Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of these Terms

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") form a binding agreement between you and HCCN ("HCCN", "we", "us", or "our"), the operator of the Human-Centric Content Network at hccn.ink and its related sites, applications, and services (together, the "Service").

By creating an account, publishing, verifying a certificate, or otherwise accessing or using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and by any policies referenced here. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you use the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind that organization, and "you" refers to that organization.

2. Eligibility

You must be able to form a legally binding agreement to use the Service, and the information you provide must be accurate and complete. HCCN does not impose a minimum age to use the Service.

If you are a minor in your jurisdiction, you may use the Service only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use. If you do not have the legal capacity to agree to these Terms yourself, a parent or guardian must accept them for you.

3. What HCCN is — and what it is not

HCCN records how a document was composed and issues a reader-verifiable Human Authorship Certificate: an Ed25519-signed attestation describing a tamper-evident record of the writing process and the certification level reached.

HCCN is NOT an AI detector, and a certificate is NOT proof that a work was written without unobserved assistance (including artificial intelligence), nor proof of the truthfulness of anything an author claims. HCCN verifies the recorded composition process — nothing more, and nothing less. Certificates are provided for informational and reputational purposes and carry no guaranteed legal or evidentiary weight in any proceeding.

You must not represent an HCCN certificate, badge, or verification result as attesting to anything it does not, or use them to deceive readers about how a work was created.

4. Accounts and security

To use most features you must create an account. You agree to provide accurate information, to keep it current, and to keep your credentials — including passwords and passkeys — confidential.

You are responsible for all activity under your account. Notify us promptly at hello@hccn.ink if you suspect unauthorized use or a security breach. We are not liable for losses arising from your failure to safeguard your account. We may reclaim usernames, and may refuse, suspend, or cancel accounts at our discretion, including where required to protect the Service or comply with law.

5. Your content and the license you grant

You retain ownership of the text, articles, and other materials you create or upload ("Your Content"). We do not claim ownership of Your Content.

You grant HCCN a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, process, transmit, adapt (for formatting and technical purposes), and display Your Content and the associated provenance record as necessary to operate the Service, to generate, sign, and verify certificates, and — for content you choose to publish — to display it publicly and permit anyone to verify it. This license lasts as long as the content or a certificate derived from it exists on the Service, and ends when you delete it, subject to the sections on Publishing and Certificates below.

You represent and warrant that you own or have all rights necessary to Your Content and to grant this license, and that Your Content and its publication do not infringe or violate the rights of any third party or any law.

6. Publishing, public data, and removal

When you publish, your article, its metadata, and its certificate become publicly accessible and independently verifiable by anyone, including through public APIs, embeddable badges, and standalone verifiers. Published material may be copied, cached, or indexed by third parties (such as search engines and other sites) outside our control, and may persist even after you remove it from HCCN.

Withdrawing an article hides it from HCCN surfaces (such as your profile) but a previously issued certificate, and any copies others have made, may remain available and verifiable. Deleting an article removes the article, its provenance record, and its certificate from our systems, after which that certificate will no longer verify through HCCN — but we cannot retrieve or invalidate copies that have been distributed elsewhere.

7. Certificates and cryptographic verification

A certificate is a cryptographic attestation signed with HCCN's private signing key. Verification relies on HCCN's published public key and on the integrity of the hash-chained provenance record.

We will make reasonable efforts to keep the signing key stable so that existing certificates continue to verify, but we do not guarantee perpetual availability or verifiability. We may revoke, invalidate, decline to issue, or downgrade certificates — for example, to correct errors, to address content that violates these Terms, or upon termination of an account.

You must not forge, alter, tamper with, or misrepresent certificates, badges, the provenance recorder, or the hash chains, or attempt to make the Service attest to a process that did not occur.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to, and not to help or permit anyone else to:

• —upload, publish, or transmit content that is unlawful, infringing, defamatory, harassing, hateful, sexually exploitative, or that violates the privacy, publicity, intellectual-property, or other rights of any person;
• —publish content you do not have the right to publish, or impersonate any person or entity or misrepresent your affiliation;
• —forge, tamper with, game, or attempt to defeat the provenance recorder, hash chains, or certificates, or misrepresent what a certificate attests;
• —upload malware, or probe, scan, breach, overload, or disrupt the Service or its infrastructure or security — except good-faith security research disclosed responsibly to us in advance;
• —reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code or private keys, except to the limited extent this restriction is prohibited by applicable law;
• —use bots, scrapers, or other automated means except through documented public APIs and within posted rate limits, or circumvent rate limits, usage caps, or access controls;
• —resell, sublicense, or commercially exploit the Service except as expressly permitted; or
• —use the Service to deceive readers, to fabricate authorship claims, or for any unlawful or fraudulent purpose.

9. Moderation

We may, but are not obligated to, review content. We may remove or restrict content, and suspend or terminate accounts, that we believe violate these Terms or applicable law, or that create risk or legal exposure, at our discretion and without prior notice. We maintain an internal audit log of moderation actions.

10. Subscriptions, billing, and refunds

HCCN offers a free plan and one or more paid plans. Certificate levels are earned on merit and are not tied to payment. The free plan is limited to a set number of articles (currently up to 5 total across drafts and published). Paid plans (currently the "Pro" plan at $5 per month or $50 per year) remove that limit. Plan names, features, limits, and prices may change over time.

Payments are processed by our third-party payment processor (Stripe). We do not receive or store your full payment-card details. Paid subscriptions renew automatically at the then-current price until you cancel. You may cancel at any time, and you will retain paid access through the end of the current billing period.

Except where required by law, payments are non-refundable and we do not provide refunds or credits for partial billing periods, unused time, or downgrades. We may change prices prospectively; price changes apply to billing periods after we provide notice. You are responsible for any applicable taxes. Fair-use and rate limits apply to all plans, including paid plans.

11. Third-party services

The Service relies on third parties, including a payment processor (Stripe), an email provider (Resend), and cloud hosting and database providers. Your use of features that depend on them may be subject to their terms and policies. We are not responsible for third-party services, and their availability is outside our control.

12. HCCN intellectual property

The Service — including its software, design, user interface, the "HCCN" and "Human-Centric Content Network" names, logos, and the certificate badge mark, together with all related intellectual-property rights — is owned by HCCN or its licensors, except for Your Content and any third-party or open-source components governed by their own licenses.

We grant you a limited, revocable, non-transferable, non-exclusive license to access and use the Service in accordance with these Terms. The portable HCCN badge and verification links may be displayed to indicate a genuine HCCN certificate; you must not use HCCN's names or marks in a way that is misleading or implies endorsement without our permission.

13. Privacy and data

To operate the Service we collect and process account information, the content and provenance you create, billing and subscription status (via our payment processor), and usage and diagnostic data. Provenance events capture editing metadata — such as timing and the lengths of insertions, deletions, and classified pastes — associated with the document you are writing.

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect data (for example, row-level security on our database, signed session cookies, and salted, hashed passwords), but no method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. By using the Service, you consent to the processing described here.

Our Privacy Policy, linked in the site footer, describes in more detail what we collect, how we use and share it, how long we keep it, and the choices available to you.

14. Availability and changes to the Service

The Service is provided on an "as available" basis. We may add, change, suspend, or discontinue features or the Service as a whole at any time, and may perform maintenance that causes downtime. We are not liable for any unavailability, or for any modification or discontinuation of the Service.

15. Disclaimers

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE, CERTIFICATES, AND ALL CONTENT AND MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

Without limiting the above, we specifically disclaim any warranty that a certificate proves authorship, the absence of AI or other assistance, or the truthfulness of any user's claims; that the Service, provenance records, or certificates are accurate, complete, uninterrupted, secure, or error-free; or that certificates will remain verifiable indefinitely.

16. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, HCCN AND ITS OPERATORS, OFFICERS, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR REPUTATION, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO HCCN IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US$100). Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you.

17. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless HCCN and its operators and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to Your Content, your use of the Service, or your violation of these Terms or of any law or third-party right.

18. Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, if you violate these Terms, if we reasonably believe your use creates legal risk or harm, or otherwise at our discretion.

Upon termination, your right to use the Service ceases. Provisions that by their nature should survive — including those on Your Content license (to the extent content or certificates remain), certificates, intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and governing law — survive termination. Handling of published content and certificates after termination is described in the Publishing and Certificates sections above.

19. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date above and, for material changes, provide additional notice where appropriate. Changes are effective when posted. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

20. Governing law and dispute resolution

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

Before bringing any formal claim, you agree to first contact us at hello@hccn.ink and to attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute informally for at least thirty (30) days. If the dispute is not resolved, it will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in the State of Illinois, United States, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts — except that either party may seek injunctive or equitable relief in any court of competent jurisdiction to protect intellectual property or to stop misuse of the Service.

21. Miscellaneous

These Terms are the entire agreement between you and HCCN regarding the Service and supersede any prior agreements on that subject. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect and the unenforceable provision will be limited to the minimum extent necessary. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it.

You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent; we may assign them, including in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. Nothing in these Terms creates any agency, partnership, or employment relationship. We are not liable for any delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control. Section headings are for convenience only.

22. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Reach us at hello@hccn.ink.