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Submission Terms

Last updated: August 16, 2026

1. Agreement

These Submission Terms are a binding agreement between you and The Ontario Buzz ("TONB", "we", "us"). By sending us any photo, video, audio, text, tip, or other material (a "Submission"), whether through this website, by direct message, by email, or by tagging us, you accept these terms. If you do not agree, do not submit.

Tagging counts because that is how much of our community reaches us. Mentioning or tagging @theontariobuzz on a post or story, replying to us with material, sending it by direct message, or using a hashtag we are actively running are all ways of sending us a Submission on purpose, and these terms apply to it. They do not apply to a public post we merely reshare using a platform's own repost, remix, or story-share tools: that stays your post, on your account, under that platform's terms. If we ever ask you directly for permission to post something, our message and your reply form part of the record described in section 14.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to submit, or have the consent of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to these terms on your behalf.

3. Your ownership and promises

You keep ownership of your Submission. Because we publish what you send us, we rely completely on these promises. By submitting, you represent and warrant that:

  • You made it. You personally created and captured the Submission, or you have the express permission of the person who did to send it to us on these terms.
  • You did not take it from somewhere else. You did not download, screen record, rip, or copy the Submission from another person's account, website, broadcast, stream, group chat, or any platform. Finding something publicly posted online does not make it yours to send us.
  • Nobody else has the rights. The Submission is not subject to any exclusive licence, assignment, representation, or agency agreement with any third party, including a viral video licensing agency, a news organization, a stock library, an employer, or a school.
  • Everything inside it is cleared. Any music, audio, songs, artwork, logos, branding, film, television, game footage, or other material appearing or audible in the Submission is your own, is licensed to you with the right to sublicense it to us, or is used with the owner's permission. Background music playing in a recording is not automatically cleared.
  • The people in it agreed, or had no expectation of privacy. Every identifiable person in the Submission either consented to being recorded and published, or was in a public place in circumstances where they had no reasonable expectation of privacy.
  • Minors are protected. If a person under 18 is identifiable in the Submission, you have the consent of their parent or legal guardian.
  • It is lawful to publish. The Submission is not subject to a publication ban, sealing order, court order, undertaking, or confidentiality obligation, and publishing it will not breach one.
  • It was captured lawfully. You did not trespass, interfere with emergency responders, breach a workplace or school policy, or put anyone at risk to obtain it.
  • It is honest. The information in and around the Submission is true to the best of your knowledge, is not deliberately misleading, and has not been manipulated, synthetically generated, or presented out of context in a way that would mislead.
  • AI use is disclosed. If any part of the Submission was generated, altered, or extended by an artificial intelligence tool, beyond the routine processing your camera or phone applies on its own, you clearly said so in the message that came with it, and you said exactly what was generated or changed.
  • Nothing is owed. No payment, royalty, credit, or clearance fee is owed to any third party as a result of us publishing the Submission.
  • It infringes nothing. The Submission does not infringe any copyright, moral right, trademark, privacy right, personality or image right, confidence, or any other right of any person, and is not defamatory.

If any of this stops being true after you send us a Submission, or if you become aware of a dispute about it, you must tell us immediately through our contact page.

Keep your original. Hold on to the original, unedited file, on the device or account that captured it, for as long as your Submission is published and for a year after. If a rights question ever comes up, that file and its embedded metadata are usually what settles it. See sections 13 and 14.

4. Licence you grant us

You grant TONB a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, and sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, edit, crop, caption, adapt, translate, publish, display, perform, and distribute your Submission, in whole or in part, on this website and on our social media channels (including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube), including in promotional material for TONB.

The licence covers your own voice and likeness as they appear in the Submission, and the name or handle you give us for credit. That is there so that crediting you, or leaving you audible in your own clip, cannot itself become a claim against us.

The licence must be sublicensable for a practical reason: when we post to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube, those platforms require us to grant them a licence to the material under their own terms of service. Without your permission to pass that licence along, we could not lawfully post your Submission anywhere.

This licence is non-exclusive: you remain free to use your Submission anywhere else, including selling or licensing it to others. We do not sell Submissions to third parties. The licence survives any removal of the Submission, but only to the extent of uses already made and copies already distributed. See section 11.

5. Moral rights

To the extent permitted by the Copyright Act (Canada), you waive your moral rights in the Submission in favour of TONB and anyone we sublicense it to. In plain terms, this means you agree that we may crop, trim, caption, subtitle, add our watermark or branding to, reformat, and edit your Submission, and publish it alongside our own commentary, without that editing on its own being treated as a breach of your rights as its author. Moral rights cannot be assigned under Canadian law, so you keep them; you are agreeing not to assert them against us for these ordinary editorial uses. This waiver does not permit us to use your Submission in a way that is defamatory toward you.

6. Credit and anonymity

If you ask to be credited, we will make reasonable efforts to credit the name or handle you provide, in a format we choose. If you ask for anonymity, we will not publish your name or handle. We may decline to publish a Submission if we cannot honour a request.

7. Editorial discretion and verification

We are not obliged to publish any Submission. We verify before publishing where possible, and we may contact you, local authorities, or other sources to do so. We may edit for length, clarity, or safety, and we may remove published material at any time.

Our checks do not replace your promises in section 3. We cannot independently confirm who filmed a clip, what is playing in the background of it, or whether someone else already owns it, and we are not obliged to try. Publishing a Submission is not our confirmation that it was cleared, and it does not shift responsibility for it from you to us.

8. Safety first

Never put yourself or anyone else at risk to capture content. Do not trespass, interfere with emergency responders, or break any law. In an emergency, call 911 before you think about recording.

9. Prohibited submissions

Do not send material that is unlawful; that you took from someone else; that is subject to a publication ban or court order; that discloses another person's private information without their consent; that is hateful, harassing, or exploitative; that depicts a minor inappropriately; or that you know to be false or misleading.

10. Personal information

Personal information you provide with a Submission is handled under our Privacy Policy.

11. Removal requests

You may ask us to remove your Submission from our website and channels at any time, and we will make reasonable efforts to do so promptly. We cannot recall copies shared or reposted by others before removal.

Removal ends the licence in section 4 going forward. It does not make our earlier publication of the Submission a breach, and it does not require us to recall material already distributed or sublicensed to a platform. We may keep an archival copy after removal as described in section 14.

12. No compensation

Submissions are voluntary. Unless we agree otherwise in writing before publication, no payment is owed for any Submission or its use. If a third party demands payment from us because of something you sent, that is your responsibility under section 13, not a fee we owe you.

The same rule covers exclusivity. We do not take exclusive rights under these terms, and no exclusivity, embargo, or paid arrangement exists unless we both agree to it in writing before publication.

13. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless TONB and its owners, operators, and contributors from and against all claims, demands, complaints, proceedings, losses, damages, settlements, fines, and costs, including reasonable legal fees on a full indemnity basis, arising from or connected to:

  • your breach of any promise in section 3;
  • any allegation that your Submission infringes a copyright, moral right, trademark, privacy right, personality or image right, or confidence, or that it is defamatory;
  • any claim by a person appearing or heard in your Submission; and
  • any claim by a licensing agency, rights holder, employer, or other party asserting rights in your Submission.

We will tell you promptly about any claim we seek indemnity for. We may choose our own counsel and control the defence and any settlement of a claim relating to material we published, and you will cooperate with us and provide the original file, the device or account it came from, and any correspondence about it on request. This section survives any removal of your Submission and any end of these terms.

14. Records we keep

To be able to answer a rights holder, a platform, or a court, we keep a record of each Submission and how it reached us. That record may include the original file and its embedded metadata, the date and time it was received, the network address it came from, the account or handle that sent it, the consent boxes you ticked, and the version of these terms in force at the time. We keep this record for as long as the Submission remains published and for a reasonable period afterward to defend against claims, as permitted under section 7 of our Privacy Policy. We may disclose it where we are required to by law, by a court order, or where it is necessary to respond to a legal claim.

15. Tips are for publication, not held in confidence

You send us material so we can publish it. Sending a tip or Submission does not create an obligation of confidentiality over the material, and it does not make us your agent, adviser, or representative. Your identity is different: if you ask for anonymity, section 6 applies, we do not publish your name or handle, and we treat protecting who you are as a serious editorial responsibility. But these terms are not a contract of secrecy, and section 14 explains that a court can compel the records we keep. If something is sensitive, say so clearly before you send it, or write to hi@tonb.ca first so we can talk about how to handle it.

16. Crimes, emergencies, and investigations

If your Submission shows a possible crime, a collision, or an emergency, report it to police or call 911 first. We are a news page. Sending material to us is not a report to any authority, and we do not routinely pass tips to police.

Know this before you send footage of a serious incident: police or a court can legally demand the records described in section 14, including material we chose not to publish. If your Submission relates to an ongoing investigation or court proceeding, tell us when you send it so we can check for publication bans and decide how to handle it. Your promise in section 3 that the material is not subject to a ban or court order still applies.

17. AI and manipulated content

We publish real moments from real places in Ontario. Readers have to be able to trust that a clip on our channels shows what actually happened. So if you used an AI tool on any part of a Submission, to generate it, to add or remove something, to change a voice, or to extend a scene, you must tell us when you send it and say exactly what was changed. We may label it, decline it, or remove it. The platforms we post to have their own rules for synthetic media, and your disclosure is what lets us follow them.

Sending us synthetic or manipulated material presented as genuine footage is a serious breach of your promises in section 3, and your indemnity in section 13 applies to any claim or complaint it causes.

18. Ideas and feedback

If you send us ideas, suggestions, or feedback, about a story we should chase, a series we should run, a feature the site needs, or anything else, they are voluntary. We can use them, or something like them, without restriction, credit, or payment, and sending them creates no confidential or special relationship between us. This exists so that a suggestion like "you should do a weekly events roundup" cannot become a claim on the roundup we later build. A photo, video, or story tip is a Submission and is covered by the rest of these terms, not by this section.

19. When someone else wants your clip

Other newsrooms, agencies, and producers sometimes ask to use a clip after we post it. The licence in section 4 is for our own website, channels, and promotion. We do not sell or license Submissions to third parties, and we are not your licensing agent. If a third party asks us about your clip, we will pass the request to you where we can reach you, and any deal, and any money from it, is between you and them. Third parties who want to license material seen on our channels can write to hi@tonb.ca and we will forward the request. Note that a licensing agency agreement you sign after submitting does not cancel the licence you already gave us in section 4. Exclusivity or paid terms with us exist only by separate written agreement, see section 12.

20. General

These terms, together with our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use where they apply, are the entire agreement between us about Submissions, and they replace anything said in a comment, message, or conversation. That does not undo a written agreement we make under section 12, or the credit and anonymity choices you give us under section 6. If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, that part is trimmed to the minimum needed and the rest still stands. If we do not enforce a term on one occasion, we can still enforce it later. You may not assign these terms or your obligations under them. We may assign them to a successor who carries on TONB, and the licence in section 4 binds and benefits successors, heirs, and estates on both sides. Submitting does not make you our employee, contractor, partner, or agent, and it does not make us yours. These terms create no rights for anyone other than you and us, except the indemnified people named in section 13.

21. Survival

Sections 3, 4, 5, and 12 through 23 survive any removal of your Submission and any end of these terms.

22. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable in Ontario.

Any dispute about these terms or a Submission will be decided exclusively in the courts of Ontario, and you and we both agree to that. We chose real courts on purpose: for most disagreements that means Small Claims Court, which either of us can use without a lawyer.

23. Changes and contact

We may update these terms; the version posted at the time of your Submission applies to it. Questions: hi@tonb.ca or see our contact page.