Fair Use Policy

1. Scope

This policy governs what Arkive archives, how it fetches, and what may be stored through the service. It forms part of the Terms of Service. Notices under this policy go to sdx-support@protonmail.com.

Arkive is a personal archiving service. At the user's request it fetches a web page and stores a private reading copy for that user's account. This policy applies to all saving, fetching, uploading and storage performed through the service.

2. Private archiving only

All archived material is private to the account that saved it. The service provides no public profiles, no shared libraries and no mechanism by which an archived copy can be made available to a third party. Redistribution of archived material is not a feature of the service and is not permitted through it. Sharing an article means sharing its original link.

3. Reading copies

On saving an article, the service fetches the page once and stores a cleaned reading copy consisting of the article text, the images belonging to it, and the title. The copy is stored solely for the saving account and is served only after ownership of the item has been verified. It constitutes a private convenience copy, not a republication.

4. Prohibited conduct

The service must not be used to:

• Circumvent paywalls or access controls. The service contains no such mechanism. A page that does not serve its body to an unauthenticated reader is stored as a link and title only.
• Supply credentials for third-party sites. The service does not accept or use credentials for any site other than its own, and cannot fetch content that sits behind a third-party login.
• Store video files. A saved video is embedded from the originating platform and plays under that platform's terms, with its metrics intact.
• Perform bulk import, site mirroring or systematic crawling. See sections 6 and 7.

5. Fetching conduct

The service issues one request per saved page, identifying itself with an accurate user agent. Requests are subject to a timeout and a response size cap, and a saved page is not fetched again except at the user's explicit request. Saving a page never triggers fetching of further pages from the same site.

Where fetching is automated in a manner comparable to crawling, robots.txt is honoured and a Disallow directive is treated as final.

6. Uploaded files

By uploading a file, the user represents and warrants that they hold the rights necessary to store a private copy of it. Uploaded files are stored and served back to the uploading account only. The service verifies file format and does not otherwise inspect file contents.

7. Volume

The service is designed for personal reading archives. Bulk importing of sites and automated mass saving are prohibited and constitute grounds for suspension or termination of the account. No quantitative limit is currently enforced; if one is introduced, it will be published on this page before it takes effect.

8. Publisher exclusion

A publisher may request exclusion of its domain by writing to sdx-support@protonmail.com and naming the domain. On receipt of a valid request, fetching from the domain ceases and stored copies of its pages are deleted. Affected items retain their link and title and are shown as available at the source only. A formal legal notice is not required for a request to be honoured.

9. Complaints

Reports that the service has archived material improperly, or has otherwise acted improperly towards a site, should be sent to sdx-support@protonmail.com. Reports are reviewed by a person.

10. Enforcement and changes

Accounts in breach of this policy may be suspended or terminated. This policy may be amended; the version published at this address is the version in force.