Terms and Conditions

1. Who you are contracting with

The Documentary System Science Platform is operated and sold by Documentary System Science Platform ("we", "us"). Where you subscribe to an edition (Professional, Enterprise, Sovereign or Research) or acquire an individual work, your contract for the service is with Documentary System Science Platform.

You may reach us at legal@dss-platform.com for any question concerning these terms.

2. Acceptance

By continuing to use the platform you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

If you accept on behalf of an organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind that organisation. If you accept as an individual, you confirm that you are of legal age in your jurisdiction.

3. What the service provides

The platform gives access to the Documentary System Science corpus: foundational works, the Method A and Method B manuals, the reading room, and the assistant that helps you navigate the corpus. The scope of your access depends on the edition you hold or the works you have acquired.

Access is granted for your own professional or research use within the plan you selected. It is a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right of use.

4. Acceptable use

You must not use the platform unlawfully, fraudulently, or for spam. You must not infringe intellectual property, interfere with the security of the service (malware, probing, automated scraping), circumvent technical access limits, or resell and redistribute the works.

You must not reverse engineer the platform, nor share your credentials. You are responsible for all activity carried out under your account and for keeping your account details accurate.

5. Assistant and generated content

The assistant produces answers automatically from the Documentary System Science corpus and from your questions. Outputs may be inaccurate or incomplete and must be verified before being relied on. They do not constitute legal, financial, or other regulated professional advice, and they do not replace expert review.

You are responsible for the prompts you submit, for having the rights to any content you provide, and for how you use the outputs. We may filter or refuse outputs, remove content, and suspend accounts where the service is misused. Rights-holders may contact us at legal@dss-platform.com to report infringing content; repeated infringement leads to termination.

6. Intellectual property

The platform, its software, its documentation, the Documentary System Science works, the methods and the branding remain the property of Documentary System Science Platform or its licensors. Nothing in these terms transfers ownership to you.

You grant us a limited licence to host and process the content you submit, solely for the purpose of providing the service to you.

7. Service level

We work to keep the platform available and correct, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation. Maintenance, updates and incidents may temporarily affect availability.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, implied warranties, including merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, are excluded.

8. Payment, billing and subscriptions

Payment, billing, currency, taxes, renewals, cancellations and refunds are handled by our reseller under its own buyer terms: https://www.paddle.com/legal/checkout-buyer-terms.

Subscriptions renew automatically for the selected term unless cancelled before the end of the current period. Access to edition-only content ends when the paid period ends.

9. Merchant of Record

Our order process is conducted by our online reseller Paddle.com. Paddle.com is the Merchant of Record for all our orders. Paddle provides all customer service inquiries and handles returns.

10. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate access in case of material breach of these terms, non-payment, security or fraud risk, or repeated or serious policy violations.

On termination, your access to the works and to the reading room ends. You may request an export of your own account data within 30 days, after which it may be deleted.

11. Liability

To the extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability is limited to the fees you paid in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

We exclude liability for indirect, consequential or special damages, including loss of profits, data or goodwill. Nothing excludes liability for fraud, death or personal injury where the law does not allow it.

You indemnify us against claims arising from your content, your unlawful use of the service, or your breach of these terms.

12. General

You may not assign your rights without our consent; we may assign ours in the context of a merger or acquisition. Neither party is liable for events beyond its reasonable control.

These terms are governed by the law of the seller's jurisdiction, and disputes are subject to the competent courts of that jurisdiction. We may update these terms; the date above indicates the latest revision.