Terms of Service

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years of age to use the Service. If you are between 16 and 18 years of age (or the age of majority in your jurisdiction), you represent that your parent or legal guardian has reviewed and agreed to these Terms on your behalf.

By using the Service, you represent and warrant that you have the legal capacity to enter into a binding agreement and that your use of the Service does not violate any applicable law or regulation.

2. Your Account

To use certain features of the Service, you must create an account. You agree to provide accurate, current, and complete information during registration and to update such information as necessary to keep it accurate.

You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. You agree to notify us immediately at hello@inkwell.social if you become aware of any unauthorized use of your account.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your account if any information provided proves to be inaccurate, not current, or incomplete, or if we have reasonable grounds to suspect a violation of these Terms.

3. The Service

The Service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. Inkwell is an evolving platform — features may change, be added, or be removed without advance notice. We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability, though we will make reasonable efforts to maintain reliability and prevent data loss.

We will make reasonable efforts to notify you of material changes to the Service, but we are not obligated to maintain any particular feature or functionality.

4. Content Ownership and Licenses

4.1 Your Content

You retain full ownership of all content you create, upload, or post through the Service (“Your Content”). Inkwell does not claim any ownership rights in Your Content.

4.2 License to Inkwell

By posting content on the Service, you grant Inkwell a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, display, reproduce, and distribute Your Content solely as necessary to operate and provide the Service. This includes distributing Your Content via the ActivityPub protocol to federated servers when you publish content with public or federated visibility settings.

This license terminates when you delete Your Content from the Service, subject to the federation provisions in Section 5 and reasonable backup retention periods.

4.3 Responsibility for Your Content

You represent and warrant that you own or have the necessary rights to post Your Content and that Your Content does not infringe or violate the intellectual property rights, privacy rights, or any other rights of any third party.

5. Federation and the Open Social Web

Inkwell uses the ActivityPub protocol to federate with other platforms on the open social web (such as Mastodon, Ghost, and others). You acknowledge and agree to the following:

• Distribution of public content. When you publish content with public or federated visibility, that content may be distributed to and cached by third-party servers that we do not own or control.
• Limited control over federated copies. While we will send deletion requests to federated servers when you delete content, we cannot guarantee that all copies will be removed from all third-party servers. Remote servers may retain cached copies in accordance with their own policies.
• Incoming federated content. Content from users on other federated platforms may appear in your feed or interactions. Such content is subject to the terms and moderation policies of its originating server, and Inkwell is not responsible for the accuracy, legality, or appropriateness of federated content from external sources.
• Privacy settings apply locally. Inkwell's per-entry privacy controls (friends-only, private, custom filters) are enforced on Inkwell's servers. Content marked as “public” and federated to external servers is subject to those servers' privacy and display implementations.

6. Acceptable Use

You agree not to use the Service to:

1. Post, transmit, or distribute content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening, harassing, or that promotes violence, hatred, or discrimination against any individual or group;
2. Post or distribute child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or any content that sexually exploits or endangers minors;
3. Impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity;
4. Engage in doxxing, stalking, or the non-consensual sharing of another person's private information;
5. Distribute spam, malware, viruses, or other harmful code;
6. Attempt to gain unauthorized access to other users' accounts, the Service's infrastructure, or any connected systems;
7. Use the Service in any manner that could interfere with, disrupt, or impose an unreasonable burden on the Service or its infrastructure;
8. Use automated systems, bots, or scrapers to access the Service in a manner that exceeds reasonable use, without our prior written consent;
9. Violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law or regulation.

We reserve the right to remove content and suspend or terminate accounts that violate this Section, at our sole discretion.

7. Profile Customization

Inkwell allows users to customize their profiles using CSS and HTML within a sandboxed environment (Shadow DOM). You agree that your profile customizations will not attempt to break out of the sandbox, inject malicious scripts, impersonate Inkwell interface elements, or create deceptive or misleading experiences for other users.

We reserve the right to disable or revert profile customizations that we determine, in our sole discretion, to be harmful, deceptive, or disruptive.

8. Paid Subscriptions (Inkwell Plus)

8.1 Billing and Renewal

Inkwell Plus is a subscription service billed at $5.00 USD per month (or such other price as may be in effect at the time of your subscription). Your subscription will automatically renew each billing cycle unless you cancel before the renewal date.

8.2 Cancellation

You may cancel your Inkwell Plus subscription at any time through your account settings. Upon cancellation, you will retain access to Plus features until the end of your current billing period. After that, your account will revert to the free tier.

8.3 Refunds

Subscription fees are generally non-refundable. However, we may offer refunds at our discretion on a case-by-case basis. If you believe you are entitled to a refund, please contact us at hello@inkwell.social.

8.4 Price Changes

We may change the price of Inkwell Plus from time to time. Any price changes will be communicated to you at least 30 days before they take effect. Your continued use of the subscription after the price change takes effect constitutes your agreement to the new price.

8.5 Payment Processing

Payments are processed by our third-party payment processor, Stripe. Your payment information is handled directly by the payment processor and is subject to their terms and privacy policy. Inkwell does not store your full payment card details.

9. Copyright and DMCA Policy

Inkwell respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects its users to do the same. If you believe that your copyrighted work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide our designated DMCA agent with the following information:

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf;
2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;
3. Identification of the material claimed to be infringing and information sufficient to locate it on the Service;
4. Your contact information, including address, telephone number, and email address;
5. A statement that you have a good faith belief that the use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
6. A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.

DMCA Agent: Stanton Melvin, hello@inkwell.social, 1127 Pennington Ln, Westfield, IN 46074

Upon receipt of a valid takedown notice, we will remove or disable access to the allegedly infringing material and notify the user who posted it. Users may submit a counter-notification if they believe the takedown was made in error.

10. Termination

10.1 By You

You may delete your account at any time through your account settings. Upon deletion, we will remove your profile and content from public display. Federated copies of previously public content on third-party servers are subject to the limitations described in Section 5.

10.2 By Inkwell

We may suspend or terminate your account at any time for any reason, including but not limited to a violation of these Terms. Where practicable, we will provide notice and an opportunity to export your data before termination, unless the violation is severe (such as posting CSAM or engaging in conduct that poses an imminent threat to others).

10.3 Effect of Termination

Upon termination, your right to use the Service immediately ceases. Sections 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, and 15 survive termination.

11. Disclaimers

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Inkwell does not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, or that any defects will be corrected.

Inkwell does not endorse, warrant, or assume responsibility for any content posted by users or any third-party content received via federation.

12. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Inkwell and its officers, directors, employees, and agents shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, data, use, or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of or inability to use the Service, regardless of the theory of liability.

In no event shall Inkwell's total liability to you for all claims arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service exceed the greater of (a) the amount you have paid to Inkwell in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim, or (b) fifty dollars ($50.00 USD).

13. Dispute Resolution

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Indiana, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. Any disputes arising under or in connection with these Terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Hamilton County, Indiana.

14. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Inkwell and its officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or in any way connected with: (a) your use of the Service; (b) Your Content; (c) your violation of these Terms; or (d) your violation of any third-party rights.

15. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by posting a notice on the Service and, where possible, by email. Your continued use of the Service after the updated Terms take effect constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms.

We encourage you to review these Terms periodically.

16. Data Portability

We believe your data is yours. Inkwell provides tools to export your journal entries, comments, profile data, and account information in a standard, machine-readable format. For information on data export and portability, please see our Privacy Policy.

17. Open Source Software

Portions of the Inkwell platform are released as open source software under the AGPL-3.0 license and are available at our GitHub repository. These Terms govern your use of the hosted Inkwell service at inkwell.social, which is separate from and in addition to the terms of any open source license that may apply to the underlying code.

18. Contact Information

If you have questions about these Terms, please contact us at:

Inkwell
Email: hello@inkwell.social
Address: 1127 Pennington Ln, Westfield, IN 46074