Terms of Service

1. Using the service

• You need an invitation. You must be at least 13 years old, and if you're under 18 (or the age of majority where you live), you need your parent's or guardian's permission.
• You sign in through links sent to your email address. Keep that address secure: anyone who can read your email can sign in as you.
• We can suspend your account or remove your access at any time, for example if you break these terms. You can stop using the service at any time and ask us to delete your account.

2. Your content

• “Your content” is what you add: readings (PDFs, EPUB books, web pages and pasted text), comments, voice notes and their transcripts, reactions and bookmarks.
• You keep whatever rights you have in your content. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, process and display it as far as needed to run the service for you and your groups: for example, to show it to the members of the group you added it to, to transcribe voice notes, to generate read-aloud audio and to let the AI assistant answer questions. This license ends when the content is deleted, except for copies we have to keep by law or that remain in backups for a limited time.
• A group's readings and comments can be seen by its members. The people who run the service (staff) can't open groups; they only see an item that someone reported, as the privacy policy describes. Private threads can only be seen by their members. Bookmarks are only visible to you.

3. Readings you add

• Only add readings you're allowed to share with your group: your own work, works in the public domain or under an open license, works you have permission to share, or uses the law allows (such as fair use).
• When you attach a link, you ask us to save a copy of that page or PDF on your behalf, for your group only. The same goes for text you paste.
• Don't add material that your subscription or license doesn't allow you to share, such as articles from a paywalled publication, unless its terms permit it.
• You are responsible for the readings you add.

4. Rules of conduct and acceptable use

Diplet is for people who read together. Be kind and keep it that way. The Code of Conduct says how we talk to each other here; groups may add house rules of their own on top of it. Don't use the service to:

• break the law or infringe anyone's rights, including copyright and privacy;
• harass, threaten, impersonate or stalk anyone, or post hateful or sexually explicit content, including contacting someone who has asked you to stop;
• send spam, advertising or scams;
• upload malware or anything else meant to cause harm;
• access groups, threads or accounts you aren't part of, or interfere with the service (for example by overloading it, scraping it, or testing its security without our permission);
• use the AI assistant or read aloud to reproduce whole works, or for anything these terms forbid.

You can report a comment, a reading or a person from the app. Our staff then see the reported item and what they need to judge it (see the Privacy Policy), and may dismiss the report, delete the content, warn its author or suspend the account. Someone whose account is suspended is signed out and can't sign in until we lift the suspension. We tell the person who reported once it has been handled. Please don't report to harass someone: false or repeated reports can lead to the same measures.

5. AI features and other providers

• Voice-note transcripts, read aloud and the AI assistant are provided through OpenAI. To provide them, the relevant voice notes, text of the reading and discussion are sent to OpenAI, which processes them under its own terms. We also use hosting, storage and email providers to run the service.
• AI answers and transcripts can be wrong. Check them before relying on them for anything important.

6. Copyright complaints

We respect copyright and respond to notices of claimed infringement under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). To report that material on the service infringes your copyright, send a notice to our contact address that includes:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. the copyrighted work you believe is infringed;
3. the material you believe infringes it, with enough information for us to find it (for example its title, its original link, or the group it is in, if you know it);
4. your name, postal address, phone number and email address;
5. a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law;
6. a statement that the information in the notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

When we receive a valid notice, we remove the reading's content (its file or saved copy, extracted text and generated audio) and keep the group's own discussion of it. We tell the person who added it, and the same content can't be added again.

If you believe a reading was removed by mistake or misidentification, you can send a counter-notice to the same address. It must include your signature; the material that was removed and where it appeared; a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith that it was removed by mistake or misidentification; your name, address and phone number; and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for your address (or, if you are outside the United States, any judicial district in which we may be found) and will accept service of process from the person who sent the notice. We forward counter-notices to the person who sent the notice. Unless they tell us within 10 business days that they have filed a court action, we may allow the material to be added again 10 to 14 business days after receiving the counter-notice.

We remove access for people who repeatedly add infringing material. Knowingly misrepresenting that material infringes, or that it was removed by mistake, can make you liable for damages (17 U.S.C. § 512(f)).

Owners of web sites can also ask us not to copy their pages at all, without a notice: For publishers.

7. Changes

We may change or stop the service, and we may change these terms. If we change the terms in a way that matters, we'll ask you to accept the new version before you continue using the service.

8. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

• The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, as far as the law allows. We don't promise that it will always be available or secure, or that content will never be lost: keep your own copies of anything important.
• As far as the law allows, we aren't liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost data. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for the service in the 12 months before the claim, or US$100.
• You will compensate us for claims by others that arise from content you add or from your breaking these terms, as far as the law allows.

9. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York and applicable U.S. federal law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

10. Contact

Questions about these terms, and copyright notices, go to our contact address.