Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of BirdBook, the social network for bird photographers available at birdbook.net (“the Service”), operated from Australia. By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, including its provisions on data collection, AI training, and conservation data sharing. Acceptance of these Terms in full is a condition of use. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. The Service

BirdBook lets you:

• upload and share bird photographs and audio recordings;
• receive AI-assisted species identification for your photos and recordings;
• keep a personal life list of sightings and explore community maps;
• follow other members, join groups and events, and exchange messages; and
• contribute to community resources such as the bird encyclopedia.

We may add, change, limit, or withdraw any feature, or the Service as a whole, at any time at our sole discretion. We may introduce advertising, sponsorship, paid features, or other commercial offerings at any time without separate notice.

2. Accounts

• You must be at least 13 years old to use BirdBook.
• You must provide accurate registration information and keep it up to date.
• You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity under your account. Notify us promptly at dean.mcintosh@gmail.com if you suspect unauthorised use.
• One person per account; do not impersonate others or misrepresent who you are.

3. Your content and licence to BirdBook

• You keep ownership. Photos, recordings, and text you upload remain yours. Nothing in these Terms transfers your copyright to us.
• Licence grant. By uploading or submitting content to the Service, you grant BirdBook a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable, and sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt, modify, resize, analyse, publish, distribute, publicly display, and create derivative works from your content and its associated metadata, for the purposes of: (a) operating, developing, and improving the Service; (b) promoting the Service; (c) scientific research; (d) training, fine-tuning, and evaluating BirdBook’s AI and identification models; and (e) sharing occurrence and biodiversity data with conservation organisations, researchers, and biodiversity databases, including at precise location resolution, as described in the Privacy Policy.
• Survival. This licence survives deletion of your content or your account with respect to: occurrence records and derived or aggregated data; data already incorporated into trained models; data already shared with research or conservation partners; and content already shared into the community (for example, content reposted, quoted, or incorporated into community resources such as the encyclopedia). For other content, the licence ends a reasonable period after deletion, allowing for backup cycles.
• Your responsibility. You warrant that you own or have the rights to everything you upload, that your content does not infringe anyone else’s rights, and that you are entitled to grant the licence above.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• harass, abuse, threaten, or defame other members;
• upload or post content that is unlawful, hateful, sexually explicit, violent, deceptive, or otherwise inappropriate or offensive — as determined by BirdBook at its sole discretion — or content that you have no right to share;
• scrape, crawl, harvest, or bulk-download content or data from the Service, or access it by automated means, without our prior written permission;
• attempt to access other members’ accounts or non-public data;
• probe, disrupt, overload, or interfere with the operation or security of the Service;
• send spam or use the Service for commercial solicitation; or
• deliberately submit false species identifications or misleading sighting records.

5. Wildlife protection

BirdBook exists because we care about birds. Members are encouraged to upload sightings with precise locations — this data powers conservation and research. The Service automatically fuzzes locations shown on public sightings, and BirdBook uses and shares full-precision occurrence data through controlled conservation and research channels under the Privacy Policy. We expect members to uphold the same ethic in what they post publicly:

• Do not manually publicise the precise location of threatened, endangered, or otherwise sensitive species — including nest sites, roosts, and leks — in captions, comments, or other public text. Upload exact coordinates with your sighting instead: the platform protects them in public view while making them available for conservation.
• Follow ethical fieldcraft: do not harass birds, disturb nests, or use playback or baiting in ways that harm wildlife in pursuit of a photograph.
• We may remove content, obscure locations, or restrict accounts where we believe wildlife is being put at risk.

6. AI identification disclaimer

Species suggestions for photos are produced by an AI vision model, and audio identifications by automated analysis. These are best-effort aids, not authoritative determinations. Identifications can be wrong, particularly for similar species, juveniles, and poor-quality media. Do not rely on them for scientific, conservation, regulatory, or any other consequential purpose without independent verification. We accept no liability for incorrect identifications.

7. Moderation, suspension, and termination

• Sole discretion. We may moderate, edit the presentation of, remove, or refuse any content, and may suspend or terminate any account, at any time at our sole discretion, with or without notice and with or without cause — including, but not limited to, breaches of these Terms, the Community Guidelines, or the law, or conduct that puts members, wildlife, or the Service at risk.
• You may stop using the Service and request deletion of your account at any time.
• Termination does not affect the licence in section 3, which survives as stated there. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including content licences, warranties, disclaimers, and limitations of liability) do survive.

8. Intellectual property

The BirdBook name, logo, software, design, and all data sets, models, and derived works created by BirdBook — excluding member-owned content — are owned by the operator of BirdBook and protected by intellectual property laws. You may not copy or reuse them without permission.

9. Disclaimers

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind beyond those that cannot lawfully be excluded. We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability, error-free operation, the accuracy of any identification or data, or that content will be preserved. Keep your own copies of your original photographs and recordings.

10. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any consumer guarantee, right, or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law or any other law that cannot lawfully be excluded. Subject to that:

• to the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss, loss of data, loss of opportunity, or loss arising from the use, sharing, or publication of your content or data as permitted by these Terms and the Privacy Policy; and
• where liability cannot be excluded but can be limited, our total liability is limited, at our option, to resupplying the Service or paying the cost of resupply.

11. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms at any time. Changes are effective when posted on this page, and the “Last updated” date above will change. Continued use of the Service after a change is posted constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not accept updated Terms, your only remedy is to stop using the Service.

12. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales and the courts entitled to hear appeals from them.

13. Contact

Questions about these Terms: dean.mcintosh@gmail.com.