General Terms and Conditions

General Terms and Conditions for Podcast Hosting and Distribution Services provided by Ad Aures.

1 -- General Conditions

The present General Terms and Conditions (hereinafter T&Cs) of the website castopod.com (hereinafter “Castopod.com”) are intended to define the relationship between the Ad Aures Company, whose registered office is located at 58 rue Tiquetonne, 75002 Paris, France (the postal address being 157 boulevard Macdonald, 75019 Paris, France), registered in Paris under number RCS 880 658 745, publisher of Castopod.com, and the users of the site (hereinafter the "Users"), consumers and professionals.

On the Castopod.com website, Ad Aures provides two types of services:

A podcast hosting and distribution service based on the Castopod software (available on the Castopod.org website), allowing Podcasters to create, publish and manage their podcasts;
An installation and maintenance service for Castopod (available on the Castopod.org website).

These T&Cs relate exclusively to the service of hosting and broadcasting podcasts. The T&Cs relating to the installation and maintenance service appear in a separate document which can also be consulted on the Castopod.com website.
The use of the Castopod.com site and the placing of orders are subject to the acceptance of all of these T&Cs by Users, under the conditions described below. Users declare that they have read, understood and accepted these T&Cs and to be legally capable of giving their consent.

Ad Aures reserves the right to modify without notice the present T&Cs of the Castopod.com site, which will be applicable in their new version as soon as they are put online.

Ad Aures does not authorize any use of its website, services, and data other than those provided. Any unauthorized use of the Castopod.com website will result in the termination of contractual relationships.

Ad Aures reserves the right to initiate legal action if it considers itself to be the victim of any harm resulting from actions contrary to these T&Cs, particularly in the cases of commercial use or prospecting of its database (prospecting and/or collection of information on Castopod.com users, abusive advertising, etc.).

2 -- Definitions

Castopod: Computer software allowing the publication of podcasts.
Customer: Any natural or juridical person having entered into a contract with the Ad Aures company relating to the provision of hosting and distribution of podcasts.
Episode: Occurrence of a podcast, knowing that a podcast can be composed of multiple episodes, most often published sequentially.
Castopod instance: Installation of the Castopod software on a computer server allowing one or more users to publish one or more podcasts.
Domain name: Main label used to define website addresses. A domain name is most often sold by a domain name registrar.
Podcast: A show, most often audio, made available in the form of computer files accessible through open standards, referenced and broadcasted via multiple listening platforms.
Podcaster: Person creating and distributing Podcasts.
Computing resource: Any material equipment (disk space, Internet connection, RAM, CPU usage time, etc.) used to provide an online service.
Sub-domain: Secondary label allowing to define website addresses. A subdomain necessarily depends on a domain name. It is composed of the domain name and a suffix. A domain name can have an unlimited number of subdomains.
User: Any person browsing the Castopod.com site or using the service provided, customer or not.
CDN: Content distribution network allowing files to be downloaded (eg. mp3 audio files) as close as possible to audiences in order to improve the user experience.

3 -- Modification, improvement of the Castopod.com site

The Castopod.com site is scalable and the Ad Aures company may need to modify it in whole or in part at any time. The Ad Aures company can also, at any time and without notice, make improvements and/or changes to the services described on the Castopod.com site. These modifications are brought to the attention of the User by their simple posting and shall be deemed to have been accepted by the User without reservation as of the date of the modification.

4 -- Using the Castopod.com site and opening an account

The Ad Aures company grants any User — natural or juridical person — access to its website in order to (i) subscribe to a podcast hosting service or, (ii) subscribe to an installation and maintenance service of Castopod.

Some information is available on the Castopod.com website or on Castopod.org.

However, (i) collecting certain additional information or, (ii) concluding a contract relating to the provision of hosting or the provision of installation and maintenance require you to create an account. The creation of an account also allows you to receive newsletters on the news of the Ad Aures company and its software solutions.

Natural persons Users

Opening an account requires completing a form including mandatory information, in particular:

The first name and last name of the person creating the account;
A personal address for invoicing;
An electronic address (e-mail) for tracking orders, newsletters and sending invoices;
A username and a password.

The reading and acceptance of these T&Cs is formalized by clicking on a link reserved for this purpose. The actual registration to Castopod.com is free.

Once the request to open an account has been sent, the Ad Aures company will verify that the User is eligible to access the Castopod.com site.

The Ad Aures company reserves the right to refuse the opening of an account to any person who does not meet the above conditions.

Registration on the Castopod.com website and the creation of a user account will be confirmed by sending an e-mail.

Juridical person users

Opening an account requires completing a form including mandatory information, in particular:

Give the name of the company as well as the name of the person authorized by this company to contract with the Ad Aures company;
Fill in the address of the head office;
Indicate the telephone number and electronic address (e-mail) of the person authorized to represent the user of the Castopod.com site;
Indicate a username and password.

5 -- Description, operation of the hosting service

As part of this service, the Ad Aures company hosts the Podcasts of the Customer on its servers, i.e. those it rents itself from the Scaleway company. If necessary, the Ad Aures company may be required to change service providers.

The Podcasts hosted by the Ad Aures company are only audio.

No costs for installing Castopod on a server are charged to the Customer.

The use of Castopod requires that the Customer has a domain name or unique subdomains.

If the Customer wishes, he can use his own Internet domain name, at no additional cost charged by Ad Aures. In this case, the choice, deposit, payment and configuration of this domain name are at the Customer's charge. Ad Aures does not provide any services other than those of podcast hosting, and in particular no e-mail service.
If the customer does not have a domain name, Ad Aures can provide him with a free subdomain of the domain “podcast.audio” for the duration of his subscription, for example "my-podcast.podcast.audio". The choice of subdomain is Crafted by the Customer, on a "first come, first served” basis and can only contain lowercase characters, digits and the hyphen. In the event of breach or termination of contract, for whatever reason, the subdomain could be re-used by the Ad Aures company or by another of its customers, four (4) months after the breach or termination of contract.

Once the hosting service has been subscribed to, the Customer will have access to the various sections of Castopod and in particular the creation or import of a Podcast (choosing the cover and the banner), filling in the persons, users, any rights of intellectual property etc.

The number of Users, the number of Podcasts and the number of Episodes are not not limited as long as the hosting service is used in a normal way.

In this regard :

Storage of all media files, regardless of the number of the Customer's podcasts for this subscription, is limited:
- for the "Starter" offer at 5 GB (five gigabytes, i.e. the equivalent of approximately two hundred and fifty hours of audio files encoded at 192kb/s)
- for the "Podcaster" offer at 100 GB (one hundred gigabytes, i.e. the equivalent of approximately one thousand hours of audio files encoded at 192kb/s)
- for the "Network" offer at 500 GB (five hundred gigabytes, i.e. the equivalent of approximately five thousand hours of audio files encoded at 192kb/s)
Beyond that, each extra gigabyte will be billed at €0.05 excl. VAT/month (five euro cents excluding tax per month).
The monthly traffic, regardless of the number of the Customer's Podcasts for this subscription, is unlimited.

On the other hand, a monthly quota for the use of CDN (Content Delivery Network) resources is allocated to each customer. Beyond this quota, the service remains available but the CDN service is deactivated.

Monthly CDN resource usage quotas are defined as follows:

for the "Starter" offer at 250 GB (two hundred and fifty gigabytes) per month (i.e. the equivalent of approximately two thousand five hundred broadcasted hours of files audio encoded at 192kb/s).
for the "Podcaster" offer at 1 TB (one terabyte) per month (i.e. the equivalent of approximately ten thousand broadcasted hours of audio files encoded at 192kb/s).
for the "Network" offer at 5TB (five terabytes) per month (i.e. the equivalent of approximately fifty thousand broadcasted hours of audio files encoded at 192kb/s).

Beyond that, each terabyte (ie the equivalent of approximately ten thousand broadcasted hours of sound files encoded at 192kb/s) will be charged €20 excluding tax (twenty euros excluding tax) at the explicit request of the Customer.

Any misuse of resources may lead to a limitation of the hosting service.

6 -- Duration

The subscription can be monthly or annual, at the Customer's choice, billed at the start of the period, tacitly renewable. At the end of each period, the Customer can switch from a monthly subscription to an annual subscription or from an annual subscription to a monthly subscription.

Subscriptions are tacitly renewable.

7 -- Financial terms -- Discounts

The prices are indicated at https://castopod.com/en#pricing. They may be revised annually.

It is also necessary to take into account the additional costs that may be incurred for storage and monthly traffic beyond the volumes indicated at paragraph 5.

Promotional codes may be offered to Customers and entitle them to a discount. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, these codes are not transferable to third parties.

8 -- Placing orders

Orders are placed by selecting the chosen service with a click and by confirming acceptance of the T&Cs by ticking a box reserved for this purpose.

Orders are subject to acceptance by Ad Aures.

The Ad Aures company reserves the right to refuse to honor in whole or in part, an abnormal or unreasonable order from the Customer, or for any other legitimate reason.

9 -- Payment

Payment is made via the secure Stripe platform, by credit card. The subscription requires the registration of a valid means of payment by the Customer.

The services are performed only after reception of the payment of the first month or the first year of subscription as the case may be, and the payment of the installation fee for the installation and maintenance service.

All subscriptions must then be paid monthly or annually depending on the case, within fifteen (15) days following the sending of the invoice.

Any delay in payment will result in the payment of late payment penalties at a rate equal to the semi-annual key rate (refinancing rate or Refi) of the European Central Bank (ECB), effective January 1 or July 1, increased by 10 points, and a minimum lump sum compensation of 40 (forty) euros for recovery costs, due by right, without the need for a reminder.

Failure to pay may result in termination of the subscription.

10 -- Right of withdrawal

In accordance with article L. 221-28 of the Consumer Code, the consumer expressly agrees to the immediate execution of the service, and expressly renounces his right of withdrawal.

The consumer will express his express agreement and his express waiver by ticking the box dedicated to this purpose when subscribing to one of the proposed services.

11 -- Conditions of access to services -- Maintenance

In principle, and subject to the following reservations, the services are accessible 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Ad Aures is only bound by an obligation of means with regard to the continuity of its services as offered on the website Castopod.com.

For reasons related to the modification of the Castopod.com website or its maintenance, the Ad Aures company may have to cut for several hours or days access to Castopod.com, without this giving rise to any compensation. The same applies in the event of permanent shutdown of the website Castopod.com. In general, the Ad Aures company will do its best to ensure continuity of the service offered from the Castopod.com site and remedy any inconvenience caused by an interruption.

For the same reasons, access to the Customer's site hosted by Ad Aures may be unavailable for several hours or days without any indemnity being requested, Ad Aures undertaking to keep the duration of unavailability as short as possible.

As much as possible, the Ad Aures company will send a message to Users 24 hours before the unavailability of the site in order to keep them notified of the service interruption.

The User is solely responsible for his data, and for the confidential nature of their account and password. In case of loss, they may be assigned a new one by Ad Aures.

Unless there is a written agreement between the parties, the Ad Aures company does not provide any training for the Customer for the use of Castopod or its websites Castopod.com or Castopod.org.

The Customer declares to have computer skills allowing him to use Castopod.

No refund will be made due to an impossibility for the Customer to use Castopod due to his lack of knowledge in computer science.

If necessary, the Ad Aures company will be able to respond punctually to questions from the Customer via his contact address or by telephone, it being specified that a discussion forum is available.

For the proper functioning of the services, the User agrees to have an up-to-date web browser. In this respect, without it being an imperative Ad Aures recommends Firefox v112 or any higher version.

12 -- Intellectual Property

The Customer undertakes to respect and not to infringe the rights of intellectual and industrial property of the Ad Aures company and to respect the terms of the AGPL license attached to the Castopod software.

The Customer agrees to indicate on the first page of his website the mention "Powered by Castopod", and if necessary, delegates to the company Ad Aures the care of affixing this mention.

All the elements (source code, architecture, graphics, drawings, images, texts, logo) constituting the Castopod.com website are the exclusive property of Ad Aures.

The Castopod brand and the Castopod.com domain name are and remain the exclusive property of Ad Aures.

The Customer undertakes to scrupulously respect the intellectual property rights of third parties, and to refrain from disparaging third parties beyond what is authorized by freedom of expression in the name of free criticism.

In the event that the Customer broadcasts via their Podcasts content that is protected by intellectual property rights, he will ensure that he has the authorizations or licenses necessary for this purpose.

13 -- Hosting security -- Back-up or backup -- Backup restore

The Customer may at any time request a full backup of his data. (files and database). This safeguard, which will be communicated in the form of a ZIP file, will contain all the podcast data: Castopod programs, media files (sounds, images, metadata…), statistics, comments, etc.

The Ad Aures company can proceed, from a previous Castopod instance that the Customer has given back to it, to a full backup restoration (files and database). This operation will be carried out after agreement of the parties on the financial conditions of this restoration, and if the technical conditions permit, i.e. whether the backup was made at from a working version of Castopod.

14 -- Termination

The Customer may terminate his subscription at any time and without notice.

This termination may be Crafted by any means of communication and in particular by email, of which Ad Aures will acknowledge receipt.

Amounts already paid will not be refunded.

The Ad Aures company may set up an HTTP "301" redirection to a domain name chosen by the Customer if the latter wishes, for three (3) months after the date of termination.

The Ad Aures company may terminate any subscription, fifteen (15) days after a formal notice remained unsuccessful in the event of:

Non-payment of a due date;
Abnormal use of one of the services, and in particular overconsumption of unwarranted disk space or bandwidth;
Presence of illegal content in the Podcasts of which the Ad Aures company would be informed by a third party or a competent authority (primarily, the French Public Authority for the Regulation of Audiovisual Communication and digital “ARCOM”).

Depending on the seriousness of the illegal content of which the Ad Aures company would be informed, in particular by ARCOM or by any authority, the latter may terminate the Customer's subscription immediately, close their account and cease all distribution of their Podcasts.

In such cases, the sums received by the Ad Aures company in respect of subscriptions will not be refunded.

The Customer may also, independently of the termination for convenience, terminate the contract after any formal notice, in the event of non-compliance by the Ad Aures company of its contractual obligations.

15 -- Liability

If necessary, the Ad Aures company will be brought, at the request of third parties or a competent authority, primarily ARCOM, to put an end to the dissemination of disputed Podcasts and/or to delete them.

The Customer undertakes to guarantee the Ad Aures company against any complaint or condemnation of which it could be the object because of the violation of third party rights or violation of a regulation.

Due to the nature of the services offered on the Castopod.com site, the company Ad Aures cannot be held responsible for direct or indirect damage caused by the loss of data or the accidental spread of viruses, or by illegal behavior of which it is not the origin.

16 -- Force Majeure

The obligations incumbent on the Ad Aures company will be automatically suspended and the latter may delay or cancel any order, without its liability being sought, in the event of force majeure, such as it is defined by the Civil Code and case law.

The Ad Aures company undertakes in such cases to inform the Customer of the occurrence of a case of force majeure, its consequences and possible remedies.

The Customer may terminate his subscription in the event of force majeure.

17 -- Data protection and privacy policy

The Ad Aures company carries out data processing within the meaning of the Regulation (EU) n°2016/679 of April 27, 2016 known as “GDPR” relating to the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and the free flow of such data.

The personal data processing regime is detailed in the document “Agreement for the processing of personal data” available on the this Castopod.com website.

18 -- Applicable law, disputes, complaint handling, mediation and competent jurisdictions

The applicable law is French law.

In the event of translation of these T&Cs into another language, the French version will prevail.

For any complaint you can contact the Ad Aures company: contact@castopod.com or +33 1 83 62 28 35.

In accordance with article L. 612-1 of the Consumer Code, in the event of disagreement between the Ad Aures company and a consumer, and when this disagreement could not be settled within the framework of a preliminary procedure carried out with the Ad Aures company, the consumer can have free recourse to a mediator of consumption with a view to the amicable resolution of the dispute between them and the Ad Aures company.
Any dispute concerning a consumer can be entrusted beforehand in writing to the Ad Aures company, via the email address contact@castopod.com or the postal address 157 boulevard Macdonald, 75019 Paris, France.
Failing to reach an amicable solution after taking steps in this direction with the Ad Aures company, a mediator can be seized. To know the terms of referral, the consumer can for example consult the FEVAD website by following the following link: https://www.mediateurfevad.fr/index.php/espace-consommateur.

Any dispute concerning a consumer can be entrusted in writing beforehand. to the Ad Aures company, via the email address contact@castopod.com or the address 157 boulevard Macdonald, 75019 Paris, France.

Failing to reach an amicable solution after taking steps in this direction with the Ad Aures company, a mediator can be seized. To know the terms of referral, the consumer can for example consult the FEVAD website by following the following link: https://www.mediateurfevad.fr/index.php/espace-consommateur.

The consumer can also consult the online payment platform for disputes set up by the European Commission in accordance with article 14 of Regulation (EU) No. 524/2013. This platform is accessible at the following link: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/odr/.

Any disagreement or dispute that cannot be settled amicably is either, under the Code of Civil Procedure, from the jurisdiction of the place where the defendant, or from the place of performance of the service, or under the Code of the consumption, from the jurisdiction of the place where the plaintiff lived at the time of the conclusion of the contract, unless rules of public order attribute jurisdiction to other courts.

For disputes between Ad Aures and professionals, the Paris Commercial Court will be solely competent.

Revised: April 2023