Elthian-NonCommercial License v1.0 (Suite-Standard)
- Purpose and Intent
This License permits use of the Content by AI Systems solely for Non-Commercial Purposes. It is intended to enable personal use, academic research, education, nonprofit activity, and public-interest use, while prohibiting commercial exploitation, monetization, productization, paid services, advertising-supported deployment, and any use that confers commercial advantage. It also prohibits laundering non-commercial access into commercial model development, commercialization, or distribution.
- Definitions
Core Definitions
For purposes of this License:
2.1 “Content” means the copyrighted work(s) (text, images, audio, video, data compilations, metadata, markup, and other protectable expression) that reference or incorporate this License.
2.2 “AI System” means any automated system, model, agent, service, crawler, pipeline, or tool that performs or enables any of the following using algorithmic, statistical, machine learning, neural network, or similar techniques: inference, generation, summarization, embedding, clustering, classification, ranking, retrieval augmentation, or training.
2.3 “Automated Access” means access to Content by non-human means, including crawling, scraping, harvesting, downloading, indexing, parsing, copying, screenshotting, transcription, or any programmatic retrieval, whether authenticated or not.
2.4 “Training” means using Content to create, improve, tune, evaluate, benchmark, label, curate datasets for, or otherwise influence the parameters, weights, internal representations, routing, memory, retrieval behavior, safety behavior, preferences, or performance of an AI System, including pretraining, fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, preference learning, supervised learning, self-supervised learning, evaluation, benchmarking, dataset construction, filtering, labeling, and data annotation for model development.
2.5 “Inference” means processing Content at run time to produce outputs, including answers, summaries, classifications, rankings, or generated content, regardless of whether Training occurs.
2.6 “Embedding” means any vector, token sequence, latent representation, hash-derived semantic signature, or other representation computed from Content for storage, retrieval, similarity comparison, clustering, or downstream use.
2.7 “RAG” (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) means any system or workflow in which Content is retrieved, embedded, injected, provided, or otherwise used at inference time to influence, condition, or generate output by an AI System.
2.8 “Product Use” means use of Content by or within an AI-enabled product, feature, agent, workflow, assistant, copilot, or service, whether internal or external, whether public-facing or restricted, and regardless of whether Training occurs.
2.9 “Derivative AI Output” means any output that reproduces, paraphrases, summarizes, translates, imitates, transforms, or otherwise reflects protected expressive elements of the Content, including its protectable selection, coordination, and arrangement, including output that materially substitutes for the Content.
2.10 “Licensee” means any individual or entity that accesses or uses the Content under this License, including any entity that deploys, operates, provides, or controls an AI System.
2.11 “Human Access” means access by a natural person using a standard web browser or comparable interactive user agent, without Automated Access. Human Access does not include a natural person delegating retrieval, parsing, summarization, extraction, or interpretation of the Content to an AI System, OS-level agent, headless browser, automation tool, or synthetic user agent.
2.12 “Incidental Technical Copying” means transient copies made solely as a necessary technical step in ordinary network transmission or browser rendering (for example, caching by a browser, CDN, ISP, or proxy), provided such copying is not used for Automated Access, AI processing, Product Use, RAG, Training, or Embedding, and is not repurposed for any AI System.
2.13 “Attribution” means reasonable credit to the Licensor (and author where provided), including (where a public URL exists) a link to the original Content, and a reference to this License’s canonical URL.
2.14 “Scope” means the Content coverage to which a license notice or policy applies, which may be site-wide, limited to a section or category, defined by a URL pattern, or limited to an individual resource or URL.
2.15 “AI Search” means query-based discovery whose output: (a) includes Attribution and a direct, user-clickable link to the original Content, (b) presents only non-substitutive excerpts or metadata-level signals as permitted by the applicable license, and (c) is designed to direct the user to the source rather than provide a stand-alone answer.
2.16 “AI Indexing” means building, maintaining, or updating an index or retrieval structure over Content for AI Search or other AI System uses, including creating or maintaining inverted indexes, vector indexes, embedding stores, feature stores, or other retrieval artifacts.
Additional Definitions (License-Specific)
2.17 “Non-Commercial Purpose” means use that is not primarily intended for, and does not reasonably result in, commercial advantage, revenue generation, monetization, or monetary compensation. Without limitation, a Non-Commercial Purpose excludes any use that: (a) is offered in exchange for a fee, subscription, donation requirement, token purchase, paywall, or other compensation, (b) is supported by advertising, sponsorship, affiliate marketing, lead generation, or sale of access, (c) is used to develop, improve, evaluate, benchmark, or operate an AI System that is intended to be offered commercially now or in the future, or (d) confers a material commercial advantage to a Commercial Entity (including through cost reduction, productivity gain, product improvement, or competitive positioning), except where such advantage is purely incidental to a bona fide public-interest activity by a Non-Commercial Entity.
2.18 “Commercial Entity” means any for-profit entity, or any entity that is majority-owned, controlled, or managed by a for-profit entity, including affiliates, subsidiaries, parent companies, and any contractor, agent, or vendor acting on behalf of such entity.
2.19 “Non-Commercial Entity” means: (a) an individual acting in a personal capacity, (b) a nonprofit organization recognized under applicable law, (c) an accredited educational institution acting in a teaching, learning, or academic research capacity, or (d) a government agency acting for public administration, public education, public research, or public service, and not for revenue-generating commercial activity.
2.20 “Commercialization Event” means any event in which an AI System, dataset, Embedding store, model, weights, outputs, or a service materially derived from the Content is (a) sold, licensed, offered commercially, monetized, or made available in a paid or advertising-supported offering, or (b) transferred, licensed, or provided to a Commercial Entity other than under a separate written license from the Licensor.
2.21 “Cost-Recovery” means charging only the reasonable, documented, direct costs of providing access to a non-commercial service (for example, hosting and bandwidth), without profit, without advertising, and without bundling into a paid offering. Cost-Recovery is permitted only for Non-Commercial Entities and only where it does not function as a disguised commercial service.
- License Grant (Non-Commercial Only)
3.1 Grant. Subject to full compliance with this License, Licensor grants Licensee a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Content in connection with AI Systems solely for a Non-Commercial Purpose.
3.2 Scope Included. The grant in Section 3.1 includes rights necessary for Non-Commercial Purpose use, including Automated Access, AI Indexing, AI Search, Embedding, RAG, Inference, Training, and generation and distribution of outputs, provided all such use remains non-commercial and otherwise compliant.
3.3 No Sublicensing. Licensee may not sublicense the Content. Any sharing must occur under this same License and only to Non-Commercial Entities acting for Non-Commercial Purposes, unless the Licensor provides separate written permission.
3.4 Reservation of Rights. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.
- Conditions of Use
4.1 Attribution Required. Where outputs include citations, results, or references, Licensee must provide Attribution and, where a public URL exists, a link to the original Content.
4.2 License Notice. Where Licensee redistributes the Content in whole or substantial part, Licensee must include a reference to this License by name and canonical URL.
4.3 No Removal of Notices. Licensee must not remove, obscure, or falsify copyright notices, authorship information, or embedded licensing metadata.
4.4 No Misrepresentation; No Passing Off. Licensee must not misrepresent the origin of the Content, claim authorship of the Content if untrue, or present the Content in a manner that is materially deceptive as to source.
4.5 No Endorsement. Licensee must not imply that Licensor endorses Licensee, Licensee’s AI System, or any outputs, products, or services, unless separately agreed in writing.
4.6 Compliance With Law. Licensee is responsible for compliance with applicable law, including privacy, consumer protection, intellectual property, and any sector-specific obligations.
- Privacy, Publicity, and Sensitive Content
5.1 No Privacy or Publicity Rights Granted. This License grants rights only to the extent of the Licensor’s copyright and related rights in the Content. It does not grant any rights of privacy, publicity, personality, biometric, or similar rights that may apply to individuals depicted, described, or referenced in the Content.
5.2 Personal Data Handling. If the Content includes personal data, Licensee is solely responsible for ensuring a lawful basis for any collection, processing, retention, Training, or downstream use of such personal data, and for meeting all notice, consent, deletion, and retention obligations under applicable law.
5.3 Sensitive Use Risk Allocation. Licensee bears all risk of claims arising from Licensee’s processing, generation, or distribution of outputs involving personal data, sensitive categories of information, or regulated uses.
- Prohibited Uses (Commercial and Proxy Controls)
Licensee must not, and must not enable any third party to:
6.1 Commercial Use. Use the Content for any commercial purpose or in any manner that is not strictly a Non-Commercial Purpose.
6.2 Advertising and Monetization. Use the Content in any service or product that is monetized directly or indirectly, including advertising-supported offerings, paid subscriptions, premium tiers, usage-based billing, token gating, affiliate marketing, or lead generation.
6.3 Commercial Model Development. Use the Content to develop, improve, evaluate, benchmark, or operate an AI System that is intended to be commercialized now or in the future, including where the system is currently free but operated by, for, or for the benefit of a Commercial Entity.
6.4 Commercial Transfer. Transfer, license, sell, publish, distribute, or provide the Content, any derived dataset, any Embedding store, any fine-tuned model, weights, or any material output derived from the Content to any Commercial Entity.
6.5 Commercialization Event. Engage in or facilitate any Commercialization Event without a separate written license from the Licensor.
6.6 Laundering Through “Research Partnerships.” Use the Content in any collaboration, sponsorship, joint venture, data-sharing arrangement, or “research partnership” that permits or enables a Commercial Entity to access, benefit from, or incorporate the Content or derivatives into a commercial AI system.
6.7 Circumvention by Aggregation. Aggregate uses across accounts, entities, vendors, or projects to disguise commercial scale or commercial intent.
- Change of Status and Post-Use Obligations
7.1 Status Change. If Licensee ceases to qualify as a Non-Commercial Entity, or if the use ceases to be a Non-Commercial Purpose, all rights under this License terminate immediately.
7.2 Commercialization Barrier. If Licensee intends to commercialize any system, model, dataset, Embedding store, or service that has used the Content, Licensee must (a) cease use, (b) delete the Content and derived representations where feasible, and (c) obtain a separate written license from the Licensor before commercialization.
7.3 No “Grandfathering.” Prior non-commercial use does not authorize later commercial use.
- Anti-Circumvention and Evasion
8.1 No Fragmentation Evasion. Licensee may not fragment retrieval across multiple requests, IPs, accounts, regions, vendors, or agents to evade restrictions or to disguise commercial benefit.
8.2 No Proxy Laundering. Licensee may not use a Non-Commercial Entity, affiliate, contractor, academic lab, or individual as a proxy to provide prohibited benefits to a Commercial Entity.
8.3 No Reassembly. Any attempt to reconstruct, recompose, or approximate the Content through aggregation or partial extracts for commercial benefit is prohibited.
- Human Access and Incidental Technical Copying
9.1 Human Access Allowed. Human Access remains unaffected.
9.2 Incidental Technical Copying Allowed. Incidental Technical Copying is permitted only where it does not enable prohibited commercial use.
- Notice, Metadata, and Technical Signals
10.1 Signals Are Complementary. The Content may provide notice of this License through robots.txt, llms.txt, HTTP headers, meta tags, structured data, sitemaps, or other machine-readable signals. Absence of one signal does not waive the License where other notice exists.
10.2 Technical Signals Do Not Expand Rights. Technical directives are complementary signals and do not expand the scope of rights granted by this License.
- Termination
11.1 Immediate Termination on Breach. Any violation of this License terminates the rights granted under Section 3 immediately.
11.2 Cessation and Deletion. Upon termination, Licensee must cease use of the Content and, where feasible and subject to applicable law, delete retained copies of the Content and derived representations that would otherwise enable continued use.
11.3 No Rights by Cure. Curing a breach does not reinstate rights or grant rights not expressly granted.
- Remedies
12.1 Injunctive Relief. Unauthorized use may cause irreparable harm. Licensor may seek injunctive or equitable relief in addition to other remedies.
12.2 Statutory Rights Preserved. This License does not limit any rights or remedies available under copyright law, including statutory damages where applicable.
- Compliance Evidence and Cooperation (Privacy-Safe)
13.1 Reasonable and Proportionate Requests. Any request for compliance evidence must be reasonable and proportionate to the suspected breach, taking into account the nature of the Content, the scale of deployment, and the specificity of the allegation.
13.2 Preservation Duty After Notice. Upon written notice of suspected breach, Licensee must preserve records reasonably necessary to verify compliance to the extent permitted by applicable law, and should provide such records in aggregated, anonymized, or redacted form where feasible.
13.3 Written Attestation. Upon reasonable request, Licensee must provide a written attestation describing safeguards used to prevent prohibited commercialization, Commercialization Events, and transfers to Commercial Entities. The attestation must not require disclosure of personal data or confidential security details beyond what is reasonably necessary to evidence compliance.
13.4 Refusal as Evidence. Refusal to provide reasonable cooperation after credible notice may be treated as evidence supporting an inference of unauthorized use, to the extent permitted by law.
- No Trademark Rights
This License does not grant any rights in the Licensor’s trademarks, service marks, trade names, or branding.
- Disclaimer
THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE.” LICENSOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.
- Limitation of Liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL LICENSOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THIS LICENSE OR THE CONTENT, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
- Governing Law and Venue
This License is governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.
To the extent enforceable, the parties consent to exclusive venue and jurisdiction in the state or federal courts located in Delaware for disputes arising from or relating to this License.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Licensor may seek injunctive or equitable relief, or bring claims for unauthorized use, in any court of competent jurisdiction where the alleged conduct occurs or where a defendant is located, and nothing in this License limits the Licensor’s ability to do so.
If a court determines the Delaware venue provision is unenforceable as to a particular party or claim, venue and jurisdiction will lie in any court of competent jurisdiction that has a reasonable connection to the dispute.
- Severability
If any provision of this License is held invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force, and the invalid provision will be interpreted to best effectuate the original intent to the maximum extent permitted by law.
- No Waiver
Failure by Licensor to enforce any provision does not constitute a waiver of future enforcement of that or any other provision.
- Acceptance by Conduct
By accessing or using Content that provides notice of this License, Licensee accepts the limitations and conditions of this License to the maximum extent permitted by law.
- Interpretation
Headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation.
Machine-Readable Metadata (Reference Example)
{
"version": "1.0",
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"timestamp": "2026-01-01T12:00:00Z",
"default_policy": {
"license": "elthian-noncommercial",
"capabilities": {
"allow_training": true,
"allow_inference": true,
"allow_rag": true,
"allow_embedding": true,
"allow_indexing": true,
"allow_search": true,
"allow_product_use": false,
"attribution_required": true,
"embedding_persistence": "permitted",
"rag_mode": "persistent_store_permitted",
"output_substitution": "permitted",
"search_citations_required": true,
"snippet_max_chars": 5000,
"dataset_construction": "permitted",
"evaluation_benchmarking": "permitted",
"commercial_use": "restricted",
"personal_data_training": "lawful_basis_required",
"derivative_output": "permitted"
}
},
"scopes": [],
"url_overrides": [],
"metadata": {
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