Collector's Chest - Acceptable Use Policy
Effective Date: [DATE]
This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") governs your conduct when using the Collector's Chest platform ("Service"). This AUP is incorporated into and forms part of our Terms of Service. Violation of this AUP may result in content removal, account suspension, or permanent account termination at our sole discretion.
1. General Conduct Standards
All users of the Service are expected to act in good faith, treat other users with respect, and use the platform for its intended purpose: managing comic book collections and participating in legitimate comic book marketplace transactions and community contributions. The following sections describe specific prohibited and required behaviors.
2. Prohibited Content
You may not upload, post, send, or otherwise transmit any content through the Service that:
- Is unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, deceptive, fraudulent, or tortious.
- Contains hate speech, slurs, or content that promotes discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, disability, or age.
- Is obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, or depicts graphic violence.
- Infringes on the intellectual property rights of others, including unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted material beyond what is necessary for legitimate collection management.
- Contains personal or private information of another individual without their consent (including real names, addresses, phone numbers, or other identifying information).
- Contains malware, viruses, or any other harmful code or technology.
- Is spam, including unsolicited promotional content, chain messages, or bulk messaging.
- Impersonates another person, entity, or brand, or misrepresents your affiliation with any person or entity.
3. Prohibited Marketplace Conduct
When using the marketplace features (buying, selling, bidding, making offers, and trading), the following behaviors are strictly prohibited:
3.1 Fraudulent Activity
- Listing items you do not own or do not intend to ship.
- Misrepresenting the condition, grade, authenticity, or any other material characteristic of a comic book.
- Listing counterfeit, bootleg, or reproduction items as originals.
- Accepting payment and failing to ship the item within a reasonable timeframe.
- Claiming non-receipt of an item that was delivered (as confirmed by tracking).
3.2 Bidding Manipulation
- Shill bidding: placing bids on your own listings or coordinating with others to artificially inflate prices.
- Bid shielding: using secondary accounts or coordinating with others to place high bids and then retracting them to allow a lower bid to win.
- Using automated tools or bots to place bids.
3.3 Fee Avoidance
- Directing buyers or sellers to complete transactions outside the Platform to avoid platform transaction fees for items originally listed on the Service.
- Manipulating sale prices to reduce transaction fees (e.g., listing an item for $1 and collecting the real price outside the Platform).
3.4 Trade Abuse
- Proposing trades in bad faith (e.g., agreeing to a trade with no intention of shipping).
- Deliberately misgrading or misrepresenting comics in trade proposals.
- Shipping items that materially differ from what was agreed upon in the trade.
4. Community Contribution Standards
The Service includes community contribution features such as the Community Cover Database and the Creator Credits program. When participating in these features, the following rules apply:
4.1 Cover Image Submissions
- You must only submit cover images that you have the right to share. Do not submit images that infringe on third-party copyrights without appropriate permission or legal basis.
- Submitted images must be actual comic book covers relevant to the comic title and issue they are associated with. Do not submit inappropriate, offensive, misleading, or unrelated images.
- Do not submit intentionally low-quality, corrupted, or blank images.
- Do not submit images that contain embedded text, watermarks, or overlays that are not part of the original cover (e.g., personal branding, advertising, or offensive text).
4.2 Creator Credits Integrity
- Do not submit fraudulent, spam, or intentionally incorrect contributions for the purpose of inflating your Creator Credits count.
- Do not submit duplicate or near-duplicate content that has already been submitted or approved, except where the new submission is a meaningfully higher quality version.
- Do not use automated tools, bots, or scripts to generate or submit contributions.
- Do not coordinate with other users to artificially inflate each other's contribution counts through reciprocal low-quality submissions.
Repeated submission of low-quality, inappropriate, or fraudulent content may result in temporary or permanent loss of submission privileges, Creator Credits revocation, or further account action at the Company's sole discretion.
5. Username Policy
Usernames are publicly visible and subject to the following rules. Usernames must not contain vulgar, offensive, obscene, or sexually explicit language; hate speech, slurs, or discriminatory terms; impersonation of other individuals, companies, or brands; references to illegal activities; or excessive special characters or formatting intended to disrupt the display of the Platform. Our automated content filtering system screens usernames at the time of creation. We reserve the right to require modification of any username that violates this policy, even if the automated filter did not catch it at registration.
6. Messaging Conduct
The Service provides a messaging system for users to communicate about collection items, trades, and marketplace transactions. When using messaging, you must not: send harassing, threatening, or abusive messages; send unsolicited commercial messages or spam; share personal information of third parties; attempt to solicit transactions outside the Platform for items listed on the Service; or send content that violates any other section of this AUP. Messages are subject to automated AI-powered content moderation. Violations detected by the moderation system may be flagged for manual review and may result in messaging restrictions or account action.
7. Account Integrity
You may maintain only one account on the Service. The following behaviors related to account integrity are prohibited:
- Creating multiple accounts to circumvent feature limitations of the free tier, to abuse free trial periods, or to reset scan allocations.
- Creating new accounts to evade a previous account suspension or termination.
- Sharing account credentials with others or allowing others to use your account.
- Using automated tools, bots, or scripts to create accounts.
- Misrepresenting your age during the marketplace age attestation process.
8. Technical Restrictions
You may not: attempt to gain unauthorized access to any part of the Service, other users' accounts, or computer systems or networks connected to the Service; use automated tools, scrapers, bots, or scripts to access or interact with the Service without our prior written permission; attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise derive the source code of the Service or its AI features; interfere with or disrupt the Service, servers, or networks connected to the Service, including through denial-of-service attacks; circumvent, disable, or otherwise interfere with security features of the Service, including rate limiting; or probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service without our authorization.
9. Respect for Intellectual Property
While the Service is designed to display comic book cover images and metadata for collection management purposes, users must respect the intellectual property rights of publishers, creators, and other rights holders. You may not use the Service to distribute unauthorized digital copies of comic books, systematically download or archive cover images for use outside the Service, submit images to the Community Cover Database that you do not have the right to share, or use the Service's AI features to generate content that infringes on others' intellectual property. If you believe content on the Service infringes your intellectual property rights, please contact us at [SUPPORT EMAIL] with a detailed description of the alleged infringement.
10. Reporting Violations
If you encounter content or behavior that violates this Acceptable Use Policy, please report it using the reporting functionality within the Platform or by contacting us at [SUPPORT EMAIL]. We take all reports seriously and will investigate promptly. We may, but are not obligated to, take action based on reports, including content removal, warnings, temporary suspension, or permanent account termination.
11. Enforcement
We reserve the right to enforce this AUP at our sole discretion. Enforcement actions may include, but are not limited to:
- Warning: A notification that specific content or behavior violates this AUP.
- Content Removal: Removal of content that violates this AUP, including cover image submissions.
- Feature Restriction: Temporary restriction of specific features (e.g., messaging, marketplace access, community submission privileges).
- Creator Credits Revocation: Removal of credits and badges earned through fraudulent or abusive contributions.
- Account Suspension: Temporary suspension of account access.
- Account Termination: Permanent termination of the account and deletion of all associated data.
In cases of severe violations, including fraud, illegal activity, or threats to user safety, enforcement may be immediate and without prior warning. Users whose accounts are terminated for AUP violations are not entitled to refunds of subscription fees or purchased scan credits.
12. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Acceptable Use Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated through the Platform or via email. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
13. Contact Us
If you have questions about this Acceptable Use Policy, please contact us at:
[LEGAL BUSINESS NAME]
[ADDRESS]
[SUPPORT EMAIL]
Website: collectors-chest.com