Here’s information regarding “Terms of Service” and the services here at Squidge.org INC, a non-profit 501c3 organization.
**NOTE: Terms Of Service Update, April 2023**
Squidge.org holds no rights to someone else’s information — we will just host it. The content is solely owned by the list/email/website owner, and we lay no claim to it. The only exception is when someone approaches Squidge.org to add their copyrighted terms to the public legal page. One group, the DDTeens, had some problems with people misrepresenting their name and asked if we could copyright it, so we put together a page saying “The following terms are copyrighted by Squidge Production Facilitators”, etc. You can see it at Squidge.ORG Legal Information.
Squidge.org is really lenient — Hell, Walter, the person who started Squidge.org is a fan, too. Walter, via Squidge.org, has been giving back to the community by hosting chats, mailing lists, websites, and email accounts.
There are four rules
- No “snuff” flick type stuff. In this case “snuff” is the literal term used for filming of people being murdered. No. Just no.
- No CSEM – Child Sexual Exploitation Materials. To clarify, this rule is here because someone once used a Squidge property to post child sexual photos. Squidge.org will not stand for that. This includes anything deemed pro-child sex or child-sex advocacy symbols.
- Within the context of fandom, whether a fanfiction story on SquidgeWorld Archive or a personal homepage, no links to Patreon, GoFundMe, or the like that asks for money to pay/support for fanfiction. Links for those that have original works (not fan-based copyrighted works) are exempt. The clarification for this exception is in the update (dated July 7th, 2021) below.
- No sharing of your username and password with others.
Other than that, you can have whatever you want on your website/mailing list, etc.
So anyway, there you have it on the “Terms of Service.” No big ugly corporate BS, just regular usage stuff. And if you have a question, please contact the webmaster.
Added in 2002: Please note — If you have a UNIX/Web/Mail account through squidge.org, that account and the information about it (the login & password) are yours and yours alone. This means that you are NOT to share your account information with others. If you do, and we find out, we’ll be forced to terminate your account for security reasons. Now it’s fine if you and another person/some people are using one account for website creation and maintenance, etc. However, you may NOT be allowed to give your login & password out to others for the purpose of you and them sharing files, etc.
Added September 21st, 2007, with the note that this is specific to personal website hosting, NOT image hosting: We have been asked to clarify what “kiddie porn” means. First of all, the artistic writing in fandoms, such as Harry Potter, is not considered kiddie porn. According to a court ruling in the United States, it is more the actual image that is the problem. Now as for artists who create pieces of work that are in like the Harry Potter or such fandoms, the law is specific. The piece of work must have artistic intent. As an artist doing the work, you are putting forth artistic intent. Thus, for those pages that you have artistic intent work on, we suggest you put a disclaimer stating your artistic value of the work, and that objectors should redirect to Google.com or something. Again, this is for people who use Squidge personal homepages, and not Squidge Image hosting. The differentiation is that with website hosting, there is an interim space where people can “back out” should they not want to see the images. With image hosting, that barrier is not available.
Squidge.org has added image hosting and a robust story archive hosting package, both of which are via open-source software. These TOS apply.
SquidgeWorld Archive has these, plus two additional terms. Those are:
- Added July 7th, 2021: SquidgeWorld Users will not add any link, in their profiles or in their profiles or in any posted work or comment that points to a fundraiser of any kind including, but not limited to, Patreon, Ko-Fi, or the like. The only exception to this is in the case of a piece of work that is of original work, meaning the fandom used is Original Work, and no other fandom is listed or the fandom is listed in the public domain. Works utilizing Original Work must have only original characters, and must not utilize any aspect of a fandom such as characters or relationships that stray from the “Original” characters and relationships listed in the child tags to the Original Work tag. You may, however, link to an off-site (non Squidge.org property) profile such as your Tumblr profile or such, and that site may link to whatever you’d like. Fanfiction and other fan works are guaranteed under the “Fair Use” clause under US law (the United States being where SquidgeWorld servers are located, and thus is where the jurisdiction falls under), and are protected as long as the person posting it makes no money off of the work. People linking to Patreon or such and making money off of fanworks submit the SquidgeWorld Archive into legal jeopardy.
- Added May 13th, 2023: Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) generated works are not supported in the archive. The only exception to this rule would be partial only in posts that are clearly marked meta as part of discussion of said works. Otherwise, no. AI generated works are not welcomed in the archive.
- NEW – Added September 24th, 2023: Web scraping by artificial intelligence (AI), or any process of extracting data from the contents of this website for the purpose of use with artificial intelligence (AI) is strictly prohibited. Any data collection, content aggregation, or use of contents on this website in any way for training datasets or machine learning models is expressly prohibited. For more information, contact us via the “Contact Us” section of this website, or via any of the links on other Squidge.org property websites.
So there ya go! And if you have a question or concern, it’s better to ask.
