Terms and Conditions of Use

1. Purpose, parties and definitions

These General Terms and Conditions of Use (the “Terms of Use”) govern access to and use of the Tidecut platform, a digital asset management (DAM) service published by SARL RIOU STICHELBAUT, trading under the Polaryse brand, SIREN 844 114 942, whose registered office is located at 40 avenue de la Perrière, 56100 Lorient, France, hereinafter “Polaryse”.

For the purposes of these Terms of Use:

• Service: the Tidecut platform, its applications and features;
• Client: the natural or legal person who creates or has a Workspace created and, where applicable, subscribes to a plan;
• Workspace: the Tidecut technical environment associated with a company, an organisation or personal use;
• Owner: the User appointed to manage the Workspace, its billing and its subscription. This technical role does not, in itself, imply legal ownership of the content or the company;
• Authorised User: any natural person to whom the Client grants access to its Workspace;
• User: any natural person with a Tidecut account, whether acting as Owner, super administrator, project administrator or member.

2. Acceptance of the Terms of Use

Each User personally accepts these Terms of Use when creating an account, accepting an invitation, or when presented with a new version requiring their agreement. The Terms of Use are available before acceptance and may be consulted at any time.

Acceptance of the Terms of Use authorises use of the Service but does not authorise a User to enter into commercial commitments on behalf of the Client. Subscriptions are governed separately by the General Terms and Conditions of Sale accepted by the Owner.

3. Account, age and access security

Access to the Service is restricted to persons who are at least 18 years old, have the necessary legal capacity and hold an active account. The User provides accurate, complete and up-to-date information.

The account is personal. The User must keep their login credentials confidential, must not share them, and must notify Polaryse without delay at contact@polaryse.com in the event of loss, disclosure or suspicious use. The User remains responsible for actions carried out through their account to the extent that such actions are attributable to them.

The main roles are organised as follows:

• the Owner manages the subscription and billing and decides whether to transfer or delete the Workspace;
• super administrators manage the members and resources of the Workspace within the limits of the rights granted by the Client;
• project administrators manage the projects to which they are assigned, including the optional analysis permissions referred to in Article 8;
• members use the resources to which they have been granted access.

The Client grants and revokes its Authorised Users’ permissions and ensures that those permissions are appropriate to their duties. Polaryse may log operations necessary for security, Service administration and evidentiary purposes.

4. Subscription

Access to certain features requires a subscription by the Client, represented by the Workspace Owner, under the conditions set out in the General Terms and Conditions of Sale. Other Users are not authorised to subscribe, modify or cancel the subscription.

5. Description and availability of the Service

Tidecut allows Users, in particular, to upload, store, organise, index, search, view, transcode, download and share photographs, videos, audio files, subtitles, metadata and other compatible files. The applicable features, capacities, quotas and limits depend on the Client’s plan and enabled options.

Polaryse endeavours to ensure continuity of the Service. Temporary interruptions may be necessary for maintenance, security, incident resolution or technical developments. Where reasonably possible, advance notice will be given of planned operations likely to materially affect the Service.

6. Content and technical licence

No intellectual property rights in uploaded content are transferred to Polaryse. The Client, the User and any other rights holders retain their respective rights. The User warrants that they hold the rights, permissions and legal bases necessary to upload, process, display and share the content through the Service.

In order to provide the Service, the User grants Polaryse, on behalf of the Client, a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence limited to the period necessary to provide the Service, enable reversibility, maintain backups and comply with applicable legal obligations. This licence only authorises Polaryse and its necessary processors to host, copy, back up, transcode, create previews and thumbnails, index, display, transmit, distribute in accordance with sharing settings, return and delete the content.

For optional artificial intelligence features, the licence covers only the operations expressly authorised under Article 8. It does not authorise promotional use of the content or its use to train a model for Polaryse’s own benefit without a separate agreement with the Client.

The User checks recipients and access rights before creating a sharing link. The User remains responsible for the lawfulness of the availability they request.

7. Prohibited uses

The Service must not be used to:

• upload or distribute unlawful, infringing or defamatory content, or content that violates privacy, image rights or personal data rights;
• introduce malware, circumvent a security measure, gain unauthorised access to an account, or test the security of the Service without written permission;
• impersonate another person, share login credentials or knowingly grant excessive permissions;
• disrupt or abnormally overload the Service, automate abusive extraction, or circumvent quotas and technical limitations;
• resell, rent, reproduce or make the Service available to a third party outside the intended features and without permission;
• use artificial intelligence features or their outputs for unlawful, discriminatory or deceptive purposes, or in a way that disproportionately infringes a person’s rights.

Suspected unlawful content or conduct may be reported to contact@polaryse.com, stating its location, the reasons for the report and the information needed to assess its merits.

8. Artificial intelligence features

The Service offers optional processing features, including keyword generation, transcription, translation and subtitle synchronisation.

• the Owner, a super administrator or a project administrator must first authorise analysis of a folder;
• the permission extends to the folder and its child folders and remains active until withdrawn;
• while it remains active, new media added within that scope may be analysed automatically;
• withdrawal stops new analyses but does not delete keywords and other results already recorded, which may be modified or deleted by an authorised User.

This permission constitutes an instruction from the Client to perform the requested feature; it does not replace consent or any other legal requirement that may apply in relation to persons appearing in the content. The Client determines whether the processing is lawful, informs persons where required by law and ensures that its administrators are duly authorised.

Tidecut’s standard search does not query an artificial intelligence model: it searches previously recorded keywords, and the search text is not sent to an AI provider.

Depending on the Client’s plan, processing may be performed by a model operated by Tidecut or by a provider described in the Privacy Policy. Only the content required for the requested feature is transmitted. Automated outputs may contain errors or inaccuracies and must be reviewed before any sensitive use. They must not be used alone to make a decision producing legal effects or significantly affecting a person.

9. Facial recognition disabled

As of the date of these Terms of Use, facial recognition is not offered to Users and its automatic activation is disabled. The general permission referred to in Article 8 does not authorise any biometric processing.

Any reactivation for Clients would require specific information, separate permission, an update to the applicable documents and prior verification of the legal and security requirements. Any historical data is processed in accordance with the Privacy Policy and may be the subject of a request sent to contact@polaryse.com.

10. Hosting and location

The website, PostgreSQL database, certain transcoding capacity and backups are hosted in the AWS eu-west-1 region (Ireland). The main media API and local models are operated on Tidecut infrastructure in France, with possible failover to AWS eu-west-1. Files are stored with Wasabi in its eu-west-2 region corresponding to Paris. CloudFront may distribute certain content through a global network. These locations therefore do not guarantee that all data remains exclusively within the European Union.

11. Security

Taking into account the nature of the data and the risks involved, Polaryse implements appropriate technical and organisational measures to preserve the confidentiality, integrity, availability and resilience of the Service and the data.

As no information system can completely eliminate every risk, Polaryse does not guarantee absolute security. This qualification does not limit Polaryse’s statutory obligations or its liability where such liability cannot be excluded.

12. Liability

Each party is liable for the consequences of its own breaches. The Client and Users are responsible for the content they upload, the instructions they give, the rights they grant and their use of the Service.

Polaryse is liable for direct and foreseeable damage resulting from a proven breach of its obligations. It is not liable to the extent that damage results from non-compliant use, an instruction from the Client, content supplied by a User, a third-party service selected by the Client, or a force majeure event under French law.

Any limitations applicable to the commercial relationship with the Client are set out in the General Terms and Conditions of Sale or special terms. Nothing in these Terms of Use excludes or limits any liability or right that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

13. Suspension and termination of access

Polaryse may restrict, suspend or terminate all or part of an access in the event of a breach of these Terms of Use, fraud, non-payment, unlawful use, a security risk or a request from a competent authority. As far as possible, the measure is limited to the account, content or feature concerned.

Except in an emergency, in the event of manifest unlawfulness or where there is a risk to the Service or third parties, the Owner or User concerned is informed of the reason and given a reasonable period to remedy the breach. Access is restored once the reason for the measure no longer exists. Commercial cancellation of the subscription and its consequences are governed by the General Terms and Conditions of Sale.

14. Personal data and account deletion

Personal data is processed in accordance with the Privacy Policy and, where Polaryse acts on behalf of a Client acting as controller, the applicable Data Processing Agreement.

Deleting an account removes it from the active system, subject to data that must be retained under a legal obligation and the normal expiry of backups. The departure of a member or deletion of a member’s account does not delete content controlled by the Client. Before deleting their own account, the Owner must transfer or delete every Workspace they own using the options offered by the Service.

15. Changes to the Terms of Use

Polaryse may amend these Terms of Use to reflect legal, regulatory, technical, functional or security developments. Material changes are communicated to Users within a reasonable period before they take effect, assessed according to their nature and effects, and require renewed acceptance where they affect Users’ rights or obligations.

This notice period may be reduced where an immediate change is necessary to comply with the law, respond to a security emergency or prevent abuse. A change may also take effect earlier for a User who expressly accepts it. A User who rejects a material change may stop using the Service. The Owner may cancel the subscription in accordance with the General Terms and Conditions of Sale before the change takes effect. Purely formal or favourable corrections may take effect upon publication.

16. Governing law and dispute resolution

These Terms of Use are governed by French law, without depriving a User of any mandatory protections available to them under applicable law.

In the event of a difficulty, the User is invited first to submit a complaint to contact@polaryse.com in order to seek an amicable solution. If no agreement is reached, the dispute falls within the jurisdiction of the competent courts under the applicable rules of procedure. No jurisdiction clause contained in another document may be enforced against a person who did not contract as a trader where prohibited by law.