Add your voice to the Green Room

These are the full terms for adding your voice to the Green Room of The Alien's Guide to English Comedy and some British Humour (working title). You enter into the agreement when you submit the contribution form. The agreement shown on the form is the operative version; this section sets out the full terms and adds our privacy notice. If anything here conflicts with the agreement on the form, the agreement on the form prevails, and nothing in either reduces any statutory right you have as a consumer. For data protection, Maqutt Studio Ltd is the controller, and you can reach us at hello@maqutt.studio.

The full terms

1. Who we are. The Green Room is produced and published by Maqutt Studio Ltd (company no. 17154771, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ). Bilee J is a pen name and imprint of Maqutt Studio Ltd, used to credit the book; it is not a separate party. In these terms, "we" and "us" mean Maqutt Studio Ltd, and "the book" means The Alien's Guide to English Comedy and some British Humour. For data protection, Maqutt Studio Ltd is the controller. Contact: hello@maqutt.studio.

2. What you submit. Your "line" is the one or two sentences you write. Your "credit details" are the credit name you choose, your "where you are" caption, the scene you rep, and any city or town you give. Together they are your "contribution". The licence in clause 4 covers your line, and, where any of your credit details carry copyright, it covers those too; where they do not, you give us permission to use and publish them in the same way. So we may publish your line together with your chosen credit, caption, scene, and city.

3. Ownership. You keep all ownership and copyright in your contribution. You are only granting us the licence in clause 4.

4. The licence you grant. In consideration of the opportunity for your contribution to be read, considered, and possibly published and credited in the book, you grant Maqutt Studio Ltd a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, and assignable licence to use, reproduce, adapt, edit, translate, publish, distribute, communicate, and make available your contribution, in whole or in part, with the credit you chose or as "Anonymous", in: (a) the book; (b) related and future editions, books, and collections, the app, and the website; and (c) advertising, promotional, and publicity materials for any of these. We may draw on your contribution as background research even where the line itself is not printed. The licence covers all media now known or later devised, and applies whether the book is self-published or published by a third party. The licence is non-exclusive, so you keep your line and may use it elsewhere. We are not obliged to use your contribution.

5. Assignment and successors. We may assign, transfer, sub-license, or otherwise deal with the benefit of your licence and these terms, in whole or in part, including to a successor, a new owner of the book, or a third-party publisher, provided the assignment does not reduce your rights under these terms. Your licence (clause 4), your promises (clause 8), and your moral-rights waiver (clause 7) are given in favour of us and of our successors, assigns, sub-licensees, and any publisher of the book, each of whom may rely on and enforce them. To that extent, those persons may enforce the relevant terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

6. Credit. We will aim to credit you as you asked (a name or "Anonymous") with your "where you are" caption. Minor editing or layout changes to the credit may be needed for the page. If you choose anonymity, we will take reasonable steps not to identify you, but you understand that a stage name or a distinctive line may still be recognisable.

7. Editing and moral rights. You agree that we may edit your contribution for length, clarity, house style, or legal or family-friendly reasons, but we will not knowingly change the essential meaning of your line and then print that changed meaning under your name. Where an edit would change the meaning, we may instead print it anonymously, use only a short and fair excerpt, ask you first where practical, or decline to print it. So far as the law allows, you waive your moral rights in the contribution under Chapter IV of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, including the right to be identified as author (section 77) and the right to object to derogatory treatment (section 80). This waiver is given in writing and signed by your ticking the box on the form by which you accept and sign this agreement, for the purposes of section 87 of that Act. Where a waiver is not permitted, you consent to the acts described in these terms.

8. Your promises. You confirm and warrant that: (a) you are 18 or over; (b) the line is your own original wording, you have not copied it from another comedian, writer, book, programme, website, or social-media post, and you are free to grant this licence; (c) so far as you are aware, the contribution does not infringe any third party's copyright or other rights, is not defamatory, and is not unlawful; (d) it follows the family-friendly guidelines, meaning it contains nothing sexually explicit, hateful, harassing, discriminatory, or graphically violent; and (e) it contains no contact details and no sensitive personal information about you or anyone else. These promises apply as at the time you submit; you are not responsible for a problem created only by our own later editing.

9. Declining, removing, or anonymising. The licence is irrevocable, so once you submit you cannot withdraw it. We may, at our discretion, decline, edit, remove, or anonymise your contribution in editions and materials within our control, which may not include a third-party-published edition once it is out of our hands. We are not liable to you for choosing not to use, or for removing, a contribution. Your data-protection rights are separate: you may ask us to remove or anonymise your credit name, caption, scene, and city in future printings and digital editions within our control, as set out in clause 11, but this does not affect the licence in the line itself, and any line printed in copies already distributed cannot be recalled.

10. Payment and consideration. Taking part is unpaid and the licence is royalty-free, including if the book becomes commercially successful or is taken on by a publisher. The consideration for your licence is the opportunity for your contribution to be read, considered, and possibly published and credited in the book. Separately, and not as a reward for taking part or as part of any promotion, Maqutt Studio Ltd makes occasional discretionary donations to arts causes. A free physical copy is not guaranteed; if you give your email, we will let you know when the book is out and, without promising, try to send a free copy to contributors who would like one. Your taking part is not tied to any charitable promotion or guarantee.

11. Your data (Privacy Notice). Controller: Maqutt Studio Ltd (details above; contact hello@maqutt.studio).

What we hold: your chosen credit name, your "where you are" caption, the scene you rep and any city or town you give, your contribution, your email address (only if you choose to provide it), and the date and time of your submission, which the form records automatically. You sign by ticking, so we do not ask for or store a separate legal name.

Why, and our lawful basis: to read, select, edit, and publish contributions, and to keep records of the licence. We process your contribution and name on the basis of our legitimate interests in creating, editing, and publishing a literary work (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)), and to enter into and perform our agreement with you (Article 6(1)(b)). If you give your email, we use it, on the basis of your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), to let you know when the book is out and about a possible free copy; you can withdraw your consent at any time.

Sensitive information: we ask you not to include special category data, for example about health, race, religion, political opinions, sexual orientation, or trade union membership, whether about you or anyone else, and the form asks you not to use the scene "Other" field for this. If a contribution nonetheless contains special category data about you, we will remove it before any publication, unless it is integral to the line and you have given your explicit consent to publish it (UK GDPR Article 9(2)(a)). While we hold an unpublished submission that contains such data, we keep it only so far as needed to review and remove it, or to seek your consent, and we delete it promptly otherwise.

Sharing and processors: we use Google Forms (provided by Google LLC) as a processor to collect and store your submission, and other service providers who help us run email, publishing, and printing or distribution, including the book's print and retail platforms, under appropriate terms. Submitting the form means your data is processed on Google's servers, which involves transferring and storing it outside the United Kingdom, including in the United States. We rely on legally approved transfer safeguards for these transfers, namely the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, as applicable.

If the book changes hands: if Maqutt Studio Ltd is wound up, sold, or transfers the book, responsibility as data controller for your information may pass to a successor to whom the book or its assets are transferred, who will continue to handle it under these terms.

Keeping it: we keep your contribution and the record of your licence for as long as we may exercise the licence. If your contribution is not selected for publication and we decide not to hold it for a possible future edition, we delete the personal data attached to it, meaning your credit name, caption, scene, city, and email, within 12 months of the book's first publication, or within 12 months after submissions close if the book is not published, keeping at most an anonymised version of the line. If your contribution is published, we keep the credit name and the record of your licence and your acceptance for as long as the work remains in circulation, so that we can credit you correctly and evidence the licence. Material printed in distributed copies cannot be withdrawn.

Your rights: access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, and portability, subject to legal limits. If you ask us to remove or anonymise your credit name, caption, scene, and city, we will do so in future printings and digital editions within our control. We cannot recall or change copies already printed and distributed, and erasure does not undo the licence in the line itself or uses already made. In the rare case where removing data from an edition already finalised for production would be incompatible with completing that specific edition, we may rely on the exemption for artistic and literary purposes under Schedule 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018, but we will not use it to refuse an ordinary request to anonymise your name in an editable digital edition. To exercise these rights, contact hello@maqutt.studio.

Complaints: if you think we have handled your personal data in a way that breaks data protection law, please complain to us first, at hello@maqutt.studio, by any means including email or social media. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, and keep you informed of our progress and the outcome without undue delay. If you are still unhappy after we have responded, you can also contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

12. If you are a consumer. If you take part outside your trade, business, or profession, nothing in these terms affects your non-excludable statutory rights, and nothing here is intended to operate as an unfair term.

13. Liability. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded by law. Otherwise, to the extent the law allows, we are not liable to you for indirect or unforeseeable loss arising from your taking part. If you submit in the course of a business, you are responsible for the direct loss we reasonably suffer, and cannot reasonably avoid, because your contribution broke your promises in clause 8; this does not apply if you take part as a consumer, whose statutory rights are unaffected.

14. General. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, without affecting any mandatory consumer protection you have where you live. The agreement you make when you submit the form is the operative agreement; this section sets out the full terms and adds the privacy notice, and if anything here conflicts with the agreement on the form, the form prevails. If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. We may update these terms; the version that applies to your contribution is the one published when you submitted it, and we and you may vary or rescind them without the consent of any third party who benefits under clause 5. Although the persons identified in clause 5 may enforce the terms there described under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999, no one else may enforce these terms under that Act.

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Please note: once the book is printed, lines that are included cannot be removed from copies already out in the world.