Terms of service

1 · What you're agreeing to

By using policywindow.org (the "Service"), you agree to these terms. The Service includes: the public wiki at /wiki/*, the catalog APIs at /wiki/catalog/*, the changelog feed at /wiki/changelog/feed, the embed surface at /embed/wiki/*, and any future paid surfaces. If you don't agree, don't use the Service.

2 · Acceptable use

You may:

• Read, cite, embed, fork, and redistribute catalog content under the licence terms in §4 below.
• Use the public APIs (/wiki/catalog/json, /wiki/catalog/csv, /wiki/changelog/feed) for any lawful purpose, including commercial use.
• Build derivative works (other wikis, dashboards, analyses) on top of the catalog with attribution.

You may not:

• Attempt to circumvent rate limits or denial-of-service the public APIs. We don't publish a hard rate limit today; if your usage exceeds reasonable best-effort capacity (interpreted generously), we'll contact you about a paid firehose tier rather than block.
• Misrepresent Policy Window content as your own uncredited work. Attribution is a licence requirement (CC BY 4.0).
• Use the catalog or APIs to scrape personal data, facilitate harassment, or build automated decision-making systems that produce significant legal effects without human review.
• Reverse-engineer authentication, attempt to access other users' data, or otherwise breach the security of signed-in surfaces.
• Submit feedback or corrections containing personal data about third parties without their consent, or unlawful content.

3 · Accounts

The public wiki requires no account. The signed-in dashboard (/dashboard, /partners) is for internal users + partners and access is granted via the operator. If you have an account, you're responsible for safeguarding your credentials and for activity that occurs under your login. Notify security@policywindow.org if you suspect unauthorised access.

4 · Content licensing

Catalog content (article pages, coverage matrix, methodology pages, and similar editorial output) is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Code in the public repository is published under the standard MIT licence.

Quoted primary-source text (e.g. excerpts from the EU AI Act, US executive orders, China's GenAI Measures, regulatory guidance) is reproduced under fair-use / fair-dealing for the purposes of comment, criticism, and education. The underlying copyright of quoted text remains with its original holder.

5 · No warranties, no advice

The Service is provided "as is". We make every reasonable effort to keep catalog content accurate and up-to-date (see /wiki/methodology + the per-article freshness chip), but we give no warranty of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. Policy Window content is not legal advice, regulatory advice, financial advice, or any other kind of professional advice. For high-stakes policy decisions, consult qualified counsel and verify claims against primary sources.

6 · Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we're not liable for indirect, consequential, special, or punitive damages arising from your use of the Service, including loss of profits, loss of data, or loss of opportunity. Our total aggregate liability for any direct damages arising from your use of the free public Service is limited to £100 (one hundred pounds sterling). Liability under a paid firehose contract will be defined separately in the relevant Master Subscription Agreement.

7 · Suspension + termination

We may suspend or terminate access to the Service (or specific account credentials) if we reasonably believe the terms are being breached. For the free public wiki, we won't suspend in a manner that breaks ?asOf=<ISO> citation URLs without a 30-day notice on /wiki/changelog. The catalog will remain free to read; the URL stability commitment in /wiki/charter §1 binds us even in the wind-down case.

8 · Governing law + jurisdiction

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute relating to the Service is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts, except where mandatory consumer-protection law of your jurisdiction provides otherwise.

9 · How these terms are updated

Material changes (new restrictions on use, change to governing law, change to liability cap) take effect 30 days after a notice is posted on /wiki/changelog. Cosmetic changes take effect immediately and are visible in git log src/app/terms/page.tsx on the public repository.