Terms of Service
Draft — under legal reviewThis document has not been approved by a lawyer. It may change, and changes will need your acceptance again. Status: DRAFT — pending counsel review.
These Terms are an agreement between you and Antonio Kodheli ("Likeness", "we", "us"). They apply to everyone who uses the Likeness website, applications and APIs (the "Service") during the pilot: creators, buyers, partners and visitors. Creators also accept the Creator Agreement. Buyers also accept the Buyer License Terms. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data.
By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
1. What Likeness is, and what it is not
Likeness is a registry and marketplace for licenses to use photos. It lets a creator:
- upload photos and mark them with an invisible watermark locator;
- list an offer (a use, territory, term and price) on a public page, if they choose to;
- sell a license to a buyer through a hosted checkout, and be credited the sale price in the pilot.
Likeness also lets partners ask whether a file carries a Likeness watermark and what the registered rule for that file says. The answer is a category (for example "license required"), never a score.
Likeness is not:
- an identity verification service: we do not check who anyone is. A creator who sells through Likeness has self-attested that they are the person shown and that they hold the rights. We have not verified that statement;
- a court, a law firm, an escrow agent, a bank or a payment institution;
- a guarantee that any use of a photo is lawful, authorised or detectable.
2. Eligibility and accounts
You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of majority where you live, if higher) and able to form a binding contract. Do not use the Service on behalf of a company unless you are authorised to bind it.
Give us accurate information, keep your credentials and second factor safe, and tell us promptly if you think someone else has accessed your account. You are responsible for what happens under your account. We require two-step sign-in for every account.
3. Acceptable use
You will not:
- upload, register or offer a photo of another person, or a photo you do not have the right to license;
- upload photos of anyone under 18, sexually explicit content, or content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing or deceptive;
- impersonate a person or organisation, or choose a handle or display name meant to mislead;
- use the Service, its outputs or any API to build a search for people, to identify anyone, or to scrape the registry;
- use a licensed photo, or anything made from it, to deceive voters or influence an election, to commit fraud, to impersonate a person or organisation, or to create a false statement or depiction attributed to a real person;
- probe, overload, reverse engineer or circumvent the Service, its rate limits, authentication or watermarks;
- remove or alter a watermark in order to use a file without the license that applies to it;
- misrepresent a check result or a license, including by calling a self-attested creator "verified";
- use the Service for money laundering, fraud or any activity that breaks the law or card-network rules.
We may remove content, unlist pages, suspend offers or accounts, or refuse a checkout if we reasonably think these rules, the Creator Agreement or the law has been broken.
3A. AI-generated output
Some licenses allow a buyer to generate or alter a face or a voice from a creator's photo or recording. Anyone who publishes such output must label it as AI-generated or altered wherever the law requires, and must never present it as a genuine recording or statement of the person. Likeness does not label output for you.
4. Your content
You keep ownership of what you upload. You give Likeness a worldwide, non-exclusive licence to store, process, copy, watermark, display (including watermarked previews, if you choose a public page) and deliver your content, and to issue licenses to buyers on the terms you have set, only as needed to run the Service. This licence ends when your content is deleted, except for copies that buyers have licensed and records we must keep (see the Privacy Policy).
You promise that you have all the rights needed to give us this licence and to sell the licenses you offer, and that your content and offers do not break anyone's rights or the law.
5. Licenses between creators and buyers
When a buyer pays for a license, the license is a contract between the creator and the buyer, on the terms shown in the quote and in the Buyer License Terms. Likeness is not a party to that license except that we operate the checkout, record the license, deliver the buyer's copy and, as described in the Creator Agreement and Buyer License Terms, handle refunds, disputes and takedowns. A license that has been granted is frozen: later changes to a creator's rules or to our policies apply only to future licenses.
6. Payments
Payments are processed by Stripe. We do not store card numbers. During the pilot Likeness charges the creator no platform fee, and the creator's earnings are paid out manually, after a hold, as set out in the Creator Agreement. Prices are shown in the currency of the offer. You are responsible for your own taxes (see the Creator Agreement).
7. Watermarks and checks are not guarantees
Watermark detection is probabilistic. A watermark can be damaged by editing, compression, cropping, re-recording or deliberate removal, and a file that was never marked carries nothing to find. A check can therefore miss a marked file, fail, or return "unknown". A missing or unreadable watermark is not permission to use a person's likeness, and a categorical answer from the Service is not a legal finding about identity, ownership or infringement. Decisions that matter should be taken with legal advice.
8. Disclaimers
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE". TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT:
- ANY CREATOR IS WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE, OR HOLDS THE RIGHTS THEY CLAIM (WE DO NOT VERIFY IDENTITY);
- A WATERMARK WILL SURVIVE OR BE DETECTED, OR THAT A CHECK RESULT IS COMPLETE OR CORRECT;
- THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT IT WILL PREVENT UNAUTHORISED USE OF ANY PHOTO OR LIKENESS;
- ANY THIRD-PARTY PLATFORM WILL REMOVE CONTENT BECAUSE WE OR A CREATOR ASK.
9. Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, LIKENESS AND ITS OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES AND SUPPLIERS ARE NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA OR GOODWILL, OR FOR THE ACTS OR OMISSIONS OF CREATORS, BUYERS, PARTNERS, PAYMENT PROVIDERS OR OTHER USERS. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE FEES LIKENESS KEPT FROM YOU IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM (WHICH IS ZERO WHILE THE PILOT FEE IS 0%; THE PRICE OF A LICENSE IS NOT A FEE) AND (B) US$100. NOTHING IN THESE TERMS LIMITS LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED BY LAW.
10. Indemnity
You will defend and indemnify Likeness, its officers, employees and suppliers against claims, losses, damages and reasonable costs (including legal fees) arising from your content, your offers and licenses, your breach of these Terms or the Creator Agreement, or your violation of law or of anyone's rights. Creators are responsible for the rights they claim: if a person or rights holder says a photo should not have been registered or sold, the creator who registered it bears that claim as between the creator and Likeness. We may control the defence of a claim, and you will cooperate.
11. Takedown and repeat infringers
Anyone can report impersonation, misuse or an infringing photo using the process in our Takedown and Report Policy. We act on reports as described there, which can include marking a page "under review", unlisting it, suspending offers, recommending refunds and, for repeat infringers, closing accounts.
12. Suspension and termination
You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time (the Privacy Policy explains what happens to your data and why some records remain). We may suspend or end your access immediately if you breach these Terms or the Creator Agreement, if we reasonably suspect fraud or misuse, if we must by law, or if we end the pilot. Sections that by their nature should survive (including content rights already granted, frozen licenses, disclaimers, liability, indemnity, governing law and dispute resolution) survive termination. Money owed to a creator when an account is closed is dealt with under the Creator Agreement.
13. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. Each version has an identifier (for example terms-pilot-v1). When a new version is published, we will ask you to accept it again before you next sign up, attest as a creator, sell a license or check out; a creator who has not accepted the current Terms, Privacy Policy and Creator Agreement cannot sell new licenses until they do. If you do not accept, you may close your account. Licenses already granted are not changed.
14. Governing law and venue
[GOVERNING LAW AND VENUE — TBD]
15. Dispute resolution
[DISPUTE RESOLUTION — TBD]
16. General
Neither party is liable for a delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control (force majeure), such as outages of hosting, payment or network providers, natural disasters, war, or government action; payment obligations for completed sales are not excused except as the law allows. You may not use the Service if you are subject to sanctions or located in a country under comprehensive embargo, and you must comply with export-control and sanctions laws that apply to you. These Terms, the Privacy Policy and the documents they refer to are the whole agreement about the Service. If part is unenforceable, the rest stays in force. You may not assign your rights without our consent. Our failure to enforce a term is not a waiver. We may contact you by email and in the product.
17. Contact
Antonio Kodheli, 16 Hobart St, Braintree, MA 02184, United States, antonio_kodheli@icloud.com