Terms of service

1. Who can use Maplecord

You must be at least 13 years old, or older if the law where you live requires it to use a service like this one without a parent's consent (16 in some countries). If we learn that an account belongs to someone younger than that, we delete it. You are responsible for everything done with your account. Keep your sign-in (your Google, GitHub or other account) safe.

2. What you share is your responsibility

You are fully responsible for everything you post, upload, stream or send through Maplecord: messages, files, pictures, animations, sounds (soundboards included), voice, video, screen sharing and any other kind of media, whether it goes through the app, our relays, our servers, or straight between apps (P2P).

By sharing anything through Maplecord, you confirm that you own it or have the permission or other legal right to share it, and that sharing it does not break any law that applies to you where you are, or in Texas and the United States, where Maplecord is run. That you are responsible does not change what the law requires of Maplecord itself.

If someone makes a claim against Maplecord or the people who run it because of what you shared, or because you broke these terms, you agree to cover the costs that come of it, including reasonable legal fees, as far as the law allows.

You keep ownership of what you share. You give Maplecord permission to store, copy, send, show and check it, only as far as needed to run the service for you and the people you share it with, and to moderate it.

3. What is not allowed

• Anything that sexualises or exploits a child, in any form, real or drawn or made by a computer. There are no exceptions. It is removed, the account is closed, and it is reported (see section 6).
• Streaming, playing or sharing video, audio, pictures or files you do not have the rights to.
• Anything illegal where you are, or in Texas or the United States, and anything that helps someone else break the law.
• Threats, harassment, bullying, or encouraging someone to harm themselves or others.
• Sharing someone's private information, or private pictures of them, without their permission.
• Pretending to be someone else, or to be part of Maplecord's staff.
• Spam, scams, malware, and anything that tries to break, overload or get around Maplecord, its limits or its checks.
• Sexually explicit pictures anywhere public: public servers, profile pictures, banners, nameplates, server icons and banners, emojis and stickers.

Server owners can set stricter rules for their own servers.

4. What we can do

To keep Maplecord safe and running, we may, at any time, for any reason, with or without notice, and with or without giving a reason:

• remove any message, file, picture or other media;
• suspend, ban or delete any account, or change its name, its limits or what it may do;
• limit or end anyone's access to Maplecord, or to any part of it.

People make these decisions, not programs. Removing something already posted, and suspending, banning or changing an account as a penalty, are always done by a person. On their own, programs only:

• refuse to upload a picture that is very likely explicit to somewhere public;
• blur a picture on your own device that may be explicit or revealing (a click shows it);
• take down, at once, something flagged as sexualising a child, so that a person can review it and report it;
• enforce technical limits, the same for everyone: how often requests can be made, how large an upload can be, and ending a stream that sends more than it is allowed to;
• do scheduled upkeep: deleting old files as the privacy page describes, and lifting a suspension when its time is up.

Anything else a program notices is only flagged for a person to look at.

When a moderator removes a picture of yours, or suspends or bans your account, we email you what was done and why, except for anything taken down for child safety. We never tell anyone who reported them. If you think a decision was a mistake, reply to that email or write to [email protected], and a person will look at it again.

We can limit an account and what reaches our servers. We cannot delete copies already on other people's devices: things they downloaded or saved, P2P history kept in their apps, or copies kept by archive bots in a P2P channel.

5. Privacy, in short

• Messages in ordinary channels and direct messages are kept on our server so they reach all your devices. Their text is encrypted where it is stored, and our server decrypts it to deliver it and to search it. Nobody reads them as a matter of course.
• Whoever runs Maplecord sees messages only when someone reports them, when an admin visits a server to deal with a problem, or when a security problem or the law requires it. A visit shows the admin in that server's member list for as long as they are there, and it is logged.
• Apart from pictures (below), nothing you post is checked or watched. Problems are found when people report them.
• Pictures posted somewhere public (public servers, profiles, server pictures, emojis, stickers) are checked by a program on our server as they are uploaded. Pictures in direct messages and private servers are only checked on the device of the person viewing them, to blur them, and nothing is sent anywhere for that.
• Voice, video and screen sharing are encrypted by your app before they leave it. Our relays carry them but cannot hear or see them. Maplecord does not record calls; anyone in a call can record what reaches their own device.
• P2P channels and calls go straight between people's apps and never reach our server. Connecting P2P shows your IP address to the people you connect with.

The privacy page lists everything we keep, what we do not, and for how long.

6. Reporting to the authorities

We are required by law to report apparent child sexual abuse material that we become aware of to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), and we do. We keep what was reported for at least one year after the report, as the law requires, and longer if the authorities ask us to.

We may also report to the police, or to the right authority, threats of violence, ongoing harassment that may be a crime, and other criminal activity reported to us, when we judge that it calls for it, and anything where someone's life or safety is in immediate danger. We answer valid legal requests, such as court orders, as the law requires. We do not sell what you post or share it for any other purpose.

7. Copyright

Our designated agent for copyright notices (registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, DMCA-1083155) is:

Kenneth Lasyone, Maplecord
8706 Bevlamo St, Houston, TX 77031
713-919-8055
[email protected]

If you believe something on Maplecord infringes your copyright, send a notice there, preferably by email, with:

• the work you believe is infringed;
• where the infringing material is on Maplecord (a link, or the server, channel and message), clearly enough for us to find it;
• your name, address, phone number and email address;
• a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not allowed by the owner, its agent or the law;
• a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or allowed to act for the owner;
• your physical or electronic signature.

We remove material named in a valid notice and tell whoever posted it.

If you believe something of yours was removed by mistake, or because it was taken for something else, you can send a counter-notice to the same address, with:

• what was removed, and where it was on Maplecord before it was;
• a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or because it was taken for something else;
• your name, address and phone number;
• a statement that you agree to the jurisdiction of the federal court for the district where your address is (or, if you live outside the United States, any district where Maplecord can be found), and that you will accept legal papers from whoever sent the original notice;
• your physical or electronic signature.

We send a copy of a valid counter-notice to whoever sent the original notice. The material is put back between 10 and 14 business days later, unless they tell us first that they have gone to court to keep it down.

Accounts of people who infringe again and again are closed.

8. Bots, plugins and other people's servers

Connecting to Maplecord with a bot, through the bot libraries, MapleLink or anything else, falls under these terms. Whoever runs a bot is responsible for everything it does and plays.

A bot may only play, stream or share audio, video or other media that the person running it, and the person asking it to play, have the right to share. Playing music or video you do not have the rights to is not allowed, including anything taken from sites such as YouTube against their own terms. This applies to P2P bots too, even though what they play never reaches our servers and we cannot see it.

We can switch off, limit or ban any bot, as section 4 says for accounts.

Plugins you add to the desktop app run on your own computer, at your own risk. Servers inside Maplecord are run by their owners, who set their own rules within these terms.

9. The service

Maplecord is provided free, as it is, without any promise that it will always be available, free of errors, or keep any feature. We may change or stop any part of it. Keep your own copy of anything that matters to you.

As far as the law allows, Maplecord and the people who run it are not responsible for any loss or harm that comes from using it, or from what other people share on it.

10. Leaving

You can delete your account at any time in Settings, under My account. We can close accounts as section 4 says. Sections 2, 6, 7 and 9 still apply after an account is closed.

11. Changes, law and contact

We may change these terms. When we do, the app asks you to agree to the new ones before you go on. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas and of the United States, and any dispute about them is for the courts of Texas.

These terms, with the privacy page, are the whole agreement between you and us about Maplecord. If any part of them is found not to be valid, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a part of them at some time, we have not given it up.

Questions: [email protected].