Terms of Use

This is a plain-language description of how we expect COM to be used, not a legally reviewed document. Consult a lawyer before treating this as a binding agreement.

Last updated: 03/10/2026.

Acceptance

By visiting on our website or any subdomain, by signing in, or by using any COM API or MCP server, you accept these terms. If you don't accept them, don't use the service.

The service is operated by COM Argentina (Club de Observadores de Mariposas). The codebase is released under the MIT license (client) and AGPL-3.0 (server). Per-observation data is licensed by you, the observer, under one of the Creative Commons options described below.

Account and tokens

• One account per human. We do not allow shared organisational accounts at this time. If you need a multi-user setup (an NGO, a research lab, an agency), contact us and we'll work it out.
• You are responsible for the security of your authentication and your personal API tokens (rst_*). Tokens are SHA-256 hashed on our side, but the plaintext is shown to you exactly once at creation and we cannot recover it. If you leak a token, revoke it at /profile/tokens.
• Don't share an account or token with someone else. If you need a separate identity for a coworker or a co-researcher, ask them to create their own.

Acceptable use

What we ask:

• Don't scrape. The public data is published under per-record CC licenses; respect each record's license. For bulk academic use, prefer the Darwin Core export (/profile/export/) or the GBIF mirror once that pipeline is live.
• Don't submit fake or AI-fabricated observations. COM is a citizen science platform; the integrity of the data depends on it being real. AI identifications of real photos are fine and explicitly supported. Generating fake photos and uploading them is not.
• Don't harass other users. No targeted abuse, no doxxing, no threats — in observation comments, in profile bios, anywhere.
• Don't try to circumvent sensitive-species obscuration. The coordinate-coarsening for sensitive species exists to protect those species from poaching. Do not attempt to de-anonymise it via timing attacks, repeated queries, scraping, social engineering, or any other means.
• Don't abuse the API. Soft rate limits apply per token; we will revoke tokens that exceed them in a way that suggests automation rather than a good-faith client.

Per-observation licensing

When you submit an observation, you choose a license for it:

• CC BY 4.0 (default) — anyone can reuse the photo and metadata as long as they credit you.
• CC BY-NC 4.0 — same as above but non-commercial use only.
• CC0 — you waive all rights; the observation is in the public domain.

By submitting the observation, you grant COM a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to display the observation, generate share cards, include it in Darwin Core exports, mirror it to biodiversity platforms (if you opt in), and serve it through the public API — all under the per-record license you selected.

We do not ever change the license you picked. You can edit a record (or delete it) from /profile/observations/.

Sensitive species

If your observation matches a protected species, COM will coarsen the public coordinates to approximately a 10×10 km square. Precise coordinates remain readable to:

• you (the observer)
• credentialed researchers, when authenticated

Don't attempt to circumvent this. Don't post precise GPS coordinates of sensitive species in your observation notes, and don't post screenshots of maps that show the precise location.

Third-party APIs

COM integrates with services that have their own terms:

• PlantNet — when you submit a photo for plant identification, the photo and any associated metadata travel to PlantNet's servers under their terms (my.plantnet.org/legal). Their license also governs how PlantNet may store and reuse the photo.
• Anthropic — when you bring your own (BYO) Anthropic API key, photos used for Claude vision identification are sent to Anthropic under *your* contract with Anthropic (anthropic.com/legal). COM does not store the key and does not relay your call through our servers.
• OpenFreeMap, Cloudflare R2, Supabase — infrastructure providers; their terms govern uptime and storage.

When you use BYO keys, *you* are bound by the upstream provider's terms. Don't paste somebody else's key.

Suspension and appeals

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms. We try to give warning except in the case of clear abuse (impersonating someone, scraping, mass-uploading fakes, attempting to compromise the system). If you think your account was suspended in error, reach out to us through our official support channels.

We'll review and reply, usually within a week.

Disclaimer of warranty

COM is provided "as is", on a best-effort basis. There is no service level agreement (SLA), no uptime guarantee, no warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. The server is licensed under AGPL-3.0; the AGPL-3.0 disclaimer of warranty applies in full.

In particular: identifications produced by COM are suggestions, not authoritative determinations. Treat every species identification as a hypothesis to verify against expert knowledge or peer-reviewed sources before taking any decision based on it (conservation, foraging, regulatory, medical, or otherwise).

Governing law

These terms are intended to be read in good faith. Where a question of law arises, the operator is based in Mexico, and Mexican law applies in the absence of a more specific agreement. This clause should be reviewed by a lawyer before treating it as binding — see the disclaimer at the top of this page.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms — for example to clarify a privacy practice, add a new third-party integration, or close a loophole. When we do, the "Last updated" date at the top of this page changes. Material changes are announced in our official channels.

Last updated: 03/10/2026.