COPYRIGHT
All material on How Do I Say This? is copyright ©2007-2008, the How Do I Say This? team and contributing artists. We retain copyright on every submission, for all current and future formats (TV shows, movies, books) so…don’t submit anything you don’t want us to use! Submission of any and all content will be interpreted as an irrevocable transfer of license from now until the end of time, on this and every planet in any and all media now existing or yet to come. We consider the saving/copying of your own submissions to be fair use, but if you copy any large sections of the site without permission, watch out—lawyers will kick down the door while you sleep! Want to share our work? Use the “send to a friend” link.

We reserve all rights to all content created by us. Seriously, broke-assed students made a lot of this stuff on credit cards and ramen. If you take it and post it anywhere else without permission, you’re not stealing from a big media company, you’re stealing from the little guy. Bad Karma will follow. Lawyers will deliver it. Then, when you think you’re safe—maybe riding in an elevator—someone who seems like no threat at all, perhaps an elderly Polish lady with a sweet smile, will draw a knife from his/her sleeve and cut off whatever part you consider to be your best feature. We will pay him/her for this assault with whatever money we make suing you.

PRIVACY
We have made every effort to keep your data safe. But, you agree to hold us harmless if somebody hacks the site (we don’t collect any personal info beyond email, so we consider this to be a low-risk proposition).

We will not sell your user data to any marketers. We may sell your user data if we sell the site, but we’ll make whoever buys the site promise not to use your email to sell you stuff you don’t need. We may occasionally send you an email describing a new feature or boasting of some incredible news item, but we’re not going to try to get you to refinance your house or buy Canadian Viagra.

PLEASE NOTE: We do reserve the right to snoop around in user submissions and send-to-friend texts to make sure nobody is violating our spam or acceptable content policies. So, treat everything you write like a postcard, we may read it.

ACCEPTABLE USE
How Do I Say This? is for personal, entertainment purposes only. The advice we give may be bad or good, but it is not meant as a substitute for professional counseling, parental advice, or having good friends.

We hope that you’ll let your guard down and be open and honest or funny and insightful or perceptive and wry, etc… We encourage you to be yourself. However—if yourself is racist, sexist, homophobic, or intolerant of people’s faith, we encourage you to be a more enlightened version of yourself. If you are deemed to be offensive, we’ll close your account. If you make the site less fun for other users, we’ll close your account. Everyone’s invited to the party—but if you don’t know how to act, you’ll be thrown out.

If you use the site to harass anyone, stalk anyone, or attempt to use it for reasons other than the collective giving and shaping of advice, we’ll close your account. Maybe when you’re invited to another party, you’ll know how to act.

SPAM
Why would you spam people? Really? Do you actually make money on it? We haven’t met any spam millionaires yet, but maybe you’re out there. You should stop. It’s like farting for a living or wiping your boogers on people—it’s shameful and makes you less than human. God did not put you on Earth to spam. Step up to the glorious potential you’ve been given.

If we catch you spamming, we close your account. If we can figure out who you are, we will call and find out if you’re a millionaire. If it turns out you live with your mom, we’ll laugh at you.

AGE
How Do I Say This? is R-rated. We encourage frank discussion about sex, drugs, politics, etc… If you’re not 18, you should go do something more wholesome, like visiting MySpace or FaceBook where nothing bad ever happens.

Seriously, if you haven’t attended a semester of college or more, you should leave. If you’re not 18, you have to have your parents agree to let you use this site. And, really, how would you ever prove this? So, get out of here.

YOU AGREE NOT TO SUE US
Even if we crash your computer, even if it deletes something important, even if you take our advice and your girlfriend dumps you, you lose your job, your friends, your house… This is just a website, and like all websites, you use it at your own risk. We don’t want to sue you, you don’t want to sue us—let’s be reasonable.

By agreeing with these policies, you’re saying, “Hey—this is a game. They told me not to take their advice. They told me that they did their best to protect my data, but that it wasn’t Fort Knox. They told me that it was unlikely, but the site might crash my computer. I knew the risks going in. I have ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to sue these people and I never will.”

These policies may be written in a casual, off-the-cuff manner, but we mean all of it except for the old Polish lady part. If you don’t agree to it, please go away. Thanks!