Legal

The licenses, the terms, the privacy statement, and the disclaimer, in full.

Academy Network is open-source software and an openly specified protocol. There is no company operating a service here and no server holding your data. That architecture decides most of the legal picture, and the documents below state the rest. This page reproduces the project's full, binding legal texts. The same text ships with every release and lives in the source repository as LICENSE, TERMS.md, PRIVACY.md, and DISCLAIMER.md; if any copy ever differs, the version shipped with your client and published in the repository governs.

Version 1, 2026-07-11. These documents are written to be read: plain on purpose, and binding as written.

Plain-language summary

The short version, not a substitute for the full text below. The developers publish software and documents; they do not run the network and cannot control it. Everyone who runs the app is an independent node operator, responsible for their own machine and their own local law. Every author is responsible for what they publish. Guides are written by strangers: follow them at your own risk. Nothing is collected about you, so there is nothing to protect, sell, or hand over.

Who is responsible for what

The network has no owner. Responsibility sits where the action actually happens:

Responsibility on the Academy Network
Party	What they do	What they are responsible for
Developers	Write and publish the open-source software and the protocol specification	The code and documents as published, nothing more. They hold no content, no keys, no logs, and have no ability to alter or remove anything on the network
Node operators (every user)	Run the app; their machine stores and serves the replicated library	Their own node: the storage and transmission it performs, its resources, and compliance with the laws of their own jurisdiction
Authors and contributors	Write guides, edits, votes, and petitions under a pseudonym	Everything they publish: its legality, its accuracy, and the rights to publish it
Readers	Read and follow guides	Their own safety and legality when acting on any instructions

Licenses

Two licenses cover the project, so the code stays free and the network stays reimplementable forever:

What is licensed how
Material	License
The client app and the core libraries (code)	GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or later (`LICENSE`)
The protocol specification and project documentation	Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Content you publish to the network (guides, edits, and so on)	Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0), attributed to your pseudonym

You may use, study, modify, and redistribute the software freely under the AGPL's terms. The software is provided as is, with no warranty of any kind, as the license states. Licensing the specification and docs under CC BY-SA 4.0 means anyone can build a compatible client from the spec alone, so the network can outlive any single implementation.

Terms of use and node operator agreement

By downloading or running the software, connecting a node to the network, or publishing content, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not run the software.

1. What these terms cover, and who "we" are

"Academy Network" names three separate things:

The Software: the open-source client application, the academy-core libraries, and the code and documentation in the repository.
The Specification: SPEC.md, the public protocol definition, which anyone may reimplement.
The Network: the peer-to-peer network formed by everyone who runs a compatible client. The Network has no owner and no operator. It is not owned or operated by us.

"We" and "the Developers" means the authors, copyright holders, maintainers, and contributors of the Software and the Specification, individually and collectively. We publish software and documents. We do not operate a service.

2. Definitions

Node: a running instance of any client compatible with the Specification.
Operator: the person or entity that runs a Node. This includes seed-node hosts. Every user who runs the app is an Operator.
Content: anything transmitted over the Network: guide text, revisions, media blobs, votes, ratings, petitions, comments, manifests, and every other object.
Contributor: any identity that publishes Content to the Network.

3. The Software is a tool, not a service

The Developers provide the Software under the GNU AGPL (see the license above), as is. The Developers:

do not host the Network or any Content. Where an individual developer also runs a Node, they do so as an Operator, on exactly these terms, like everyone else;
maintain no accounts, servers, databases, or copies of your keys;
cannot see, intercept, alter, or delete Network traffic or Content;
have no technical ability to remove Content from other people's machines, to suspend identities, or to shut the Network down.

Nothing in the Software, the Specification, or the website is an offer of a service, and no service contract exists between you and the Developers.

4. Your node is yours: operator responsibility

Running a Node is your unilateral decision. When your Node stores, reproduces, or transmits Content, you are performing that storage, reproduction, and transmission, on your hardware, under your control, by your choice of running the Software.

As an Operator you agree that you are solely responsible for:

compliance with every law that applies to you, including copyright, data protection, export control, and any rules in your jurisdiction about running Tor onion services;
the disk, bandwidth, and other resources your Node donates;
the consequences of the Content your Node stores or serves. Many jurisdictions protect mere conduits, caches, and hosts; knowing whether and how those protections cover you is your responsibility;
securing your machine and your keys.

The Software gives every Operator compliance tools: compliant clients automatically purge Content delisted by the community removal process (SPEC 5.6); you may cap, pause, or stop your Node at any time; your local store and archives are yours to delete.

No agency. Operators and Contributors are not agents, partners, employees, or representatives of the Developers, and the Developers are not agents of any Operator or Contributor. Nobody can bind anybody else.

5. Content: authorship, warranties, license

Contributors are solely responsible for the Content they publish. By publishing Content you represent and warrant that:

you created it, or you hold the rights needed to publish it under the license below;
publishing it violates no law that applies to you and infringes nobody's rights;
it contains no malware, tracking, or hidden payloads;
its instructional and factual claims are made in good faith.

License of contributions. You license all Content you publish to every user of the Network under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0), attributed to your publishing pseudonym. Understand before you publish: objects are replicated and immutable, so publication is irrevocable in practice. You cannot recall what you have published.

The Developers do not review, endorse, or verify any Content. Community review (juries, editors, removal votes) is performed by pseudonymous volunteers acting on their own behalf; review does not transfer responsibility for Content to anyone other than its Contributor.

6. Guides teach real skills: assumption of risk

The Network's purpose is practical instruction: electrical work, chemistry, construction, machining, first aid, and anything else people choose to teach. Written instructions can be wrong, incomplete, outdated, or unlawful to follow where you live.

You follow guides entirely at your own risk. You are solely responsible for:

your safety and the safety of everyone around you;
compliance with local law, safety codes, licensing, and permits;
honestly judging your own competence before attempting anything;
consulting a qualified professional whenever stakes are high.

No Content on the Network is professional advice. Nothing on the Network creates a doctor-patient, attorney-client, engineer-client, or any other professional relationship with anyone.

7. Prohibited conduct

You may not use the Software or the Network to publish Content that is unlawful for you to publish, to infringe intellectual property, to distribute malware, to attack or sabotage the Network or its users, or to evade the community removal process. The protocol cannot physically stop you; this section establishes that if you do these things, you do them alone, in breach of these terms, and you alone bear the consequences (sections 4, 5, 11, and 12).

8. Moderation and removal

Curation is community-run and protocol-enforced: jury review before publication (SPEC 8), editor manifests (SPEC 7), and community removal votes (SPEC 5.6). The Developers hold no privileged role in any of these processes and have no ability to intervene in them.

If Content should not be on your machine, delete it from your own Node. If Content should not be in the official index, use the removal petition process. There is no one else to ask, because there is no one else.

9. Privacy

See the Privacy statement below. Short version: no accounts, no telemetry, no servers, and the Developers collect nothing. What your Node publishes is pseudonymous and public, permanently.

10. Disclaimer of warranties

THE SOFTWARE, THE SPECIFICATION, THE WEBSITE, AND ALL CONTENT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, AND UNINTERRUPTED OPERATION. THE DEVELOPERS DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE NETWORK WILL EXIST, PERSIST, REMAIN SECURE, OR RETAIN ANY CONTENT.

11. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL THE DEVELOPERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, NOR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, PROPERTY, HEALTH, OR LIFE, ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO THE SOFTWARE, THE SPECIFICATION, THE NETWORK, OR ANY CONTENT, HOWEVER CAUSED AND UNDER ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. WHERE LIABILITY CANNOT BE EXCLUDED, IT IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT YOU PAID THE DEVELOPERS FOR THE SOFTWARE, WHICH IS ZERO.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions. In those places, these exclusions apply to the fullest extent the law allows.

12. Indemnification

If a third party brings a claim against the Developers arising out of your operation of a Node or your Content, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the Developers from that claim, including reasonable legal costs, to the extent the claim arises from your acts or omissions.

13. Relationship to the software license

The Software is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or later. Nothing in these terms limits, conditions, or adds restrictions to the rights the AGPL grants you in the Software itself. The sections above about the Network, Content, and conduct are separate from and additional to the code license, not a modification of it.

The Specification and the repository's documentation are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, so the Network stays reimplementable by anyone.

14. General

Severability. If any part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest stays in force, and the unenforceable part is replaced by the closest enforceable reading.
No waiver. Not enforcing a term is not a waiver of it.
Changes. Terms may be revised alongside the Software. The version shipped with your client and published in the source repository is the one that applies to you. Continued use after a change is acceptance.
Entire agreement. These terms, the license, the Privacy statement, and the Disclaimer are the entire agreement between you and the Developers concerning the Software and the Network.
These terms are drafted for worldwide use and deliberately name no governing jurisdiction; mandatory local law applies where it must.

Privacy statement

This statement covers the website (academynetwork.net) and the Academy Network desktop application. It is short because there is almost nothing to disclose: the system is designed so that there is nothing to collect and nowhere to collect it.

The website

The site is fully static files. It has no accounts, no cookies, no analytics, no forms, and no third-party requests of any kind.
The developers receive no data about visits. The hosting provider that serves the static files may keep standard access logs under its own privacy policy; the developers do not receive or request them.
Downloads are plain files. Nothing phones home.

The application

No accounts, no telemetry. The app never asks who you are and never reports usage to anyone. There is no server to report to.
Your identity is a local key. A pseudonymous keypair is generated on your machine on first launch. It never leaves your machine except as the public half attached to things you choose to publish. The developers hold no copy and cannot recover it.
Reading is invisible. All guide text is replicated to your machine, so reading happens locally. No one can observe what you read, because reading sends nothing.
Publishing is public and permanent. Anything you publish (guides, edits, votes, ratings, petitions) is signed by your pseudonym, replicated across the network, and immutable. Assume it can never be recalled. Do not put personal information in content you publish, including in donate URLs.
Transport is Tor only. Nodes connect exclusively as Tor onion services. Peers see your node's onion address and the pseudonymous objects it announces, never your IP address.
Local-only data stays local. Watchlists, drafts, settings, and your blob cache are stored on your machine and are never gossiped.

What we could hand over

Nothing. The developers hold no user data, no keys, no logs, no content records, and cannot identify any user or node operator. There is no mechanism by which they could comply with a data request, because the data does not exist on their side.

Children

The network collects nothing from anyone, including children. Content suitability is governed by the community guidelines and the removal process, not by data collection.

Changes to this statement

This statement is versioned with the code and republished with each release. If the design ever changes in a way that touches privacy, this statement changes with it, and the change is visible in the public source history.

Disclaimer

A plain-statement disclaimer for the software, specification, website, and the peer-to-peer network that compatible clients form. The full binding terms are above; the software license is the GNU AGPL v3 or later.

The developers publish software, not content

Academy Network has no servers. All content lives on, and is served from, the machines of the people who run the app. The developers of the software do not host, store, transmit, select, review, endorse, or have the technical ability to remove any content on the network. Every node operator is an independent party acting on their own initiative and is solely responsible for what their own machine stores and serves, and for compliance with their own local law. Every author is solely responsible for what they publish.

No warranty

THE SOFTWARE, THE SPECIFICATION, THE WEBSITE, AND ALL NETWORK CONTENT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. THE DEVELOPERS DO NOT WARRANT ACCURACY, SAFETY, COMPLETENESS, FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE, OR THAT THE NETWORK WILL CONTINUE TO EXIST OR RETAIN ANYTHING.

Follow guides at your own risk

The network exists to teach practical skills. Instructions written by strangers can be wrong, incomplete, outdated, or unlawful to follow where you live. Anything you build, wire, mix, cut, install, or ingest as a result of a guide is entirely at your own risk. Nothing on the network is professional advice: not medical, not legal, not financial, not engineering. Check your local laws and codes, and bring in a qualified professional when stakes are high.

No liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE DEVELOPERS ACCEPT NO LIABILITY FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM THE SOFTWARE, THE NETWORK, OR ANY CONTENT, INCLUDING PERSONAL INJURY, PROPERTY DAMAGE, DATA LOSS, OR LEGAL CONSEQUENCES OF OPERATING A NODE (see Terms sections 10 through 12).

Not legal advice

These documents describe the project's own terms. They are not legal advice to you, and reading them creates no relationship with anyone.

Copyright and removal

There is no takedown desk, because there is no host: content exists only on the machines of independent node operators. What the system offers instead:

Community removal. Anyone can petition to remove content, a guide, a forum board and everything in it, a thread, or a standalone upload, with a written reason. A public vote, weighted by earned standing and needing a quorum and a supermajority, delists it from the official index, and every compliant node then purges it automatically. See Removing guides and Governance.
Editorial revocation. Editors can mark objects revoked for cause in the signed manifest, removing them from the curated index. Editors are bound by the protocol and cannot revoke jury-approved content without cause; a community appeal can reverse a wrongful revocation.
Your own machine. Operators may delete anything from their own node at any time.

Authors publishing infringing or unlawful content do so in breach of these terms and bear sole responsibility for it.