Website Terms & Conditions

Access to and use of any part or page of www.brits.co.uk, www.classcialbrits.co.uk/vote or the BRITs pages of www.bpi.co.uk, including, without limitation, www.bpi.co.uk/theacademy (each a “Website” and, together, the “Websites”) both within the UK and internationally is provided by BRIT Awards Limited (“BAL”) on the following terms:

*1. By using a Website, you agree to be bound by these terms, which shall take effect immediately on your first use of that Website. If you do not agree to be bound by all of the following terms please do not access, use and/or contribute to a Website.

*2. BAL may change these terms from time to time and so you should check these terms regularly. Your continued use of a Website will be deemed acceptance of the updated or amended terms. If you do not agree to the changes, you should cease using the Websites. If there is any conflict between these terms and specific local terms appearing elsewhere on the Websites (including house rules) then the latter shall prevail.

Use of the Websites
*3. You agree to use the Websites only for lawful purposes and in a way that does not infringe the rights of BAL or restrict or inhibit anyone else’s rights, use or enjoyment of the Websites. Prohibited behaviour includes harassing or causing distress or inconvenience to any person, transmitting obscene or offensive content or disrupting the normal flow of dialogue within the Websites.

Intellectual Property
*4. All copyright, trade marks, design rights, patents and other intellectual property rights (registered and unregistered) in and on the Websites and all content (including all applications) located on the Websites shall remain vested in BAL or its licensors (which includes other users). You may not copy, reproduce, republish, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use Website content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You also agree not to adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any Website content except for your own personal, non-commercial use. Any other use of Website content requires the prior written permission of BAL.

*5. The names, images and logos identifying BAL or third parties and their products and services are subject to copyright, design rights and trade marks of BAL and/or third parties. Nothing contained in these terms shall be construed as conferring any licence or right to use any trade mark, design right or copyright of BAL or any other third party.

Contributions to BAL
*6. By sharing any contribution (including any text, photographs, graphics, video or audio) with BAL you agree to grant to BAL, free of charge, permission to use the material in any way it wants (including modifying and adapting it for operational and editorial reasons) for BRIT Awards services in any media worldwide (including on BAL’s Websites accessed by international users). In certain circumstances, BAL may also share your contribution with trusted third parties.

*7. Copyright in your contribution will remain with you and this permission is not exclusive, so you can continue to use the material in any way including allowing others to use it.

*8. In order that BAL can use your contribution, you confirm that your contribution is your own original work, is not defamatory and does not infringe any UK laws, that you have the right to give BAL permission to use it for the purposes specified above, and that you have the consent of anyone who is identifiable in your contribution.

*9. We normally show your name with your contribution, unless you request otherwise, but for operational reasons this is not always possible. BAL may need to contact you for administrative or verification purposes in relation to your contribution, or in relation to particular projects. For full details of when and how we may contact you please see BAL’s Privacy Policy and any local terms where applicable.

*10. Please do not endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or break any laws when creating content you may share with BAL.

*11. If you do not want to grant BAL the permission set out above on these terms, please do not submit or share your contribution to or with the Websites.

*12. If you have any questions about contributing content to BAL, please Contact Us at britwebsite@bpi.co.uk.

Website communities and other member pages
*13. In order to participate in and contribute to selected Website communities and/or other member pages, you may be required to register with a Website. Any personal information supplied to the Websites as part of this registration process and/or any other interaction with the Websites will be collected, stored and used in accordance with BAL’s Privacy Policy

*14. You agree to use Website communities (including message boards) in accordance with the following Community Rules as well as the rest of these terms and conditions. These apply across all Website community sites and services. You should, however, read the local house rules of the particular site or service you’re using, as there may be some local variations to these Community Rules.

(i) About your posts:
• Contributions must be civil and tasteful.
• No disruptive, offensive or abusive behaviour: contributions must be constructive and polite, not mean-spirited or contributed with the intention of causing trouble.
• No unlawful or objectionable content: unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable.
• Be patient: users of all ages and abilities may be taking part in the relevant Website community.
• No spamming or off-topic material: we don’t allow the submission of the same or very similar contributions many times. Please don’t re-submit your contribution to more than one discussion, or contribute off-topic material in subject-specific areas.
• No advertising or promoting.
• No spoilers: material which contains information about the BRITs or other matters which haven’t been made available in the UK may be deleted.
• Contributions containing languages other than English may be removed unless allowed in the relevant local house rules.
• No impersonation.
• No inappropriate (e.g. vulgar, offensive etc) user names.
• URLs (web site addresses) can only be posted if allowed under any relevant local house rules.
• Deliberate misuse of the complaints facility is not permitted. If you persist in doing this, action may be taken against your account.

(ii) Your BRITs Account:
If you use multiple logins for the purpose of disrupting a community or annoying other users you may have action taken against all of your accounts.
All accounts must be registered with a valid personal email address that you access regularly so that moderation emails can be sent to you. Accounts registered with someone else’s email address, or with temporary email addresses may be closed without notice. We may require users to re-validate their account if we believe they have been using an invalid email address.
BAL reserves the right to close accounts if any user is seen to be using proxy IPs (Internet Protocol addresses) in order to attempt to hide the use of multiple BRITs accounts, or if a non UK user pretends to be a UK user, or disrupts any of our services in any way.

(iii) Safety:
We advise that you never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example: telephone number, postal address, home address or email address or any other details that would allow you to be personally identified) in any BRITs community.

(iv) Legal requirements:
• You may not submit or share any defamatory or illegal material of any nature in Website communities. This includes text, graphics, video, programs or audio.
• Contributing material to a Website community with the intention of committing or promoting an illegal act is strictly prohibited.
• You agree to submit to or share with Website communities only contributions which are your own original work. You must not violate, plagiarise, or infringe the rights of BAL or third parties including copyright, trade mark, trade secrets, privacy, publicity, personal or proprietary rights.

(v) If you’re under 16:
• Please get a parent’s or guardian’s permission before taking part in any Website community.
• Never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example, school, telephone number, home address or email address).

(vi) If you breach these Community Rules:
If you fail to abide by these Community Rules (and/or any variations in relevant local house rules) or any other term or condition of use when taking part in a Website community, you will be sent an email which informs you why your contribution has been refused or edited. This email will also include a warning that continuing to break the rules may result in action being taken against your account or accounts.

This action may include any content posted by you being checked before allowed to go on the site or a temporary or permanent suspension of your ability to participate in any or all Website community areas.

If you submit or share offensive or inappropriate content to or with any Website communities or anywhere else on the Websites or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on the Websites, and BAL considers such behaviour to be serious and/or repeated, BAL may use whatever information that is available to it about you to stop any further such infringements. This may include informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school or email provider about the infringement(s). BAL reserves the right to delete any contribution, or take action against any BRITs account, at any time, for any reason.

Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability
*15. The majority of content posted in Website communities is created by members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of BAL. Neither BAL nor its group companies are responsible for any content posted by members of the public on the Websites or for the availability or content of any third party sites that are accessible through the Websites. Any links to third party websites from the Websites do not amount to any endorsement of that site by BAL or its group companies and any use of that site by you is at your own risk.

*16. Website content, including the information, names, images, pictures, logos and icons regarding or relating to BAL its products and services (or to third party products and services), is provided “AS IS” and on an “AS AVAILABLE” basis. To the extent permitted by law, BAL excludes all representations and warranties (whether express or implied by law), including the implied warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, security and accuracy. BAL does not guarantee the timeliness, completeness or performance of the website or any of the content. While we try to ensure that all content provided by BAL is correct at the time of publication no responsibility is accepted by or on behalf of BAL for any errors, omissions or inaccurate content on the website.

*17. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes BAL’s liability for death or personal injury caused by its proven negligence. Subject to the previous sentence, BAL and/or shall not be liable for any of the following losses or damage (whether such damage or losses were foreseen, foreseeable, known or otherwise): (a) loss of data; (b) loss of revenue or anticipated profits; (c) loss of business; (d) loss of opportunity; (e) loss of goodwill or injury to reputation; (f) losses suffered by third parties; or (g) any indirect, consequential, special or exemplary damages arising from the use of the Websites regardless of the form of action.

*18. BAL does not warrant that functions available on the Websites will be uninterrupted or error free, that defects will be corrected, or that the Websites or the server that makes them available are free of viruses or bugs. You acknowledge that it is your responsibility to implement sufficient procedures and virus checks (including anti-virus and other security checks) to satisfy your particular requirements for the accuracy of data input and output.

General
*19. If any of these terms are determined to be illegal, invalid or otherwise unenforceable by reason of the laws of any state or country in which these terms are intended to be effective, then to the extent and within the jurisdiction in which that term is illegal, invalid or unenforceable, it shall be severed and deleted from these terms and the remaining terms shall survive and continue to be binding and enforceable.

*20. The failure or delay of BAL to exercise or enforce any right in these terms does not waive BAL’s right to enforce that right.

*21. These terms shall be governed by and interpreted in accordance with the laws of England and Wales which shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any disputes.

Competition

*22. These terms and conditions (“Terms”) are the rules which apply to The BRIT Awards 2009 Goody Bag competition (the “Competition”) offered by BRIT Awards Limited unless otherwise expressly stated. By entering the competition, entrants agree to be bound by these Terms.

*23. The Competition is organised by BRIT Awards Limited whose registered address is Riverside Building, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JA (“BAL”).

*24. BAL reserves the right to cancel or amend the Competition or these Terms at any time without prior notice. A copy of the Terms may be obtained by sending a stamped addressed envelope to: “The BRIT Awards 2009 Ticket Competition”, Legal Department, BRIT Awards Limited, Riverside Building, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JA.

*25. There is one (1) prize, being a goody bag from The BRIT Awards 2009 (the “Prize”).

*26. Each entrant may only enter the Competition once.

*27. Entry is only open to residents of the United Kingdom. If you are under the age of 16, you must obtain permission from your parent/guardian before entering the Competition. Employees of BAL or its affiliates, media partners, sponsors and/or agencies associated with this Competition and members of their immediate families (including any live-in partner) are ineligible to enter. Any such entries will be invalid.

*28. In order to enter the Competition, eligible entrants must answer the following question correctly using the online form at www.brits.co.uk:
Who presented this year’s ‘Outstanding Contribution Award’ to the Pet Shop Boys?
Brandon Flowers from The Killers
Simon Pegg from Spaced
Alex James from Blur

*29. BAL reserves the right to request written proof of age and identification of the Prize Winner.

*30. There is no purchase requirement to enter the Competition.

*31. The closing time and date for entering the Competition shall be 12 noon (GMT) on 6 March 2009 in Great Britain.

*32. Competition entries must be made in the manner and by the closing date specified. Failure to do so will disqualify the entry.

*33. Proof of delivery of entry is not proof of receipt. BAL and its group companies and/or partners cannot accept responsibility for any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communications line failure, theft, destruction, alteration of, or unauthorised access to entries, or entries lost or delayed whether or not arising during operation or transmission as a result of server functions, viruses, bugs or other causes outside their control.

*34. Eligible entrants who have answered the question correctly will be entered into a prize draw for the Prize. The Prize winner will be chosen at random by an independent adjudicator from all qualifying entries on 6 March 2009. The decision of the independent adjudicator shall be final and no correspondence or discussion shall be entered into.

*35. The Prize Winner shall be notified by telephone or email within 36 hours of the prize draw.

*36. In the event that BAL or its agent is reasonably unable to contact a Prize Winner for whatever reason that Prize Winner may be disqualified and an alternate winner may be selected.

*37. Claims for a Prize must be made within the time and in the manner notified to the Prize Winner upon notification. Failure to claim the Prize within this time or in the manner specified may result in disqualification and selection of an alternate winner.

*38. The Prize is non-transferable and there is no cash alternative. BAL reserves the right to substitute prize(s) of equal or greater value to the Prize at any time.

*39. The Prize is awarded at BAL’s discretion and no Prize shall be awarded as a result of improper actions by or on behalf of any entrant.

*40. The name of the Prize winner shall be posted on the website www.brits.co.uk by no later than 9 March 2009.

*41. BAL cannot accept any liability for any damage, loss, injury or disappointment suffered by any entrant entering the Competition or as a result of accepting a Prize. BAL is not responsible for any problems or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer on-line systems, servers, or providers, computer equipment, software failure of any email or entry to be received on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the internet, telephone lines or at any website, or any combination thereof, including any injury or damage to an entrant’s or any other person’s computer or mobile telephone related to or resulting from participation or downloading any materials in the Competition. Nothing shall exclude BAL’s liability for death or personal injury as a result of negligence.

*42. The Prize Winner may be requested to take part in promotional activity and BAL reserves the right to use the names and locations of the Prize Winner, photographs and audio and/or visual recordings of them in any publicity.

*43. Any personal data relating to entrants will be used solely in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and in line with BAL’s privacy policy which can be found here

*44. These Terms shall be governed by English law and, in the event of any dispute, BAL and each entrant submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

*VOTING*

*Voting Terms & Conditions – British Breakthrough Act*

The BRIT Awards public votes are organised by or on behalf of BRIT Awards Limited, whose registered address is Riverside Building, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JA.

Voting opens at 00:01 GMT on 7 February 2009 and closes at 19:00 GMT on 15 February 2009.
You may only cast your vote by voting on www.brits.co.uk for the act you want to win. The winner will be the act with the most votes once the vote has closed.

You will need to register to vote, as indicated on the “How To Vote” page of the BRIT Awards website [insert link].

You may only vote once (any additional votes that you make will be discounted).

Votes received outside of the specified times will not be counted. Voting times are liable to change and BRIT Awards Limited may suspend, withdraw or re-set voting at its sole discretion at any time and will post any updates on www.brits.co.uk. BRIT Awards Limited reserves the right to discount votes if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that fraudulent voting has occurred (including certain bulk voting).

BRIT Awards Limited, its sub-contractors, subsidiaries and/or agencies do not accept any responsibility whatsoever for any technical failure or malfunction or any other problem with any telephone network or line, system, server, provider or otherwise which may result in any vote being lost or not properly registered or recorded.

These rules are governed by the laws of England and Wales.

*Voting Terms & Conditions – British Live Act*

The BRIT Awards public votes are organised by or on behalf of BRIT Awards Limited, whose registered address is Riverside Building, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JA.

Voting opens at 00:01 GMT on Monday 2 February 2009 and closes at 17.00 GMT on 7 February 2009.

You may only cast your vote by voting on www.brits.co.uk for the act you want to win. The winner will be the act with the most votes once the vote has closed.

You will need to register to vote, as indicated on the “How To Vote” page of the BRIT Awards website [insert link].

You may only vote once (any additional votes you make will be discounted).

Votes received outside the specified times will not be counted. Voting times are liable to change and BRIT Awards Limited may suspend, withdraw or re-set voting at its sole discretion at any time and will post any updates on www.brits.co.uk. BRIT Awards Limited reserves the right to discount votes if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that fraudulent voting has occurred (including certain bulk voting).

These rules are governed by the laws of England and Wales.

*Voting Terms & Conditions – British Single Award*

Voting Terms & Conditions – British Single Award
1. General
The BRIT Awards public votes are organised by or on behalf of BRIT Awards Limited (“BAL”), whose registered address is Riverside Building, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JA.

There will be seven rounds:

Round One: From 00.01 on 2 February 2009 to 17:00 on 6 February 2009
Round Two: From 00:01 on 9 February 2009 to 17:00 on 9 February 2009 to reduce the shortlist from 10 songs to 9 songs by eliminating the song with the fewest votes.

Round Three: From 19:00 on 9 February 2009 to 17:00 on 10 February 2009 to reduce the shortlist from 9 songs to 8 songs by eliminating the song with the fewest votes.
Round Four: From 19:00 on 10 February 2009 to 17:00 on 11 February 2009 to reduce the shortlist from 8 songs to 7 songs by eliminating the song with the fewest votes.

Round Five: From 19.00 on 11 February 2009 to 17:00 on 12 February 2009 to reduce the shortlist from 7 songs to 6 songs by eliminating the song with the fewest votes.
Round Six: From 19.00 on 12 February 2009 to 17.00 on 13 February 2009 to reduce the shortlist from 6 songs to 5 songs by eliminating the song with the fewest votes.

Round Seven: The winner from the five remaining songs will be announced during the live broadcast of The BRIT Awards 2009 on ITV1 on 18 February 2009. From 19.00 GMT on 13 February 2009 to a time to be advertised on The BRIT Awards 2009 television programme on ITV1 (expected to be approximately 21:10 on 18 February 2009) you can vote for your favourite song out of the final five songs. The winner will be the song with the most votes overall after all seven rounds.

All times are GMT.
In Rounds One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six, you may only cast your vote online at www.brits.co.uk/vote for the song you want to save in each round.
In Round Seven, you may only cast your vote by premium rate telephone service, by dialling the numbers specified for the nominated song you want to win.
You may vote only once per round in Rounds One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six (and any additional votes you make in that round will be discounted), but as many times as you want in Round Seven.
Guidelines for Online Voting:
You will need to register to vote, as indicated on the “How to Vote” page of the BRIT Awards website www.brits.co.uk.

2. Round Seven General Voting Guidelines

You can vote by premium rate telephone service (PRTS) only, by dialling the numbers as specified for each of the five (5) shortlisted songs in the British Single category. Please note it is not possible to vote via SMS, the internet, red button or via email.

To vote for your favourite song from amongst the shortlist of five (5) nominated songs in the category for British Single, you may dial the premium rate telephone service phone number (PRTS) for the relevant song in the category, as specified, and listen to the instructions given in a short message.

Each phone vote costs 35p per call from a BT network landline in the UK. Call costs from other networks may be higher and from mobiles will be considerably more. The total cost may be dependent on your network. Please ask permission from the bill payer before voting and please dial carefully and sensibly. There will be no refunds for the cost of any attempted calls or misdialled calls made.

The ITV and BAL endeavour to donate 22.4 pence for each PRTS vote to the charitable organisation, the BRIT Trust.

Voting times:
Vote lines open on Friday, 13 February 2009 and close as stated during The BRIT Awards programme on ITV1 (the ‘programme’) on Wednesday, 18 February 2009. Votes received outside of the specified times will not be counted, but may still be charged. Voting times and the rules for voting are liable to change and voting may be suspended, withdrawn or re-set at any time. The availability of this service may change without notice for reasons beyond the reasonable control of ITV and/or The BRIT Awards Limited (“BAL”).

Anyone having difficulties getting through to the voting lines should wait and then try calling again within voting times only. BT has supplied the phone numbers for voting, but if voting volumes are high, voters using other UK network operators may experience difficulties in voting.

Voting restrictions:
You may dial the numbers as specified to vote as many times as you like. ITV and BAL are committed to operating voting fairly, and to preventing abuse of our systems. Hence, ITV and/or BAL, and the producers of the programme reserve the right to discount votes if they have reasonable grounds to suspect, at their sole discretion, that fraudulent voting has occurred, such that is designed to excessively manipulate the outcome of the vote. Any votes which are received from one recognised number in excess of 1000 for one nominated song in the category, are deemed to be unfair and designed to excessively manipulate the outcome of the vote. Therefore if you vote more than 1000 times for one song in the category, we reserve the right to disqualify any votes made above that figure, having regard to all circumstances and information available to us at the relevant time, and if we decide to disqualify votes above 1000, we will refund the cost of any such votes to you.

Vote results:
PRTS votes received in the British Single category will be added to all votes received before the voting time for PRTS votes, to determine the winner of that category. The result of the vote to determine the winner for the British Single category will be determined by the total number of votes received by the producer of the programme during voting times before and during the programme at the time when the result is calculated, after the lines have closed during the programme. Please note that votes which have been sent but not yet received by the producer of the programme at the time when the result is calculated will not be counted but may still be charged.

The song which receives the most votes in that category will be the winner. The winning song will be announced during the programme on Wednesday, 18 February 2009.

Neither ITV nor BAL will have a say in the outcome of the vote. In the event of a tie, where two or more nominated songs receive joint highest votes, each of these nominated songs will be a winner.

In the event that the outcome of the vote cannot be reasonably determined because of a technical failure or other circumstance beyond the ITV’s and/or BAL’s reasonable control which affects the vote, or any other decision which the vote would have determined, then all votes received before the voting time for PRTS votes will determine the winner. In the event those votes are tied, such that two or more nominated songs receive joint highest votes, each of the nominated songs will be a winner. BAL will calculate the outcome of the vote having regard to all circumstances and information available to them at the relevant time.

General terms:
ITV, BAL, the producers of the programme and their sub-contractors do not accept any responsibility whatsoever for any technical failure or malfunction or any other problem with any telephone network or line, system, server, provider, software or otherwise which may result in any vote being lost or not properly received, registered or recorded, nor do they promise that the phone line will be free from errors or omissions nor that it will be available uninterrupted and in a fully operating condition. The system and/or service may be suspended temporarily and without notice in the case of system failure, maintenance or repair or for reasons beyond their reasonable control. Neither ITV nor BAL will be liable to you or to any other person in the event that all or any part of the system and/or service is discontinued, modified or changed in any way.

Nothing in these terms and conditions restricts your statutory rights as a consumer. For more details on your statutory rights you should contact your local Trading Standards Office or Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

Queries/complaints:
If you have a query or complaint, you may register it with the ITV duty office who can be contacted by phone on 0844 88 14150, or by email at viewerservices@itv.com. You will need to give the following information:

a) Your Name
b) The telephone number you called from
c) The date(s) and time(s) when you called
d) If possible, your telephone network operator, e.g. BT, Cable & Wireless
e) The date(s) and time(s) when you experienced problems
f) The nature of your query, or the problem you have been experiencing
g) A contact telephone number you can be reached on if necessary

Alternatively, you may send the above required information to itvihelp@itv.com and we will contact you as soon as possible.

“ITV” is ITV Consumer Limited, 200 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8HF (registered number 2937518)

The BRIT Awards public votes are organised by or on behalf of BRIT Awards Limited, whose registered address is Riverside Building, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JA (registered number 03405116).

These Terms and Conditions were revised on 10 February 2009