Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your use of the Gathered Lives website at gatheredlives.com, the service behind it, the emails and links it sends, and any printed products ordered through it (together, the “Service”). The Service is operated by Stumptown Ventures LLC, doing business as Gathered Lives (“we”, “us”). You can reach us at support@gatheredlives.com.

By creating an account, opening an invitation link, adding a memory, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which explains what we collect and how we use it. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

2. Who may use the Service

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, to contribute to a Story, or to be the subject of a Story. Gathered Lives is for adults. A Story cannot be centred on a child. Children may appear incidentally in a family’s memories and photographs, and when they do, the person adding that memory is responsible for having the right to share it, and we keep such memories to the people in that Story.

You must be able to form a binding contract with us, and you must not be barred from using the Service under the laws of the place you live.

3. Accounts and guest access

Sign-in is handled by our authentication provider. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in method secure and for everything done through your account. Tell us at once if you believe someone else has used it.

Someone invited to a Story can contribute without an account, through a private link. A guest link is for the person it was sent to. Please do not forward it. Whoever holds the link can add memories to that Story and, where the inviter allows, read it. The person who created the link can turn it off at any time. A guest may later create an account, and what they added stays theirs.

4. Stories, memories and roles

A Story is a collection of memories about a person, a couple, a family or a group, and the chapters written from them. A memory is something someone adds: a voice recording, a video, a photograph, a document, or written words. The people in a Story hold roles:

• Custodians lead a Story. They decide who can see it, who can join it, what is approved, and whether it is printed, archived or deleted.
• Curators can approve contributions and edit chapters.
• Contributors add memories.
• Viewers read.
• Subjects are the people a Story is about. A living subject who joins the Service can claim their Story and take the lead of it, and can always make it more private.

Custodians are responsible for how they run their Story: for the people they invite, for what they approve, and for respecting the wishes of the Story’s subjects and contributors.

5. What you add stays yours

You own the memories you add and keep every right in them. We claim no ownership of your recordings, photographs, documents or words, or of the chapters written from them.

So that we can run the Service, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, copy, transcribe, analyse, convert, display, transmit and print what you add, and material derived from it, solely to provide the Service to you and to the people the Story is shared with, at your and their direction. This includes making display copies of photographs, transcribing recordings, extracting facts and dates, writing and revising chapters, laying out a book, and sending notifications. The licence ends when the content is deleted from the Service, except that copies may remain in backups for a limited time and in printed products already made.

The original of every memory is kept as you gave it. We do not edit, crop or alter originals. Chapters, transcripts, captions and facts are derived material and can be edited, regenerated or removed.

We do not use your content to train artificial intelligence models, and we require the providers that process it for us not to.

6. Content about other people

Most of what people add to Gathered Lives is about someone else: a recording of a grandmother, a photograph of a father, a story about a friend. When you add such content you confirm that you have the right to do so, that you have, where it is needed, the consent of the people in it, and that sharing it with the Story’s members does not break any law, confidence or agreement. Recording someone without their knowledge may be unlawful where you live. Do not add recordings made that way.

If a living person tells us that a Story about them, or content in which they appear, was added without their consent, we may restrict or remove it, and we may make the Story private, without waiting to hear from its custodian. A subject can also claim their Story within the Service and take control of it.

The people who contribute to a Story keep control of their own memories. A contributor can restrict who sees a memory they added, or remove it, at any time, even after it has been woven into chapters.

7. Chapters written by software

The chapters, facts, key dates, captions, introductions and polished text in a Story are produced by software from the memories gathered. The software is instructed to draw only on those memories, to keep uncertainty and disagreement visible, and never to invent. It can still misunderstand a recording, misattribute who said something, place an event in the wrong year, or phrase something poorly. Every generated sentence is tied to the memories it came from so that you can check it.

You are responsible for reading a Story and correcting it before you rely on it, share it more widely, or print it. Nothing in a Story is medical, legal, financial, genealogical or historical advice, and we make no promise that any of it is accurate.

8. Privacy and sharing

Every Story starts private, visible only to the people its custodian adds. A custodian may make a Story readable by anyone with its link, or public. Widening a Story exposes the memories in it at the default audience level, and the Service says so before it happens. Any subject can make a Story more private on their own. Memories a contributor has limited to the subjects or custodians never become more visible when the Story does.

How we handle personal information is set out in the Privacy Policy. We do not sell personal information and we do not show advertising.

9. What you must not do

• Add content you do not have the right to share, or that infringes someone’s copyright, privacy or other rights.
• Use the Service to harass, defame, threaten or expose anyone, or to build a Story about someone in order to harm them.
• Create a Story centred on a child, or add sexual content involving anyone under 18.
• Impersonate a person, claim a Story that is not about you, or misrepresent who recorded or said something.
• Forward a private link to people it was not meant for, or use a link after it has been turned off.
• Scrape the Service, probe its security, overload it, or use it to send unsolicited messages.
• Use the Service, or any output from it, to train machine learning models.
• Resell the Service or use it to provide a competing service.

We may remove content and suspend or close accounts that break these rules, and we may report unlawful content to the authorities.

10. Printed books and other paid products

Creating, reading, contributing to and sharing a Story is free, and reading a Story is never conditioned on buying anything. We may offer paid products, such as a printed hardcover edition of a Story. When we do:

• Prices, shipping costs and delivery estimates are shown before you order. Taxes are added where required.
• A book is printed from a proof you approve. Please check the proof carefully: once printed, a book cannot be changed. We do not refund books because of mistakes in the text, photographs or layout that were visible in the proof.
• If a book arrives damaged or with a manufacturing defect, tell us within 30 days of delivery with photographs and we will reprint it or refund it.
• You may cancel an order until printing begins. After that, the order is final.
• Printing and shipping are carried out by a print partner acting on our instructions. We give them only what they need to make and deliver the book.
• Where a printed edition is a gift, the person paying for it is our customer; the Story remains under the control of its custodians.

We may change prices for future orders at any time.

11. Our content and software

The Service, including its software, design, name, logo, question library and text, is ours or our licensors’ and is protected by copyright, trade mark and other laws. These Terms do not give you any right in it beyond using the Service as intended. The typographic design of a printed edition is ours; the words and images in it are yours and your family’s.

12. Availability, changes and the free service

We will do our best to keep the Service available and to keep your content safe, but we cannot promise that it will always be available or free of faults. We may change or withdraw features, and we may change these Terms. If a change is significant we will tell you by email or within the Service before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that is your acceptance of the change.

If we ever decide to close the Service, we will give you at least 90 days’ notice and a way to export your Stories and memories.

13. Ending your use, deletion and export

You can stop using the Service at any time. You can delete a memory you added, delete a Story you lead, and ask us to delete your account. Deleted Stories and memories are kept for 30 days so that a mistake can be undone, and are then permanently removed from our systems, except that copies may remain in backups for a limited time. Memories you added to a Story someone else leads remain yours and are not deleted when that Story is; you can delete them yourself.

A custodian can export a Story as a PDF at any time, and a printed edition’s files belong to the Story’s custodians.

We may suspend or end your access if you break these Terms, if we must for legal reasons, or if your account has been inactive for a very long time and we have tried to reach you. Where we can, we will tell you why and give you a chance to export your content.

14. Disclaimers

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, and any warranty that the Service or the content in a Story will be accurate, complete, reliable or error-free. Nothing in these Terms limits rights that consumer law gives you and that cannot be excluded.

15. Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data or goodwill, arising out of or related to the Service or these Terms, however caused. Our total liability for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the greater of one hundred US dollars and the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. These limits do not apply to liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

16. Your responsibility to us

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from claims, losses and expenses, including reasonable legal fees, that arise from content you add to the Service, from your breach of these Terms, or from your violation of anyone’s rights or of any law.

17. Disputes and governing law

If you have a problem, write to us first at support@gatheredlives.com. We will try to sort it out with you within 30 days. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Oregon and the federal laws of the United States, without regard to conflict of law rules. Any dispute that we cannot resolve together will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Portland, Oregon, and you and we consent to their jurisdiction. If you live in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of your country and may bring a claim in its courts.

18. General

These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. If any part of them is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. If we do not act on a breach, we are not giving up our right to act later. You may not transfer your agreement to anyone else; we may transfer ours to a successor that takes over the Service, and we will tell you if that happens. Notices to you may be sent to the email address on your account.

19. Contact

Stumptown Ventures LLC, doing business as Gathered Lives, Portland, Oregon. support@gatheredlives.com.