Contributor and Data Contribution Terms

1. Who we are and when these terms apply

These terms are an agreement between you and Nexus Observatory Inc. (we, us), a Canadian company and an Ellipi Group company, located in Toronto, ON M4R 1V2. They add to our Terms of Use and apply to each contribution: an observatory you operate or claim, a station you register and the observations it sends, and any dataset, guide, knowledge article, code, conformance or test result, or portfolio item you submit for review or publication.

If you sign a separate written agreement with us about a contribution, that agreement prevails over these terms.

2. Contributions are voluntary and unpaid

You contribute voluntarily and without payment. Unless a separate written agreement signed by us says otherwise:

• we do not pay you, and you do not acquire any right to payment, income, royalties, revenue share, profit or any other financial benefit from your contributions, your observatory, your stations or the use of your data;
• nothing on observatory.global is an offer of, or an invitation to expect, earnings or a financial return from running a station or contributing data, and running a station is not an investment in us or in any network;
• you acquire no ownership, membership or other interest in us, in our group, in the network or in any revenue or asset;
• you bear your own costs, including equipment, power, connectivity, installation and insurance.

Points, badges, ranks and trust levels recognize accepted contributions. They have no cash or monetary value, cannot be transferred, sold or redeemed, and are governed by section 7 of our Terms of Use.

If we ever offer a programme that pays for data, hosting or services, it will be offered only if and when it becomes available, under its own written terms, with the identity, tax and other checks the law requires. It will not apply to past contributions unless those terms expressly say so.

3. Observatories and claims

An observatory is the place or programme that groups one or more stations. Each observatory has one operator, an individual or an organization, who manages its stations, its settings and the people who help run it.

• Creating an observatory: you become its operator. If you act for an organization, you confirm that you are authorized to do so.
• Listed public observatories: we may list existing observatories and stations from public sources, with their public name, type, approximate location and source. A listed observatory is not operated through observatory.global until its operator claims it.
• Claiming: to claim a listed observatory, you show that you are entitled to operate it, for example with an email address on the organization's domain, a confirmation through its official contact details or documents we reasonably ask for. We review each claim, may ask for more evidence, and may refuse a claim that is not clearly established. If several people claim the same observatory, we may hold it until the dispute is resolved.
• Corrections: the operator of a listed observatory, or anyone with an interest, can ask us to correct or remove listed information at contact@observatory.global.
• Approval and withdrawal: we may approve an observatory for public listing, and suspend or remove a listing or a claim that is inaccurate, disputed, unsafe or breaks these terms.

4. Sharing tiers

You choose a sharing tier for each station. A new station is private until you choose otherwise.

• You can change a station's tier at any time. The change applies to data published after it.
• Open releases are permanent. Data already released under CC BY 4.0, including in published datasets and open data publications, stays available under that licence after you change the tier or leave, because the licence cannot be withdrawn from people who already received it.
• You can export your stations' data at any time, in every tier.

5. Location precision

You choose how precisely each observatory and each station appears in public. The exact location is always private: only you, the people you authorize in your observatory and we can see it, and we use it only to run, check and protect the service.

• A station appears on the public map only while it publishes data in the open or members-only tier, at the precision you chose. Private stations never appear.
• An observatory we have approved may be listed, at its chosen precision, before its stations publish.
• If a location could identify a person's home or put someone at risk, we may show it at a coarser precision or hide it.

6. Your rights and the licence you give us

You keep whatever rights you have in your contributions. For every tier, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, check, clean, format and process your contributions to run, secure and improve the service, to provide them to the people the tier allows and to give you your dashboards and exports.

• Open tier: you also license the data under CC BY 4.0. We may publish it, include it in datasets and data products, combine it with other data and provide it to others, including commercially, as that licence allows. For data accepted into a published dataset, this is perpetual and irrevocable, so that published records stay complete and reproducible.
• Members-only and private tiers: we do not publish your data or license it to third parties without your separate consent. We may use it in aggregated form that cannot be traced back to your station to check data quality.
• Guides and knowledge articles: we may edit them for accuracy, clarity, safety and style, and publish them with credit to you.
• Code: code you submit to a repository we publish is licensed under that repository's licence, shown in the repository.
• Attribution: where practical, we credit you or your station by the name or handle you choose, or not at all.

To the extent the law permits, you waive your moral rights in your contributions as needed for these uses, and you agree not to assert them against us or the people we license.

7. Open data publication

To make open data useful beyond observatory.global, we may publish daily summaries of open-tier data to third-party open data platforms, such as the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), under CC BY 4.0, and provide them as an aggregated feed to risk and resilience indices.

• These summaries use only the public location precision you chose and contain no personal information.
• They are published under the platform's own terms, and copies already published elsewhere cannot be recalled.
• If you change a station's tier, we stop including it in new summaries.

8. Qualification record

Your account shows a qualification record for each station: a checklist of steps, such as registration, device checks, time and location checks and data quality, and the station's current status. It helps you run a reliable station and shows what a future programme might require.

The qualification record is for information only. It is not an offer, a promise or a contract, and reaching any status gives no right to payment or any other benefit. Contributions remain voluntary and unpaid. Terms for any paid programme will be separate and offered only if and when such a programme is available.

9. Your own data

You can always see, download and export the data your own stations contributed, and use their dashboards, free of charge and in every tier. Your licence to us does not limit what you do with your own data elsewhere.

10. Promises you make

For each contribution, you promise that:

• you have the rights and permissions needed to give us the licences above, and third-party material you include is under a licence that allows it, with its attribution;
• the data comes from the device, place and time you declare, and you have not fabricated, altered or spoofed it, its location or its time source;
• the information you give about an observatory, a claim or a location precision is true, and you choose the exact precision only if you meet its conditions;
• you run the site where the station is installed or have the site owner's permission, and you follow the electrical, building, radio and safety rules that apply, with any licence or approval needed;
• your contribution does not contain personal information about other people, such as images or sounds of identifiable individuals, unless you have a lawful basis and have told us;
• your contribution contains no malware and does not break the law or our Acceptable Use Policy.

11. Stations

• Registration: you register a station in an observatory against a device class, with its serial number and exact position. The station then goes through the steps of joining, attesting, timing and publishing that the service describes. If you move a station, register the new position.
• Quality checks: we check data automatically and may accept or reject each period of data, with a reason you can see. We may flag, exclude or stop accepting data from a station that fails checks, appears tampered with, or breaks these terms. We have no obligation to publish any contribution.
• Your device: unless agreed in writing, you own your device and are responsible for it, its installation, its safety and its insurance. We do not direct your work on site.

12. Changing your mind and leaving

You can change a station's tier or location precision, remove a station, close an observatory or delete your account at any time. We then stop collecting new data from the station and remove it from the public map. Open data already released stays available under CC BY 4.0, as explained under Sharing tiers, without your name if you ask. Members-only and private data is deleted with the station or account, after you have had the chance to export it. Your personal information is handled as described in our privacy policy.

13. Liability and changes

The disclaimers and limitation of liability in our Terms of Use apply to these terms. We may change these terms with at least 30 days' notice to contributors by email or on the service. Changes apply to contributions made after they take effect, and never reduce your rights over your own data or the tier and location choices you have made.