As Clifford Stoll once observed “Data is not information, information is not understanding, understanding is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.” We apply that aphorism to all aspects of our activities because ‘it’ goes out from you, what ever ‘it’ is. Too many people already know way too much about all of us, and we at South Country Fair intentionally work to not be like ‘them’. We are not a government or a corporation. Why governments and corporations want all that control makes us more than a little suspicious about their intent, especially since they have figured out how to try and download that burden onto organizations like ours.

We are not nosy or obsessive although rarely we may ask what you actually think about something we do or are planning instead of trying to guess your opinion. We are not voyeurs. We are a folk and roots music festival that was established because the World around us can be pretty crazy as is much of the music they blare at us 24/7 in all manner of media in the name of keeping us all working to dig the last ore out of the ground, pump the last oil and mow the last trees down in the name of some nebulous penultimate thinly-disguised as something else and designed to only benefit an entitled few. We heartily dislike the concept of the USO tour, where everything on the stage is about working troops into a killing funk. We love music but we don’t like it when it baaa’s in our face all day long like a deranged goat that’s been mutated into some sort of nefarious conditioning instrument. We desire and demand some sanity and we expect you do, too. Our relationships are built on trust and we would never do anything to compromise that. This is the way it has always been at South Country Fair, not one iota at all has changed there.

If we have any of your personal information it’s either because you gave it to us when you bought your tickets or signed up for our newsletter or something like that (of course it is possible some vindictive troll signed you up for our newsletter as a prank too, the jerks). The only reason we retain this information is so we can send you something you asked for, either the tickets you purchased or an electronic newsletter. We don’t sift data, or attempt to understand your personal purchasing habits so we can chain you to our festival. That’s hideous and we would never, ever do that to ‘optimize our revenue stream’ because it is our opinion that people who think that way suck, which is one reason why we started The Fair in the first place. We most emphatically are not like Edelman, Facebook, Google, American Express, the despotic government of your choice or a criminal syndicate of some kind, nor do we work on behalf of any of the foregoing juggernauts or their affiliates to track you for any reason. We resist with the very fibre of our being relentless attempts to get us to import ‘their’ definitions of us and in doing so steadfastly choose to remain a human institution. Although it was fun for a long time The Internet and electronic communication in general has more or less just become a necessary evil for us – it’s not an end, it’s a means to an end in the 21^st Century, one which we simply articulate as ‘an easy way for our people to find South Country Fair’.

We assume that because persons who use our ticketing system have credit/debit cards that they are okay with their information being held by their credit card company, bank, etc. We don’t receive that information although is does get processed by a merchant gateway we retain between our ticket system and your bank or credit card company. The company we use for ticket management holds the contact information you send so we can make sure your tickets get to you, and we never access it for any other reason and it is kept in a secure relational database for that purpose only. We have never and will never sell or for any reason share your personal information with anyone — we don’t really care that we have it except to make sure you get your tickets or the festival updates you requested. That’s it.

At the moment our website counts ‘hits’ to our pages but that’s all. If we get around to it we may add a feature that logs the location of the originating node to which your machine is connected, so we can see how many hits we get from in and outside our region. This we regard as a sane, relevant and for you an anonymous amount of market research.

We are confident that the information we retain for business purposes is secure. We don’t want to permanently shackle you to our festival because we think everybody should have a choice — we hope you like us and want to be part of our community, so that’s why we treat everybody like persons and not spend-bots or schnitzels. If you suspect your personal information is in our possession for reasons you don’t understand and you don’t like how that feels let us know and we’ll remove it.

If you need to contact us – info@southcountryfair.com, or by mail: South Country Fair Association, Box 1251, Fort MacLeod, AB T0L 0Z0