Terms of Use

# Terms of Use
Last updated: 14 July 2026

## About these terms
This is an interim Terms of Use. It applies now and describes the arrangement between you and Branch Press today. It is under review by legal counsel and may be refined; some formal clauses, noted below, are being finalized. Any change will be handled as described under "Changes to these terms."

## The agreement
These Terms of Use are an agreement between you and Soulaiman B. Mershed, an individual operating as Branch Press from Muscat, Oman ("Branch Press," "we," "us"). By using branchpress.org or creating an account, you accept these Terms and the Privacy Policy, which is part of them. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

## What Branch Press is
Branch Press has two layers. The public site offers essays, books, a knowledge graph, writer profiles, and public shared notes, readable by anyone without an account. Branchspace is a private, account-based writing workspace with notes, spaces, a personal knowledge graph, a reading tracker, and a public writer profile with visibility controls. Branch Press is currently free: there are no paid plans, no billing, and no payment processing. If paid features are ever introduced, they will come with their own clearly presented terms before anything can be purchased.

## Eligibility
You must be at least 16 years old to create an account, and legally capable of entering this agreement.

## Your account
One account per person. Your account is personal and non-transferable; do not share your credentials or let others use it. You are responsible for keeping your credentials secure and for activity under your account, and you should tell us at [email protected] if you believe your account is compromised. You must provide a valid email address, since account-related notices go there. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms.

## Your content is yours
You own everything you write in Branchspace and everything you publish through Branch Press. These Terms transfer no ownership of your content to us. You grant Branch Press only the narrow license needed to operate the service: a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, back up, and reproduce your content as technically necessary, including caching and content-delivery copies, and to display it to you for private content, and to the public only for content you have yourself made public, for as long as it stays public plus the short time needed for unsharing to take effect. This license exists solely to run the service, ends when you delete the content or your account, apart from transient backup copies purged on the schedule in the Privacy Policy, and does not include any right to use your content for AI training, marketing, or publication in Branch Press's own works.

## Publishing and public sharing
Marking a note, space, or reading entry public is publishing. What you publish is world-readable and can be read, indexed, cached, and quoted by anyone. Unsharing removes it from Branch Press going forward but cannot recall copies already made. You are responsible for what you choose to publish, including having the rights to any third-party material it contains. Your writer profile is public by default with a switch to make it private, as described in the Privacy Policy.

## Acceptable use
You must not: use Branch Press for anything unlawful; publish content that infringes others' rights; harass or abuse other users through public features; attempt to breach the security boundary, probe or bypass access controls, or access anyone else's private content; scrape or bulk-download other users' shared content or profiles by automated means; overload or disrupt the service; or misrepresent your identity to us in a way that defeats these Terms. Your private notes are your business: we do not police, review, or moderate private content, and these rules are enforced against public material and against conduct, not against what you privately write. The narrow exceptions where we may access private content are stated in the Privacy Policy and apply here identically.

## Reporting and takedown
If you believe content published on Branch Press infringes your rights or violates these Terms, report it to [email protected] with the share link and the basis of your complaint. We will review promptly and may remove or unshare content, or warn, suspend, or terminate accounts as appropriate. We may notify the author unless the law prevents it.

## Branch Press's own work
Two separate things are ours. The platform, meaning the Branch Press software, design, and branding, is licensed to you only for use of the service under these Terms. The press's published works, meaning the essays, books, and other works authored by S B Mershed and published on Branch Press, are all rights reserved; reasonable quotation with attribution and a link is welcome, but wholesale reproduction requires permission.

## Third-party content and links
Notes may embed images hosted elsewhere at the author's choice, and pages may link to outside sites. Branch Press does not control third-party hosts or sites and is not responsible for their content or practices.

## Service changes and availability
Branch Press is a living project run by one person. We may add, change, or remove features, and the service may occasionally be interrupted for maintenance or by events beyond our control. We will treat your content with care, and the deletion and export commitments in the Privacy Policy always apply, but we do not promise uninterrupted availability. If we ever decided to discontinue the service entirely, we would give reasonable advance notice so you could export your content.

## Termination
You may leave at any time by deleting your account in account settings; what deletion removes, and the purge schedule, are stated in the Privacy Policy and apply here identically. We may suspend or terminate your account for material violation of these Terms, for unlawful conduct, or where required by law; where reasonable we will warn you first, and for serious violations we may act immediately. On termination by either side, your content is deleted on that same schedule, and the parts of these Terms that by their nature survive, including your ownership of your content, continue to apply.

## Disclaimers
Branch Press is provided "as is" and "as available." To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Branch Press is a writing tool and a press, not professional advice.

## Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Branch Press and its operator will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of data, profits, or goodwill, arising from your use of this free service. Where liability cannot be excluded by law, it is limited to the greatest extent the law allows.

## Governing law and disputes
Branch Press is operated from Oman. The formal governing-law and dispute-resolution terms are being finalized with legal counsel and will appear in a future revision of these Terms. In the meantime, if a problem arises we ask you to contact us first at [email protected] and to try in good faith to resolve it directly, as most problems are fixable by email.

## Changes to these terms
We may update these Terms as Branch Press evolves. We will update the "Last updated" date, and for material changes we will post a clear notice on the site and in the workspace before the change takes effect, and email account holders where a change materially affects them. Continued use after the effective date means the updated Terms apply. If you do not accept a change, stop using the service and delete your account before the change takes effect.

## General
These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the service. If any clause is held unenforceable, the rest stands. Not enforcing a clause once is not a waiver of it. You may not assign this agreement; we may assign it to a successor that continues the service under these Terms. Contact: [email protected].