Terms of Service

Thursday Night is a room with a screen in it. You and your friends show up, you talk, and one of you puts something on the screen. These terms explain what we're responsible for, what you're responsible for, and what happens when someone behaves badly.

They are an agreement between you and Thursday Night Studios LLC ("Thursday Night", "we", "us"). "The Service" means the Thursday Night application on any platform, the website at thursday-night.com, and the night-planning tools that run there. By using the Service you accept these terms. If you don't accept them, don't use it.

1What the Service is

Thursday Night gives you a virtual space, a big virtual screen, and live voice chat with the people you invited. Multiplayer nights run on a player's own computer acting as the host — we do not operate game servers, and your session's audio and video do not pass through anything we run. A room code is the only key to a room, and it is a deliberately weak one: the code is a short form of your computer's own internet address, so anyone who can reach your computer can work it out. Whoever has the code can come in. Treat a room code as public the moment you share it, and use the host's Remove control if someone turns up you didn't invite.

The website adds planning tools around that: scheduling a night, inviting people, and voting on what to watch.

2The screen and what's on it

Concretely, if you host a night:

• You choose the file or the desktop window. We never see it — there is no server in the path and nothing is recorded.
• You represent that you have the right to play what you play, for the people in your room. Owning a disc or a download does not automatically give you the right to perform it for others; where you are, that may depend on how many people are watching and whether it's a private gathering. That call is yours to make.
• You are responsible for the consequences if you get it wrong. We are not a party to your choice of movie.

The only media the Service itself fetches or stores is poster artwork for the voting screen — cover images looked up from third-party artwork databases, or images generated for a night's ballot. Cover art on a ballot is not a film library, and no film, show, or recording is ever provided by us.

3Acceptable use

Don't use Thursday Night to do any of the following. This list is the standard we enforce, and violating it is grounds for cutting off access.

Content on the screen

• Don't show what you have no right to show. No pirated films or shows, no stream-ripping, no circumventing anyone's copy protection or access controls, no rebroadcasting a paid stream to people who haven't paid for it.
• Don't display anything sexually explicit, and never anything involving minors. Don't display material that exists to threaten, degrade, or incite violence against people.
• Don't display someone's private information — their address, their documents, their messages — without them agreeing to it.
• Don't show anything that is illegal where you are or where your guests are.

Behavior toward other people

• Don't harass, threaten, stalk, or bully anyone. Don't use slurs. Don't make a room hostile on purpose.
• Don't impersonate someone else, including us.
• Don't spam rooms, invites, or the planning tools, and don't use the invite system to send unsolicited messages to people who didn't ask for them.
• Don't collect other people's information from the Service — names, phone numbers, email addresses — without their consent.

Against the software

• Don't try to break into accounts, rooms, or systems that aren't yours, including by guessing room codes at scale.
• Don't upload or transmit malware, and don't attack, overload, or disrupt the site, the workers, or another player's hosting machine.
• Don't reverse engineer, decompile, or modify the software except where the law says you may regardless of what this document says.
• Don't scrape or automate the Service, and don't resell access to it.

4Voice chat and behavior

Voice is the point of this app, so we want to be exact about it.

Your microphone audio is transmitted live to the other people in your room, and we never receive it, record it, or store it. There is no server-side archive of what you said, because there is no server of ours in the path — voice is relayed through the host player's computer to the other people present. You can mute at any time, and other people can see that you're muted. Our Privacy Policy describes exactly how voice is handled, including one case where a host's own screen-recording feature can capture room audio to a file on that host's own computer.

The flip side of "nothing is recorded" is that we cannot review what happened. If someone was abusive in a room, we have no recording to listen to and no log of who was present. That shapes what we can realistically do about a report — see the next section.

Voice chat is subject to the acceptable-use rules above. Harassment over voice is harassment.

5Hosts, rooms, and what we can't police

Rooms are private and peer-hosted. The person hosting a night controls it: they choose who gets the code, what's on the screen, and who stays. The host is the first and best line of moderation, and in most cases the only effective one.

If someone is making a room unpleasant, the tools that actually work are: mute them (per-person, in the People tab), ask the host to remove them, or leave. We are being straightforward about this rather than implying a moderation capability we don't have.

You can still report abuse to us at support@thursday-night.com, and we read those reports. What we can do in response is limited but real: we can terminate the account of someone who uses the planning tools to harass people, we can refuse service, and we can act on a pattern. What we cannot do is retrieve a recording of a private room, because none exists. We aim to acknowledge reports within a few days.

You are choosing to enter a room hosted by another person, and to share your voice with whoever else is there. Other users are not our employees or agents, and we are not responsible for what they do.

6Accounts

The VR app itself doesn't require an account — a room code is the whole key, and as section 1 explains, that key is your address rather than a password. The website's night-planning tools do use a sign-in, by emailed link.

• Give accurate information when you sign up, and keep your sign-in link and device private. Anything done through your account is treated as done by you.
• Tell us promptly if you think someone else has got into your account.
• You can ask us to delete your account and its data at any time by writing to support@thursday-night.com. We'll delete it, and deletion is permanent — nights you created and RSVP records go with it.
• Don't create accounts to evade a suspension.

7Age

You must be at least 13 years old to use Thursday Night. If you are under 18, you may only use it with a parent or guardian's permission, and they accept these terms with you. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13; if we learn we have, we delete it. This matches the app's 13+ age rating.

8Copyright complaints

We respect other people's copyrights and we expect our users to. Because of how this product works, our position has an unusual shape, and it's better to state it plainly than to publish a takedown procedure that couldn't actually do anything.

We do not host, store, index, or transmit user content. A movie played in a Thursday Night room lives on the host's own computer and travels directly to the people in that room. There is no copy on our systems to remove, and no URL of ours to disable. If you send us a takedown notice for a film, there is no file for us to take down.

What we can do, we will do. If you believe someone is using Thursday Night to infringe your copyright, write to our copyright agent at support@thursday-night.com with:

• your name, address, phone number, and email;
• identification of the work you say is being infringed;
• a description of the infringing activity and enough detail for us to identify the account or night involved;
• a statement that you believe in good faith that the use isn't authorized by the rights holder or the law;
• a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorized to act for them;
• your physical or electronic signature.

We will remove any material that is on our systems, and we will terminate the accounts of users who are repeat infringers. Please note that knowingly sending a false takedown notice can make you liable for damages.

9Your licence to the software

We grant you a personal, revocable, non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to install and use Thursday Night for your own non-commercial use, subject to these terms. We keep all rights in the software, the artwork, the venues, and the name that we haven't expressly granted here. You keep whatever rights you already had in your own content; nothing here transfers ownership of your movie, your desktop, or your voice to us, and we do not claim a licence to any of it.

10Availability and changes

Thursday Night is free, and it is made by a very small studio. We may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of it, and we have no obligation to provide support, maintenance, or backups. Features can go away. A night you scheduled might not survive a change. Plan accordingly, and don't build anything you can't afford to lose on top of this Service.

11Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT ANY DEFECT WILL BE CORRECTED, OR THAT CONNECTIONS BETWEEN PLAYERS WILL SUCCEED.

We also want to name the real-world ones: this is virtual reality. Be careful of your actual surroundings. Clear your play space, stay seated if you feel unwell, and stop if you experience discomfort, dizziness, or eye strain. Follow your headset manufacturer's health and safety guidance. We are not responsible for injuries or property damage from using a headset.

Some places don't allow certain warranty exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

12Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THURSDAY NIGHT STUDIOS LLC WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR SUBSTITUTE SERVICES, ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, WHETHER OR NOT WE WERE ADVISED THAT SUCH DAMAGES WERE POSSIBLE.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE, OR (B) FIFTY U.S. DOLLARS ($50). HAVING MORE THAN ONE CLAIM DOES NOT RAISE THIS LIMIT.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited — including for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence. Some places don't allow these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

13Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Thursday Night Studios LLC and its members, managers, and employees from any claims, damages, losses, and reasonable legal fees arising out of what you played on the screen, what you said or did in a room, your breach of these terms, or your violation of anyone else's rights. If a rights holder comes after a night you hosted, that is your night, not ours.

14Suspension and termination

You can stop using the Service whenever you like, and delete your account as described above. We may suspend or terminate your access — with notice where we reasonably can, and without it where we can't — if you breach these terms, if we're required to, or if continuing would expose us or other users to harm or legal risk. Sections that by their nature should survive termination do survive it: the content position, disclaimers, liability limits, indemnification, and governing law.

15Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. When we make a material change, we'll post the updated version here with a new "last updated" date and, where we have your email and the change matters, tell you. Changes take effect 30 days after they're posted, except changes required by law, which take effect immediately. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the new version. If you don't, stop using it.

16Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

Talk to us first. If you have a dispute, email support@thursday-night.com with a description of the problem and what you'd like done about it. Most things can be sorted out this way, and we ask that you give us 30 days to try before filing anything.

If that doesn't resolve it, you and we agree that any dispute will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Massachusetts, and we each consent to those courts' jurisdiction. Either of us may still bring a qualifying claim in small claims court. If you live somewhere whose law gives you the right to sue locally or to have your own country's law apply, this section doesn't take that away.

17Contact

Thursday Night Studios LLC — Massachusetts, USA
support@thursday-night.com

That address is also the one for abuse reports, copyright notices, privacy questions, and account deletion requests. One address, everything.