Diarmi Terms of Service

You Own Your Work

At Diarmi, you always maintain the copyright to your work. These Terms govern your use of the Diarmi platform, which operates as a community for collaborative fiction. By publishing in a Diarmi Anthology you authorise others to build on the characters and concepts you publish. You can retract your works at any time. Should you unpublish, other authors will be ineligible to monetise works based on your concepts and characters.

1. Definitions

• “Story”: An original work of fiction published on Diarmi, consisting of one or more Passages.
• “Passage”: A single unit of text (a page or block) within a Story.
• “Original Content”: Any Story, Passage, or other creative work you publish on Diarmi that you own the intellectual property rights to.
• “Anthology”: A curated or community-managed space on Diarmi where multiple authors submit Stories around a shared theme, universe, or subject matter. Anthologies are created and moderated by designated super moderators and moderators.
• “Anthology Canon”: The foundational Stories, characters, settings, and story elements designated as the established core of an Anthology. Canon designation is determined at the discretion of the Anthology's moderators and does not affect the original author's ownership.
• “Contributing Author”: An author who submits a Story to an Anthology and whose Story builds upon the characters, settings, or story elements established within that Anthology, including but not limited to elements from the Anthology Canon.
• “Fanfiction”: Content based on pre-existing intellectual property not owned by the publishing author. This includes content derived from third-party commercial IP (e.g., Harry Potter, Star Wars) and, under specific circumstances described in Section 7, content derived from another Diarmi author's work after the Anthologies License has terminated.
• “Diarmi Unlimited”: Diarmi's paid subscription tier.
• “Authors Guild” (also “the Guild”): Diarmi's revenue-sharing program for eligible original and contributing authors.

2. Service Tiers & Access

2.1 Free Access

All publishing on Diarmi, including creating Stories, submitting Stories to Anthologies, creating Anthologies, and following Anthologies, is available free of charge. Fanfiction content is accessible on the free tier. Diarmi does not charge for, nor does it pay royalties on, Fanfiction content.

2.2 Membership Tier (Diarmi Unlimited)

Diarmi charges a subscription fee for access to premium features under our “Unlimited” tier.

• What You Are Paying For: You acknowledge that your subscription fee is payment for access to the Platform Service, including advanced writing tools, text-to-speech, community features, and server maintenance.
• Not a Content Purchase: You agree that the subscription fee is not a purchase of any specific story or book.

3. Licenses & Permissions

3.1 The Platform License (What You Grant Us)

By posting content to Diarmi, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, display, format, and distribute your work on the Diarmi platform.

• Community Access: You agree that if you post Original Content, it will be accessible to other Diarmi members as part of the community library.
• Promotional Rights: By publishing content on Diarmi, you grant Diarmi the right to promote, feature, and advertise your Stories and associated content (including titles, excerpts, cover images, and author name) across online channels, social media, and advertising platforms for the purpose of promoting both your work and the Diarmi platform. This promotional license remains in effect for as long as your content is published on diarmi.com and is automatically revoked when you unpublish or remove your content from the platform.

3.2 The Anthology License (Inter-Author Rights)

Diarmi's Anthology feature is built on voluntary, collaborative authorship. By submitting a Story to an Anthology, you grant a limited, non-exclusive license to other authors who have also submitted Stories to that same Anthology.

• Scope: This license permits other authors within the same Anthology to create derivative works that build upon your characters, settings, and story elements, solely within the Diarmi platform and solely within that same Anthology.
• Limitations: This license does not grant other authors ownership of your characters, settings, or story elements. They may not use your characters or world-building outside of Diarmi, or outside of the Anthology to which you submitted, without your separate, direct written permission.
• Condition on Active Participation: The Anthologies License is conditioned on your Story remaining published on Diarmi. If you remove your Story from Diarmi, this license terminates and the consequences described in Section 7 apply.
• Opt-In Only: Submission to any Anthology is entirely voluntary. You are never required to submit your work to an Anthology.

4. Ownership & Derivative Works

4.1 Ownership of Your Original Story

You retain full ownership of the characters, settings, plot, and original text of any Story you publish on Diarmi. Diarmi claims no ownership interest in your work.

4.2 Ownership by Contributing Authors

When a Contributing Author submits a Story to an Anthology that builds upon another author's characters or story elements:

• The Contributing Author owns the specific text and original elements they created in their Story.
• The Contributing Author does not own the underlying characters, settings, or story elements of the author whose work forms the basis of the Anthology.
• The Contributing Author may not commercially exploit their Story independently outside of Diarmi, because it relies on another author's intellectual property. Conversely, the original author may not commercially exploit the Contributing Author's specific text without the Contributing Author's separate permission.
• Both parties are mutually dependent: each author retains their respective rights, and neither may exploit the other's work without permission.

4.3 Anthology Canon Designation

Designation of a Story or story element as “Canon” within an Anthology is an editorial decision made by the Anthology's moderators. Canon designation does not transfer ownership of any Story, character, or story element. The original author of a designated Canon Story retains full and exclusive ownership of their work.

5. Monetization (The Authors Guild)

5.1 Governance

Diarmi reserves the sole right to determine eligibility, payout calculations, and qualification tiers for the Authors Guild. These rules are outlined in the Authors Guild Policy, which Diarmi may update, modify, or suspend at any time to ensure the financial health of the community.

5.2 Revenue Share for Original Authors

If you qualify for the Authors Guild, you may be eligible to receive a portion of the Creator Pool. Payouts are calculated based on reader engagement with your Original Content (e.g., time spent reading, passage views) and your Guild tier.

5.3 Revenue Share for Contributing Authors in Anthologies

Authors who submit Stories to an Anthology and whose Stories build upon the characters, ideas, or story elements established within that Anthology are eligible for Guild monetization on equal terms with original authors, provided:

• (a) The Anthology is not classified as Fanfiction at the time of payout (see Section 6 and Section 7); and
• (b) The Contributing Author otherwise meets the Authors Guild eligibility requirements.

A Story does not need to be officially marked as Canon within an Anthology for its author to qualify for monetization. Contributing to an Anthology's universe, even in unofficial, non-Canon Stories, is sufficient for eligibility, subject to Guild qualification rules.

5.4 Non-Guild Content

If you do not meet the qualifications for the Authors Guild, your Original Content remains accessible to the community as part of the library, but you will not accrue royalties. You acknowledge that Diarmi's retention of subscription revenue in this case is fair compensation for hosting, tools, and audience access.

5.5 Fanfiction: Zero Monetization

Content classified as Fanfiction, whether third-party IP or reclassified Anthology content, is not eligible for monetization through the Authors Guild. See Section 6 for the Fanfiction Policy.

6. Fanfiction Policy

6.1 Zero Monetization

You agree that you will not attempt to monetize Fanfiction on Diarmi. Fanfiction may be freely published and read on the platform, but is excluded from all Guild revenue-sharing programs.

6.2 Indemnity

You are solely responsible for your Fanfiction content. If your Fanfiction infringes a third party's copyright, you agree to indemnify and hold Diarmi harmless from any resulting legal claims or damages.

7. Anthologies: Removal and Reclassification

7.1 Removing Your Work from Diarmi

You may remove your work from Diarmi at any time. However, if your Story was submitted to an Anthology and other authors have built derivative Stories upon your characters or story elements under the Anthologies License (Section 3.2), the following consequences apply upon removal:

• (a) Automatic Fanfiction Reclassification: The entire Anthology will be automatically reclassified as Fanfiction. All Stories within that Anthology will be ineligible for future Guild monetization from the date of reclassification forward. This reclassification is prospective only: Guild earnings already paid to Contributing Authors prior to reclassification are not subject to clawback, reversal, or any claim by Diarmi.
• (b) Stories Without Independent Existence: If a Story within the Anthology exists solely as a submission to that Anthology (meaning it has not been independently published elsewhere on Diarmi), it will be automatically moved from public to private upon reclassification. The author of that Story will be notified by Diarmi and may republish their Story as Original Content, provided the republished version does not incorporate the characters or story elements of the removed work. Alternatively, the author may republish the Story marked as Fanfiction, in which case the Fanfiction policy in Section 6 applies.

7.2 Petition for Managed Reclassification

As an alternative to automatic reclassification, you may petition Diarmi to manage the Anthology's reclassification before removing your work by contacting support@diarmi.com. If your petition is approved:

• The Anthology will be formally designated as Fanfiction.
• All Contributing Authors and followers of the Anthology will be notified of the change in status.
• The Anthology may continue to exist as a non-monetized community space.
• Your original Story may then be removed without triggering the automatic process in Section 7.1.

Diarmi reserves the right to approve or deny petitions at its sole discretion.

7.3 Removing Your Story from an Anthology Without Leaving Diarmi

You may request to withdraw your Story from a specific Anthology without removing it from Diarmi entirely. Such requests are subject to review by the Anthology's moderators and Diarmi. Withdrawal of a single Story from an Anthology does not automatically trigger reclassification unless that Story constituted the primary foundation of the Anthology's canon.

8. Unpublishing & Account Deletion

8.1 Your Right to Unpublish

You may unpublish your work at any time from your account settings. Unpublished work is removed from the public directory but may remain in your private drafts folder.

8.2 Effect on Anthologies

If you unpublish or permanently delete a Story that is submitted to an Anthology, the provisions of Section 7 apply.

8.3 Account Deletion

If you request full account deletion, Diarmi will remove your Stories from public view. Stories published solely within an Anthology will be moved to private and their authors notified in accordance with Section 7.1(b).

9. Artificial Intelligence & Automated Processing

9.1 No Training on User Content

Diarmi does not use your Stories, Passages, Diary entries, or personal data to train generative artificial intelligence models (including large language models). We do not claim ownership of your narrative voice, style, or characters for the purpose of creating derivative AI models or competing works.

9.2 Use of Automated Technologies

To provide the Service and enhance the reader experience, Diarmi uses select automated processing and AI-powered technologies. By using the Service, you acknowledge and agree that your content may be processed for the following operational purposes only:

• Content Moderation: Automated scanning to detect hate speech, spam, policy violations, CSAM, or to classify content as likely AI-generated.
• Visual Assets: The generation of cover images, thumbnails, or visual representations to display your content within the Service.
• Accessibility & Audio: The conversion of text to speech to power audio playback and accessibility features (e.g., via third-party providers including ElevenLabs).
• Description Generation: At your direction, automated generation of story descriptions to help surface your work in search and discovery.

9.3 Prohibition on Scraping and Mining

Strictly prohibited: Accessing or using any part of the Service, including public story URLs, author profiles, or API endpoints, for the purpose of:

• “Scraping,” “mining,” or “harvesting” data, text, or metadata; or
• Training, fine-tuning, or testing artificial intelligence or machine learning models; or
• Creating datasets for any future use of such models.

This prohibition applies to all users, bots, crawlers, and third-party entities. Diarmi reserves the right to employ technical measures to block such activity and to pursue legal action against entities that violate this provision.

9.4 TDM Reserved — Third-Party AI Training Prohibition

All Stories, Passages, Diary entries, and any other creative prose published on Diarmi are expressly reserved under the Text and Data Mining (TDM) opt-out right provided by EU Directive 2019/790 (Copyright in the Digital Single Market, Article 4) and equivalent protections in other applicable jurisdictions. This reservation applies regardless of whether the content is publicly accessible.

Diarmi's robots.txt file contains explicit directives restricting named AI training crawlers from accessing story passage and diary entry URLs. These directives constitute formal technical and legal notice of this reservation to any entity operating an automated crawler, AI indexer, or data pipeline.

Permitted for automated access:

• Story title, description, tags, author name, and other metadata on story landing pages (/story/*).
• Public blog posts (/blog/*), the About page (/about), and the Author's Guild information page (/guild).
• Public discovery and anthology listing pages (/discover, /anthologies).

Prohibited for automated access:

• Story passage content at /read/* — the actual prose text of any Story or Passage.
• Diary entries at /author/*/diary/* — diary posts and personal writing entries.
• Any other URL containing creative prose, for the purpose of AI model training, fine-tuning, evaluation, dataset construction, or any automated data extraction pipeline — whether or not the URL is explicitly listed above.

Violation of this section may result in immediate access termination, injunctive relief, and claims for damages under applicable copyright and database protection law.

10. Disclaimers & Limitation of Liability

10.1 “As Is” Service

Diarmi is provided “as is.” We do not guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components.

10.2 Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Diarmi shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, including but not limited to loss of revenue, lost profits, or loss of data. Our total liability to you for any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall not exceed the amount you paid to Diarmi in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim.

11. Dispute Resolution

11.1 Class Action Waiver

You and Diarmi agree that each may bring claims against the other only in your or its individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class or representative action. Unless both you and Diarmi agree otherwise, no arbitrator or judge may consolidate more than one person's claims or preside over any form of representative proceeding.

11.2 Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any disputes not resolved informally shall be submitted to binding arbitration in Denver, Colorado.

12. Age Requirements

Diarmi is intended for users who are 13 years of age or older. By creating an account, you represent that you are at least 13 years old. Users between the ages of 13 and 17 should have the consent of a parent or legal guardian to use the Service.

Diarmi does not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. If we become aware that a user under 13 has provided personal information, we will take steps to delete that information promptly and terminate the associated account. If you believe a child under 13 has registered on the platform, please contact us at support@diarmi.com.

13. Termination & Suspension

• Termination by Us (For Cause): We may suspend or terminate your account without refund if we determine in our sole discretion that you have violated these Terms, engaged in harassment, or are a repeat infringer of copyright.
• Termination by Us (For Convenience): If we terminate your account for reasons other than a violation (e.g., discontinuing the service), we will provide a pro-rated refund for any unused paid subscription period.

14. DMCA Copyright Notice

Diarmi respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects our users to do the same. In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), we will respond to claims of copyright infringement reported to our Designated Copyright Agent.

If you believe that content on Diarmi infringes your copyright, please send a written notice to legal@diarmi.com containing all of the following:

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner, or a person authorized to act on their behalf.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed.
3. Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing, with enough information for us to locate it on the platform (typically a direct URL).
4. Your contact information, including your address, telephone number, and email address.
5. A statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.