Terms

Who's who

Commissioners start productions and pay for work. Co-curators, creative directors and independent contractors, make the work. Co Curate is the platform that connects them, holds the record, and where applicable proctors the budget.

You need an account to commission or make work, you must be 18 or over, and the details you give us should be true. You're responsible for what happens under your account.

The work itself

When a commissioner and a co-curator agree a project, that agreement is between them. Co Curate is not the employer, the agent, or a party to the engagement. We don't guarantee that any brief will be filled, that any creative will be available, or that any particular standard of work will result.

What we do provide is the record: the brief, the accepted terms, the deliverables, the messages, the files, and the ledger. When there's a disagreement about what was agreed, that record is what it was.

Money

The structure is set out in full on How it works. In summary:

Commission links. When a co-curator brings a client they already work with onto the platform using a commission link, Co Curate takes no platform fee on that project. Payment on those commissions is settled directly between the client and the creative; Co Curate neither holds nor moves the money, and the project room says so. This rate applies while we're helping creatives migrate existing relationships onto the platform, and we'll give notice here before changing it.

Held by Co Curate. On a marketplace commission, Co Curate is the merchant of record: the commissioner pays Co Curate, Co Curate holds the commission until the Delivery phase closes, and then pays the makers out of it. Nothing moves to anyone mid-project. Co Curate is the party you pay and the party that pays the makers, not a third party holding money on anyone's behalf. Commissions are quoted and held in US dollars, and Co Curate absorbs the card and transfer fees.

How a payment is taken, held, released, refunded and reported is set out under Payments below. Until the payment rails are switched on, the project room says so beside its ledger and no card is charged; where a project shows real money before then, that money moved directly between the parties, outside the platform.

Payments

Who you pay. On a marketplace brief, Co Curate is the merchant of record. You pay Co Curate, and Co Curate pays the people on the project. Commission-link projects and Indie projects are not paid through Co Curate at all; the money on those is settled between the parties, and the room says so.

When the card is charged. A card on file opens the brief; nothing is debited for that. The card is charged in full, for the whole commission, when the treatment phase opens. The money is then held by Co Curate and released to the people on the project when Delivery is confirmed by both sides. Nothing is paid to anyone mid-project.

What comes out of it. Co Curate's share is 20% of the commission. The direction fee is 30% of the maker pool, to whoever leads the commission. The rest is the crew budget, allocated by the lead and visible in the room.

Refunds. A refund is asked for through the project room and decided by Co Curate. Before the treatment is delivered, a refund is in full. After it, a refund is partial and at Co Curate's discretion, because work has been done against the money. A refund goes back to the card that paid.

Disputes. If a cardholder disputes a charge, every payout on that project pauses until the dispute is resolved. The record in the room — the brief, the accepted terms, the rounds, and the two-sided confirmation of Delivery — is what Co Curate answers the dispute with.

How makers are paid. Artists are paid by transfer to their own connected Stripe account, which they set up once. A payout reads sent when the transfer is made and paid when their bank has it. Artists in countries Stripe cannot pay out to cannot be paid through Co Curate, and are told so at sign-up.

Tax. Artists in the United States receive a 1099 from Co Curate when the reporting threshold is met, delivered through their Stripe dashboard. Artists outside the United States provide a W-8BEN. Co Curate, not the artist's client, is the filer.

Currency and fees. Every amount is in US dollars. Co Curate pays the card and payout fees; the figures you see are the figures that move.

Commission links, specifically

A commission link is a quote. It carries a named client, a scope, a price and dates, and it works once. It expires 30 days after it's sent, and the creative can withdraw it any time before it's accepted.

The terms shown on the link when the client accepts are the terms of that commission. A sent quote is never edited. If something changes, the creative withdraws it and sends a new one, so the record always matches what the client actually saw and agreed to.

Accepting a commission link creates a Co Curate account for the client and opens a project room with the creative already assigned.

Your content

Work you upload stays yours. You keep all rights in your briefs, treatments, files and deliverables. You grant Co Curate only the permission needed to operate the platform: to store your content, display it to the people on that project, and show it back to you.

Usage rights in commissioned work, meaning who may use the deliverables, where, and for how long, are for the commissioner and creative to agree between themselves, and should be written into the project's terms.

Don't upload work you don't have the rights to, anything unlawful, or anything designed to harass. Don't try to break, overload, or probe the platform, and don't scrape it. We can suspend an account that does.

Going around the platform

We'd rather earn the fee than police you. If Co Curate isn't worth its share on a given project, tell us why. That's more useful to us than a rule. We only ask that you don't use the platform to source a relationship and then move it off specifically to avoid the fee, since that's the one thing that makes the model impossible.

Alpha status, and what that means

This is a prototype under active development. Features change, and things occasionally break. We may change or remove functionality without notice.

Co Curate is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. To the extent the law allows, we're not liable for lost profits, lost work, or indirect or consequential damages, and our total liability for any claim is limited to the platform fees you paid us in the three months before it arose. Nothing here limits liability that can't lawfully be limited.

Keep your own copies of anything important. Don't rely on the platform as your only backup.

Ending things

You can stop using Co Curate whenever you like, and ask us to delete your account; see Privacy. We may suspend accounts that breach these terms or put other people at risk. Live projects should be settled between the parties before an account goes.

Changes

If these terms change materially we'll update the date above and say so by email where it affects you. Continuing to use Co Curate after a change means you accept it.

Contact

Anything at all: jaredkeys100@gmail.com.