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Terms of Service

Version 3.0 — Effective 2026-07-18. This version reflects the OMLA v1 pivot: the Service is now a static website, a signed public registry, and two browser-only tools — not the accounts, dashboards, and payment-reporting product described in earlier versions of these Terms.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and the Open Model Licensing Association ("OMLA," "we," "us," or "our"). They govern your access to and use of the OMLA website at omla-ai.org, the public model registry it publishes, and the client-side tools on publish.html (together, the "Service"). Please read them carefully.

Translations are provided for convenience only; the English version of these Terms governs. In the event of any conflict or ambiguity between the English version and a translation, the English version controls, except where applicable mandatory local law requires otherwise.

Contents

  1. Acceptance
  2. Eligibility
  3. Accounts, keys & security
  4. What the Service is — and the No-Custody Rule
  5. Your obligations
  6. Model registration — representations & warranties
  7. Direct settlement — no statements, no OMLA knowledge
  8. Prohibited uses
  9. Intellectual property
  10. Copyright complaints
  11. Disclaimers
  12. No financial services · No custody · No money transmission · No investment advice
  13. Limitation of liability
  14. Indemnification
  15. Term & termination
  16. Governing law, arbitration & class-action waiver
  17. Changes to these Terms
  18. Miscellaneous
  19. Contact
No custody. No money transmission. No knowledge. OMLA publishes each licensed model's signed manifest — its identity, lineage, royalty split, and the creator's self-published payment pointers. Commercial users compute what they owe with the open resolver and pay creators directly. OMLA never receives, holds, escrows, routes, converts, refunds, or transmits any payment, and is not a party to, intermediary of, or guarantor of any settlement. OMLA keeps no records of usage, payers, or payments — because it never receives them. OMLA is not a money transmitter, money-services business, payment processor, bank, exchange, custodian, escrow agent, broker-dealer, or investment adviser. Wallet identifiers and payment pointers in the registry are routing details supplied by the creator, not accounts that hold value with OMLA. Nothing on this site is financial, investment, tax, or legal advice, or an offer of securities.

1. Acceptance

By accessing or using the Service — including reading the license text, downloading or verifying a registry snapshot, or using the signing-key or wallet-address tools on publish.html — you agree to be bound by these Terms and by the documents they incorporate by reference, including the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

These Terms of Service are operative and binding. The OMLA Public License (OMLA-PL-2.1) that governs licensed models is operative as of 2026-08-11 (see License §9). A creator accepts the License by publishing a model's signed manifest to the OMLA Registry; a commercial user becomes bound by the License through its commercial use of a licensed model. These Terms govern your use of the Service generally; the License governs the licensing of, and royalty terms for, licensed models. Where the two overlap, each applies on its own subject matter, and the governing-law and dispute-resolution provisions are written to be identical (see Section 16).

If you accept these Terms on behalf of a company, organization, or other legal entity, you represent that you have authority to bind that entity, and "you" refers to that entity.

2. Eligibility

To use the Service, you must:

You may not use the Service if applicable law prohibits you from doing so. You are responsible for ensuring that your use of the Service is lawful in the jurisdictions that apply to you.

3. Accounts, keys & security

3.1 There are no user accounts. OMLA does not operate logins, passwords, or user sessions of any kind. You do not register with OMLA, and you need no account, to read the license, browse the registry, or use the tools on publish.html.

3.2 Your signing key is generated, held, and protected entirely by you. The key-generation tool on publish.html creates an Ed25519 keypair in your browser and encrypts the private key with a passphrase you choose before it is ever written to disk. OMLA never receives, sees, stores, or has any way to recover that private key or your passphrase — it never leaves your device unless you choose to send it somewhere yourself. You — not OMLA — are solely responsible for generating, backing up, and keeping secret every private signing key and passphrase you use. If a private key or passphrase is lost, stolen, or compromised, OMLA cannot restore it, reverse any signature made with it, or guarantee control of any registry entry, wallet identifier, or payment associated with it.

3.3 Nothing to suspend. Because there is no account system, there is no account-level access for OMLA to suspend or restrict. Where OMLA becomes aware that a published manifest, wallet, or signature was obtained fraudulently or misrepresents its signer, OMLA may decline to publish it, or may stop listing it in the current registry, consistent with Section 6.

4. What the Service is — and the No-Custody Rule

4.1 OMLA is a static publisher. Through the Service, OMLA:

4.2 The No-Custody Rule. OMLA is a publishing service only. OMLA never holds, receives, moves, routes, escrows, converts, refunds, or custodies funds. OMLA is not a party to, intermediary of, beneficiary of, or guarantor of any payment between a commercial user and a creator. There is no "OMLA balance," and OMLA maintains no account that holds value on any user's behalf. OMLA also has no knowledge of settlement: it receives no usage data and no payment records, issues no invoices, and receives nothing when a royalty is paid. The financial and no-custody disclaimers in Sections 11 and 12 are an essential part of this agreement.

4.3 Availability. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time. We aim to give reasonable notice of material changes, but we do not warrant uninterrupted or error-free operation.

5. Your obligations

When you use the Service, you agree that you will:

6. Model registration — representations & warranties

When you submit a model manifest for publication — currently by emailing it to contactus@omla-ai.org, as described on publish.html, while an automated publish path is being built — you make the following representations and warranties, each of which you must be able to support, and each of which you give every time you submit, update, or re-sign a manifest:

6.1 Publication is a representation, not a guarantee. When OMLA publishes a manifest in the registry, that act means only that OMLA received a submission bearing the fields and signature described above. It is your representation that the key, the rights, and the lineage are valid. It is not an OMLA warranty that you in fact hold the rights, that the lineage is correct, or that the model is non-infringing. OMLA does not independently audit ownership, provenance, or legal rights, and does not host model weight files. This limit is deliberate: OMLA takes no position on, and makes no determination about, whether you own or are entitled to license a model, or whether its commercial use is otherwise lawful. That determination, and that risk, is yours. Section 6.2 is a narrow exception to this posture, for a specific category of harm rather than for IP validity generally.

6.2 Safety certifications. When you submit a model manifest for publication, you additionally certify each of the following, separately and specifically:

These certifications are fields in the signed Manifest itself (see registry.html), not a one-time website checkbox — they are cryptographically bound to your key and to the specific model version you publish, the same as every other representation in this Section. OMLA does not independently verify them before publication, for the same reason stated in 6.1: OMLA does not audit models before listing them. That does not lessen your obligation. It is why Section 6.3 exists.

6.3 Zero tolerance: models that generate child sexual abuse material. A model that is used to generate, or that OMLA becomes aware was designed or insufficiently tested against generating, child sexual abuse material ("CSAM") — including sexualized depictions of minors — is a fundamental breach of these Terms and of Section 6.2, regardless of intent. If OMLA becomes aware of such a model, OMLA will:

This Section applies regardless of where the model, its creator, or its hosting is located, and survives termination of these Terms (Section 15.4). To report a suspected violation, email contactus@omla-ai.org; given the severity of the harm, OMLA will act on a credible report under this Section before independent confirmation.

6.4 Review and reinstatement. Because Section 6.3 acts on a credible report before independent confirmation, an error must be correctable. A creator who believes a delisting or pointer revocation was mistaken may reply to contactus@omla-ai.org with evidence. OMLA will review the record in good faith and, where the report is not substantiated, will restore the manifest and its payment pointer(s) in the next published registry sequence and publish a correction notice alongside the earlier revocation notice. Reinstatement is prospective — it does not rewrite the append-only history of already-published Snapshots. This review is a good-faith correction process, not an adjudication of legal rights (Section 6.1), and a report already made to NCMEC or law enforcement cannot be withdrawn by OMLA.

7. Direct settlement — no statements, no OMLA knowledge

7.1 Definitions. A "Manifest" is the signed public record a creator publishes for a licensed model: its identity, lineage, royalty split, payee wallets, and public payment pointers. A "Snapshot" is a signed, versioned export of the registry that OMLA publishes as static files. The "Resolver" is the open, deterministic reference implementation that turns a licensee's own usage records into a payee-by-payee distribution (see resolver.html). A "Creator" is a party named in a Model's Manifest as entitled to a share of royalties.

7.2 How amounts are computed. Amounts owed are governed by the OMLA Public License 2.1, which is operative as of 2026-08-11. Once per calendar quarter, a commercial Licensee must either publicly release its derivative's weights, training code, and data recipe under the same license, or pay 30% of Applicable Revenue — the greater of (a) revenue reasonably attributable to the Model's or Derivative's use, or (b) the cost of equivalent API inference for the same workload at prevailing market rates — directly to each Creator, no later than 60 days after quarter end (License §4–§6). Amounts are self-assessed by the commercial user from its own records. Distribution is recursive through each Model's published split, subject to the retention caps in License §6.

7.3 Settlement is strictly peer-to-peer. Settlement happens directly between the commercial user (payer) and each Creator, using the public payment pointers the Creator itself published in its Manifest. OMLA is not a party to that settlement, does not collect, hold, escrow, or disburse any funds, does not guarantee that any Creator will be paid or that any payer will pay, and is not responsible for the solvency, conduct, or performance of any party.

7.4 No statements, no reporting, no OMLA knowledge. OMLA publishes no royalty notices, ingests no reports, and issues no invoices. It keeps no records of usage, payers, or payments — because it never receives them. A payer's own usage ledger and resolver output are the record of settlement. Disputes about a Manifest's accuracy are raised by emailing OMLA directly (see contact.html); OMLA has no payment record to consult and no automated dispute process to run.

7.5 No refunds by OMLA. Because OMLA never receives royalty payments, OMLA issues no royalty refunds. The only amounts OMLA itself might ever receive are voluntary nonprofit donations, if and when offered; those are separate from any royalty and will be governed by donation terms OMLA publishes before it accepts any donation.

8. Prohibited uses

You must not:

9. Intellectual property

Two distinct intellectual-property regimes apply, and you should keep them separate:

9.1 OMLA site and marks. The OMLA name, logo, and the design, text, and other content of the website are owned by OMLA or its licensors and are protected by intellectual-property laws. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and use the site for its intended purpose. You may not copy, modify, or create derivative works of the site's branded content except as permitted by law or with our written permission.

9.2 Your content; limited license to operate the registry. You retain your rights in the model metadata, declarations, and other content you submit. You grant OMLA a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, and distribute that content solely to operate, display, and maintain the registry and to publish and distribute signed registry snapshots — including retaining published Manifests and Snapshots to preserve lineage attribution and declared splits. You represent that you have the rights necessary to grant this license.

9.3 Licensed models (OMLA Public License). Models published to the registry are licensed under the OMLA Public License (OMLA-PL-2.1, operative 2026-08-11), which governs their use, royalties, and lineage terms. Nothing in these Terms grants you any rights in a licensed model beyond what the License grants.

10. Copyright complaints

OMLA does not host model weight files. Disputes about a registry manifest (as distinct from the underlying weights) are raised by emailing OMLA directly (see contact.html); there is no automated registry-integrity pipeline in this version of the Service.

OMLA has not designated an agent with the U.S. Copyright Office and does not claim the DMCA § 512 safe harbor. The process below is a voluntary complaint procedure, modeled on § 512(c)(3) so that notices are complete and actionable.

For alleged copyright infringement of material that OMLA itself hosts (for example, a page or image on omla-ai.org), send a written notice to contactus@omla-ai.org that includes:

  1. your contact information (name, address, telephone, and email);
  2. identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed;
  3. the URL of the allegedly infringing material on omla-ai.org;
  4. a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
  5. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or are authorized to act on the owner's behalf; and
  6. your physical or electronic signature.

If you believe material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification, you may send a counter-notice to the same address including: (1) your physical or electronic signature; (2) identification of the material removed and its location before removal; (3) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification; and (4) your name, address, telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for the judicial district in which your address is located (or, if outside the United States, the courts of Washington State), and that you will accept service of process from the person who filed the original notice. We maintain a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances, a repeat infringer's ability to submit material to the Service.

11. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE, AND ALL SOFTWARE, DATA, REGISTRY ENTRIES, SIGNATURES, LINEAGE INFORMATION, MANIFESTS, SNAPSHOTS, RESOLVER OUTPUTS, AND OTHER MATERIALS IT MAKES AVAILABLE, ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OMLA DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE.

Without limiting the above, OMLA does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of any declared split, signature, lineage relationship, content hash, manifest, or snapshot; does not warrant that any creator holds the rights it declares or controls the payment pointers it publishes; and does not guarantee that any creator will be paid, that any payer will pay, or the solvency or conduct of any third party. You rely on registry data and resolver outputs at your own risk. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above exclusions may not apply to you; in that case the disclaimers apply to the maximum extent permitted by law.

12. No financial services · No custody · No money transmission · No investment advice

This Section is a material term of these Terms and reinforces the No-Custody Rule (Section 4.2):

13. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, OMLA AND ITS DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, MEMBERS, VOLUNTEERS, AND CONTRIBUTORS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOST ROYALTIES, LOST PROFITS, LOST REVENUE, LOST DATA, LOST GOODWILL, OR PAYMENTS THAT WERE NOT MADE OR RECEIVED BETWEEN A PAYER AND A CREATOR, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS, WHETHER BASED ON CONTRACT, TORT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR ANY OTHER THEORY, AND WHETHER OR NOT WE WERE ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OMLA'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE TOTAL FEES YOU PAID TO OMLA IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM (WHICH IS TYPICALLY ZERO, BECAUSE OMLA RECEIVES NO ROYALTIES AND CHARGES NO FEES) OR (B) US$100 — THE SAME CAP THAT APPEARS IN THE OMLA PUBLIC LICENSE (§7).

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, and some of the above limitations may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including, where applicable, liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for any other liability that may not lawfully be limited. For consumers in the EU, EEA, or UK, this Section does not affect mandatory statutory rights, and our liability for breach is limited only as permitted by the law applicable to you.

14. Indemnification

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless OMLA and its directors, officers, members, volunteers, and contributors from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your breach of these Terms or the OMLA Public License; (b) your content, manifests, declarations, or lineage claims, including any that are false, infringing, or unauthorized; (c) your use or misuse of the Service; (d) any dispute between you and another party, including any settlement, payment, or non-payment between a payer and a creator; or (e) your violation of any law or of the rights of any third party. This Section survives termination. Where you are a consumer, this Section applies only to the extent permitted by the law applicable to you.

15. Term & termination

15.1 Term. These Terms apply from the time you first access or use the Service and continue for as long as you do so.

15.2 Nothing to close. Because there is no account system, there is no account to terminate. If you no longer want a manifest you submitted to remain listed in the current registry, contact contactus@omla-ai.org and we will consider the request, subject to Section 15.3.

15.3 Registry integrity; effect on published records. To preserve lineage attribution and the integrity of already-published, signed registry snapshots, a manifest you submitted may remain part of historical Snapshots even after OMLA stops listing it in the current registry, so that other models' declared lineage against yours stays verifiable.

15.4 Survival. Sections 6 (representations made), 7.3–7.5, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, and 18 survive any end to your use of the Service.

16. Governing law, arbitration & class-action waiver

16.1 Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, except that the Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of the arbitration provisions below. This choice of law does not deprive a consumer of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which the consumer is habitually resident.

16.2 Informal resolution first. Before starting an arbitration or court proceeding, you agree to first contact us at contactus@omla-ai.org and describe the dispute, and to allow 30 days for the parties to attempt to resolve it informally. This mirrors License §8.

16.3 Binding arbitration. Except as provided in Sections 16.5 and 16.6, any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service that is not resolved informally will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA). The AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules then in effect apply only if the dispute qualifies as a consumer dispute under those rules; otherwise, the AAA Commercial Arbitration Rules then in effect apply. The seat (legal place) of arbitration is the State of Washington, USA. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

16.4 Class-action and jury waiver. To the maximum extent permitted by law, disputes will be resolved only on an individual basis. You and OMLA waive any right to bring or participate in a class, collective, consolidated, or representative action, and waive any right to a jury trial. An arbitrator may award relief only in favor of the individual party seeking relief and only to the extent necessary to resolve that party's individual claim.

16.5 Small-claims carve-out. Either party may bring an individual claim in a small-claims court of competent jurisdiction instead of arbitration, so long as the claim stays in that court and proceeds only on an individual basis.

16.6 Consumer carve-out (EU / EEA / UK and other non-waivable rights). If you are a consumer, nothing in this Section deprives you of the protection of any mandatory consumer-protection law, or of any right to bring proceedings in, or be sued only in, the courts of your country of residence, where that law makes those rights non-waivable. In particular, for consumers in the EU, EEA, or UK, the arbitration agreement, class-action waiver, and jury waiver above do not apply to the extent they are unenforceable or prohibited under the mandatory law that applies to you; in that case your local law and courts may apply, and your statutory rights are preserved. You may also have access to an online or alternative dispute-resolution mechanism provided under your local law.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will revise the version number and effective date at the top of this page. For material changes, we will provide reasonable advance notice — for example, a notice on the site for at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Your continued use of the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms; if you do not agree, stop using the Service.

Changes to these Terms are not retroactive. A change to these Terms does not, by itself, change the version of the OMLA Public License you already accepted; once the License is finalized, new License versions apply prospectively and are not applied retroactively to an already-accepted version without your consent.

18. Miscellaneous

18.1 Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, that provision will be limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions remain in full force.

18.2 Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and, for licensed models, the OMLA Public License, are the entire agreement between you and OMLA regarding the Service and supersede any prior agreements on that subject.

18.3 Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms to a successor in connection with a reorganization, merger, or transfer of the initiative's activities, including upon completion of OMLA's organization as a nonprofit entity.

18.4 Force majeure. Neither party is liable for failure or delay caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God, outages, network or hosting-provider failures, labor disputes, or governmental action.

18.5 Notices. We may give you notices by posting on the site or, if you have corresponded with us by email, by replying to that correspondence. You may give us notice at contactus@omla-ai.org.

18.6 Waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.

18.7 No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms create no third-party beneficiary rights, except that the indemnified parties named in Sections 13 and 14 may rely on the provisions that protect them.

18.8 English controls. These Terms may be provided in translation for convenience. In the event of any conflict or ambiguity between the English version and a translation, the English version controls, except where applicable mandatory local law requires otherwise.

18.9 About OMLA. The Open Model Licensing Association is an open, community-governed initiative organizing as a nonprofit in the State of Washington, USA. Its 501(c) tax-exempt status is in progress. OMLA does not claim to be a bank, money-services business, or any other regulated financial institution.

19. Contact

Related documents: Privacy Policy · OMLA Public License · Full contact directory