you must purchase credits on a prepaid basis. This means you must have available credits on your account to use the Service. Credits purchased in any way other than the standard payment plan available through the service, as described on the Copernicus Computing website and available in the application, will be deemed non-standard and, as a result, will come with limitations. Such limitations may include but are not limited to waived access to volume discounts, offered promotions, and certain account features.

 

Account balance and new users

For new users who have not yet made a payment on their account, any ongoing rendering jobs will be automatically terminated if the account balance falls below -$50. This measure is to ensure responsible usage of our services and to maintain the quality and reliability of the service for all users. We advise maintaining a positive balance to avoid any disruption in your service.‍

 

Negative balance and overdrafts

Render jobs are not stopped immediately when their cost exceeds the credits available on the account. After each completed render task, the system calculates the cost and deducts credits from the balance. As soon as the system detects a negative balance, it won’t start any new tasks (frames), but it will finish rendering all current tasks (frames); in other words, it will pause the job.

When a user stops a job (issues a kill command), all the running tasks will stop immediately and lose any unsaved progress. The system will charge the account for the time render nodes were used based on the node rate and selected priority.

Copernicus Computing reserves the right to intervene and stop any jobs it deems excessive to improve the farm's overall performance and prevent service misuse.

The account's negative balance is the user’s responsibility and must be paid to enable full system functionality. We recommend running test jobs before rendering full range/resolution to avoid overdrafts and any disruption of the service.

 

PRIVACY POLICY

12. PRIVACY

We collect personal information You provide when opening an Account on the Service. We also store chat and email communication records between you and our support team under your Account. We use the information collected from our service (Your Account and communications data) to provide support and maintain Your Account. We also use this information to offer You content – i.e. announcing software updates, releasing new software, and notifying you regarding changes in your Account.

We store your project files and render output on our internal servers that are secure from any outside access.

We will always ask for your permission in case we want to use your project files to provide better customer support and better user experience, or to use your work for marketing purposes. We will never share your files with anyone outside of Copernicus Computing without your written consent.

We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Copernicus Computing.

We work hard to protect You from unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of information we hold by encrypting our services using SSL and a mandatory verification upon Account registration.

13. FILES STORAGE

We allow our users (You) to store project data (project files and any files saved in Your Account) on our servers for a total of 28 days after a completed render job or project unless otherwise agreed. We guarantee to safely store Your project data as they are and unchanged within the initial 7 days. After that, we will relocate your data to archive storage for the remaining period. The archive storage isn't guaranteed against data loss. We will completely and securely delete the project files stored in Your Account 28 days after the last completed render job in the given project.

The standard data storage available per user account is 500GB. Extensions are possible and should be discussed with customer support or account manager on a project by project basis unless an official agreement stating custom storage terms has been put in place.

14. CONFIDENTIALITY

You shall not use or disclose the Confidential Information of Copernicus Computing or its Third Party Licensors during the Term of this Agreement and following the expiration or termination hereof without the prior written consent. You agree to take all reasonable precautions to protect the Confidential Information of Copernicus Computing or its Third Party Licensors, using at least the same standard of care as you use to maintain the confidentiality of your own Confidential Information. "Confidential Information" means non-public information of Copernicus Computing or its Third Party Licensors relating to their business activities, financial affairs, technology, software, services, material, pricing, marketing or sales plans that may be provided to or accessible by you in connection with this Agreement. Copernicus Computing will take the same standard of care to maintain the confidentiality of You.

COOKIE POLICY

15. WHAT ARE COOKIES

As is a common practice with almost all professional websites, this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information cookies gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the sites functionality and the quality of the service we provide.

For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies.

16. HOW WE USE COOKIES

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are unsure whether you need them or not, in case they are used to provide you the Service.

17. DISABLING COOKIES

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (because every browser is different, please refer to your browser's Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in disabling certain functionality and features of this site and the Service associated with it. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

18. THE COOKIES WE SET

Site preferences cookies

In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences, we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page affected by your preferences.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content and improve website performance.

We configured the retention period of the data to "do not automatically expire" and therefore we can access the data for the past years. We also applied the "IP Anonymization", in this way Google Analytics anonymizes the address as soon as technically feasible at the earliest possible stage of the collection network. These controls affect most standard reporting, collecting and aggregating data.

For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

Third party analytics like Hotjar and Facebook Pixels are used to track and measure usage of this site so that we can continue to produce engaging content. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or pages you visit which helps us to understand how we can improve the site for you and your experience on the site.

From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When we are still testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most.

We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media sites including: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, and Pinterest will set cookies through our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

Copyright © 2016 - 2023 Copernicus Computing, All rights reserved.

Last updated November 24, 2023