Copyright & Content Usage Policy

This Copyright & Content Usage Policy applies to the website, digital content and online materials published by Your Local Mechanic, a trading name of ETW Holdings Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 15689156, whose registered office is at Unit 6, Turner Street, Dudley, DY1 1TX.

1. Ownership of our content

Unless otherwise stated, the original content published by Your Local Mechanic is owned by, or used under licence by, ETW Holdings Ltd and is protected by applicable copyright and intellectual property laws.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• photographs and images;
• videos, reels and other video content;
• recordings and audio content;
• photographs and videos captured during genuine customer jobs;
• job stories, case studies and descriptions of work undertaken;
• articles, guides and other written content;
• website copy and page content;
• graphics, illustrations and designs;
• edited or compiled media;
• logos, branding and other distinctive visual material; and
• compilations or collections of original Your Local Mechanic content.

The fact that content is publicly accessible through our website, social media accounts or other online channels does not mean that it is free to copy or reuse.

2. Genuine job content

A significant proportion of the photographs, videos, stories and other media published by Your Local Mechanic is original content created in connection with genuine vehicle repairs, diagnostics, maintenance and other work undertaken by us.

This material represents original work and commercial intellectual property belonging to ETW Holdings Ltd or used by it with the appropriate permission.

It must not be copied or reused to represent work undertaken by another mechanic, garage, vehicle repair business or other organisation.

In particular, you must not use our photographs, videos, job descriptions or other content in a way that falsely or misleadingly suggests that you or another business carried out the work depicted.

3. What you may do

You are welcome to:

• view and use our website for your own personal, non-commercial purposes;
• share links to publicly available pages on our website;
• share links to our publicly available social media posts using the sharing functionality provided by the relevant social media platform; and
• quote brief extracts from our written material where permitted by law and where Your Local Mechanic is appropriately acknowledged as the source.

These permissions do not transfer ownership of any intellectual property rights.

4. What you may not do

Unless you have our prior written permission or your use is otherwise expressly permitted by law, you must not:

• copy or reproduce our photographs, videos, audio or written content;
• download our content for republication elsewhere;
• republish our content on another website;
• use our content on another garage, mechanic, vehicle repair or commercial website;
• reproduce our material in advertisements, social media posts, marketing campaigns or promotional materials;
• crop, edit, manipulate or modify our photographs or videos for republication;
• remove, obscure or alter copyright notices, logos, watermarks, metadata or other ownership information;
• present our content as your own;
• use images or videos of work carried out by Your Local Mechanic to imply that the work was undertaken by another person or business;
• create derivative commercial content substantially based upon our original material;
• sell, license, distribute or commercially exploit our content; or
• authorise another person or organisation to do any of these things.

Downloading an image, video or other item from our website or social media channels does not grant permission for its subsequent use.

5. Automated scraping, datasets and artificial intelligence

Except where permitted by applicable law or where we have given prior written permission, our website and its content must not be systematically copied, harvested, scraped or extracted for the purpose of:

• creating or enriching commercial datasets;
• building content databases;
• reproducing or republishing our original content at scale;
• training, fine-tuning or evaluating artificial intelligence or machine-learning systems;
• supplying content to generative AI systems or commercial data providers; or
• creating competing or substantially similar collections of content.

Nothing in this section is intended to restrict legitimate search-engine indexing or other activity that we expressly permit.

6. Search engines and normal linking

We permit reputable search engines to crawl, index and display appropriate extracts from publicly accessible areas of our website for the purpose of providing search results.

Normal hyperlinks to publicly accessible pages on our website are also permitted.

Permission to index or link to our website does not grant permission to reproduce or commercially exploit the underlying content.

7. Social media

Your Local Mechanic may publish original content through services such as Facebook, Instagram, Google and other social media or online platforms.

Publication through a third-party platform does not, by itself, place that material in the public domain or give other users unrestricted permission to copy or commercially reuse it.

Use of content published through a third-party platform may additionally be governed by that platform’s terms and conditions.

8. Third-party content

Some material appearing on our website may be owned by third parties and used by Your Local Mechanic under licence, permission or another lawful basis.

Where third-party rights apply, those rights remain with the relevant owner.

Nothing in this policy grants permission to use third-party material.

9. Requests to use our content

If you would like to reproduce, license or otherwise use any Your Local Mechanic content beyond the uses permitted in this policy, you must obtain our written permission in advance.

Your request should identify:

• the content you wish to use;
• where and how you intend to use it;
• whether the proposed use is commercial;
• how long you wish to use it for; and
• the organisation or individual making the request.

Permission may be granted or refused at our discretion and may be subject to conditions, attribution requirements or a licence fee.

10. Unauthorised use

We actively protect our original content.

If we become aware that content belonging to ETW Holdings Ltd has been copied, reproduced, republished or commercially exploited without permission, we may take appropriate steps to protect our rights.

Depending upon the circumstances, these steps may include:

• contacting the person or organisation responsible;
• requesting immediate removal of the material;
• submitting copyright infringement or takedown notices to website hosts, search engines, social media platforms or other service providers;
• requesting details of the extent and duration of the unauthorised use;
• seeking payment or compensation in relation to unauthorised commercial use; and
• taking legal action where appropriate.

Our decision not to take action in relation to one particular use does not constitute permission for that use or a waiver of our rights.

11. Reporting suspected copying

If you believe that Your Local Mechanic content has been copied or used without permission, please contact us and provide as much information as possible, including the location of the original material and where you have seen the suspected copy.

Email: help@yourlocalmechanic.co.uk or use our contact page.

ETW Holdings Ltd
Unit 6, Turner Street
Dudley
DY1 1TX

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Copyright & Content Usage Policy from time to time to reflect changes to our website, our content, our business or applicable law.

The latest version will be published on this website.