Terms of Use

These Terms of Use (the “Terms”) are a legally binding agreement between you and Waketrace LLC, a Delaware limited liability company (“Waketrace”, “we”, “us”, or “our”), governing your access to and use of waketrace.com, when made available by Waketrace, its associated applications, maps, databases, event records, alerts, application programming interfaces, data feeds, peer-to-peer distribution features, and related products and services (collectively, the “Service”).

Legal notice address: Waketrace LLC, Delaware, United States of America. See Contact Information for the postal address and the correct channel for each kind of notice.

1. Agreement to These Terms

1.1 Affirmative acceptance

These Terms become a contract with you when, after receiving a clear and reasonably prominent notice with an accessible link to the applicable version, you select an unchecked agreement box, an “I agree” control, or another control that is clearly associated with these Terms; or when you sign an agreement that expressly incorporates that version. An account, a report submitted for publication, an API credential, a non-public feature or another feature expressly requiring contractual acceptance will be made available only after this acceptance step. This gate does not apply to a privacy request, content complaint, correction or removal notice, appeal, security report, protected communication or lawful official request; those channels remain available under their applicable procedures without account creation or acceptance of these Terms. We will provide an opportunity to read, save and reproduce the Terms before acceptance.

Merely visiting a public page, receiving Content or opening a link before that acceptance step does not itself amount to contractual acceptance. Intellectual-property rights, access controls and legal duties may apply independently of a contract. We do not impose payment, indemnification or dispute-resolution obligations on a person merely because that person views a public page.

An individual’s acceptance establishes the contractual relationship applicable to that individual. Where the individual identifies or uses the Service on behalf of an organization, government body, agency, public authority, company, institution, or other entity, the stated organizational capacity, account identity, credentials, access arrangements, representations, instructions, and associated records may be relied upon by Waketrace and considered as evidence of the relationship and circumstances of the activity, to the extent permitted by Applicable Law. An organization is not made contractually liable for an obligation solely because an unauthorized individual purported to accept these Terms on its behalf; however, a later assertion that the individual lacked internal authority does not, by itself, erase, invalidate, conceal, or disassociate the organization from the account, access, activity, submissions, instructions, records, provenance, or historical events associated with that organization or its systems.

Questions of authority, attribution, agency, responsibility, and organizational liability remain subject to the applicable facts and Applicable Law, including any rules concerning actual, apparent, implied, delegated, or other forms of authority or responsibility. In assessing those matters, Waketrace may consider the full context and provenance of the relevant activity, including the identity or stated identity of the account or user, organizational representations, credentials, access permissions, authentication records, IP addresses and network information, device or system identifiers, domains, email addresses, application or API credentials, physical or geographic access context where lawfully available, the systems, premises, networks, infrastructure, equipment or accounts through which the activity occurred, and other technical, operational, documentary, or contextual evidence reasonably relevant to attribution.

Use of organizational infrastructure, equipment, credentials, premises, networks, systems, accounts, or other access mechanisms may constitute evidence of an association with the relevant organization or entity, but no single technical or contextual indicator is necessarily conclusive. A later assertion that an individual acted without authority does not, by itself, require Waketrace to disregard evidence of organizational association, access, sponsorship, control, knowledge, direction, benefit, participation, or responsibility, or to erase, invalidate, conceal, or disassociate the organization from the corresponding records or historical events. Questions of ultimate legal responsibility remain determined under Applicable Law and the evidence available in the particular circumstances.

Government and other public-sector organization-level access is additionally subject to section 13. Nothing in this section creates, expands, or removes governmental authority or immunity beyond what Applicable Law provides, and nothing in this section permits an organization or individual to avoid otherwise applicable legal responsibility merely by characterizing activity as unauthorized after the fact.

Separate feature consent, including a privacy or P2P choice, is not inferred from acceptance of these Terms. Changes are governed by section 25.

1.2 Privacy Notice and supplemental terms

The Waketrace Privacy Notice explains how Waketrace processes Personal Data. It applies alongside these Terms.

Additional terms may apply to APIs, subscriptions, enterprise services, government access, data licences, beta features, promotions, or particular territories. A signed order form or separate written agreement controls only to the extent it expressly conflicts with these Terms. Unless the separate agreement states otherwise, all non-conflicting provisions of these Terms continue to apply.

1.3 Organizational authority

If you use the Service for or on behalf of a company, government body, military organization, public authority, nonprofit, partnership, or other entity, you represent that:

• you are authorized to use the Service in that capacity;
• the information you provide concerning the entity and your role is materially accurate; and
• you have authority to bind the entity where you state or represent that the entity accepts these Terms.

If you lack authority to bind an entity, do not represent that it is bound or use a feature requiring its agreement until an authorized representative completes that agreement. Any individual contract arises only through the acceptance process in section 1.1 and does not make you a guarantor of the entity’s obligations.

1.4 Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering into a binding agreement. You may not use the Service where your access or use would violate sanctions, export controls, data-security restrictions, a binding court order, or other Applicable Law.

1.5 Electronic records and communications

We may send routine contractual, account, security, moderation and transactional communications electronically to your account contact address or through an appropriate Service channel. Where applicable law requires a record to be supplied in writing and imposes additional conditions on electronic delivery, we first provide the required clear disclosures and obtain the required informed affirmative consent, including any required paper-copy option, withdrawal procedure, scope information and demonstration of access to the electronic format. General acceptance of these Terms does not replace that process, waive formal service requirements or eliminate a legally required alternative delivery method.

Waketrace may retain proportionate evidence of acceptance and separate choices, including the version, account or device reference where needed, date, time and acceptance action, subject to purpose limits, appropriate security and retention under the Privacy Notice. A record of acceptance does not prove facts beyond the action actually recorded.

2. Definitions

In these Terms:

“Applicable Law” means a law, regulation, judicial order, administrative order, sanction, export-control rule, data-protection requirement, or enforceable legal right that is legally applicable to the relevant person, entity, activity, Content, transaction, processing operation, or jurisdiction.

An asserted law, request, demand, notice, order, or governmental position does not become “Applicable Law” merely because a governmental, regulatory, intelligence, military, law-enforcement, or other public authority asserts it. Where the applicability, jurisdictional reach, enforceability, authenticity, or legal effect of a foreign measure is reasonably disputed, Waketrace may require appropriate authentication, legal authority, jurisdictional basis, and legally recognized process and may seek legal advice or judicial determination before treating the measure as binding, except to the extent immediate compliance is independently required by Applicable Law.

Nothing in these Terms constitutes a general submission by Waketrace, its personnel, its users, its data, or its infrastructure to the jurisdiction of a foreign authority.

“Business User” means a person using the Service primarily for a commercial, professional, organizational, governmental, military, defence, intelligence, law-enforcement, regulatory, research, journalistic, or nonprofit purpose rather than a personal or household purpose. This definition describes intended use only. It does not remove consumer, small-business or other protected status conferred by applicable law; the transaction and statutory test determine that status.

“Content” means information or material of any kind, including text, reports, event records, allegations, comments, ratings, categories, coordinates, maps, images, video, audio, documents, links, citations, source records, translations, metadata, model outputs, and analytical results.

“Government-Affiliated User” means a person accessing or using the Service in connection with a government, military, defence, intelligence, national-security, law-enforcement, regulatory, diplomatic, judicial, intergovernmental, state-owned, or public-sector role. It includes officers, employees, agents, contractors, consultants, service members, and persons acting at the direction of such an organization.

“OSINT” means information obtained lawfully from public, licensed, consensually supplied, or otherwise legally authorized sources, without unauthorized system access, credential misuse, unlawful surveillance, deceptive pretexting, or circumvention of access controls.

“Personal Data” means information relating to an identified or reasonably identifiable natural person, including information treated as “personal information,” “personal data,” or an equivalent concept under Applicable Law.

“User Content” means Content submitted, uploaded, transmitted, supplied, or made available by or through a user. Material supplied solely to exercise rights, report a security issue, make or answer a complaint, pursue an appeal or communicate through a designated protected channel is handled for that purpose. Its receipt does not grant a public-content licence, establish consent to publication, or impose section 5 submission warranties on a person who has not agreed to them. Further use requires its own lawful authority and applicable notice or permission.

“Waketrace Content” means the Service and Content owned or controlled by Waketrace, including its software, database selection and arrangement, taxonomies, interface, original editorial material, analytical methods, documentation, and branding. It does not include User Content or third-party source material merely because it is displayed through the Service.

3. Nature and Limitations of the Service

3.1 Purpose of the Service

Waketrace’s purpose is to empower people with better situational awareness and a better understanding of events, conditions, locations and risks at sea and on land. It does so by providing geospatial information, reporting, mapping, analysis, contextualization and preservation of records, while supporting transparency, accountability, informed decision-making, research, journalism, public-interest analysis and other lawful uses of information.

It aims to build a comprehensive, independently documented dataset combining human-contributed reports with lawfully obtained public and licensed information about events and conditions that may affect people’s safety, movement, rights or property. Such information may include crime, armed conflict, piracy, GPS or other signal disruption, environmental or technical conditions, and other matters of public or practical significance. The existence or presentation of information concerning a particular activity, location, asset, event, conflict, disruption or hazard does not by itself mean that Waketrace directs, facilitates, participates in, or endorses the underlying activity.

Human observation, source attribution, verifiable provenance and correction are central to that purpose. Sources may include eyewitness and community reports, government and intergovernmental publications, public records, journalism, licensed datasets, environmental or technical observations, and other lawful sources. Automated tools may assist extraction, translation, geocoding, classification, deduplication and analysis; their outputs are identified as assessments rather than substituted for an eyewitness account or established finding.

Waketrace’s ambition is broad coverage and a useful historical record. That ambition is not a representation that the dataset is the world’s most complete, that every relevant event is detected, or that any particular place is safe when no event appears. The Service supports informed judgment rather than guaranteeing outcomes. Paid access, licensing, advertising, sponsorship or other lawful commercial activity may support its operation and preservation; its public-interest and public-safety purposes do not imply governmental authority, charitable status or exemption from law.

Lawful reporting of institutional conduct, armed conflict and matters of public concern may remain available even when contested or inconvenient. Necessary attribution, location and contextual evidence are assessed on their actual public-interest value and applicable legal protections, not automatically erased because an institution or person objects. Equally, this purpose does not authorise unnecessary exposure of victims, witnesses, children or other people. Sections 6–13 govern verification, fair context, proportionality, protected reporting and requests.

3.2 Source status and no endorsement

The inclusion, receipt, citation, submission, publication, republication, summary, classification, analysis, geolocation, contextualization, or display of Content does not by itself mean that Waketrace endorses the source, accepts the Content or any allegation contained within it as true, adopts the source’s conclusions, or represents that it has independently verified the underlying information, event, or claim. This applies equally to Content submitted by Users and Content obtained from public, governmental, intergovernmental, journalistic, licensed, technical, community, or other sources.

A risk indicator, category, confidence level, assessment, classification, or map marker is an informational representation based on available information and the methodology or evidence available to Waketrace at the relevant time. It is not, by itself, a judicial finding, official designation, determination of guilt, guarantee of accuracy or safety, or statement that any particular person or organization committed an unlawful act.

Where Waketrace expressly identifies Content or an assessment as verified, corroborated, independently established, or otherwise carrying a stated evidentiary or confidence status, that characterization reflects the verification, corroboration, analysis, or assessment actually performed by Waketrace and should be understood according to the methodology, qualifications, and limitations stated with or applicable to that material. Any confidence score, confidence level, verification status, evidentiary designation, risk rating, classification, or other indicator applied by Waketrace is an informational assessment and does not, by itself, constitute legal certainty, a judicial finding, an official determination, a finding of liability or guilt, or a conclusive determination of any fact or legal status. Different information, additional evidence, subsequent events, correction, or lawful review may alter the applicable assessment or status.

3.3 Not an emergency or official service

Waketrace is not:

• an emergency dispatch or response service;
• a substitute for police, fire, medical, coastguard, maritime, aviation, weather, civil-defence, or other competent authorities;
• an official government warning system;
• a guarantee of safety or event detection;
• a consumer reporting agency; or
• a legal, medical, security, military, intelligence, navigation, engineering, insurance, financial, or other professional adviser.

In an emergency, contact the competent local authority and follow official instructions.

3.4 Independent verification required

You are responsible for evaluating whether Content is appropriate and sufficiently reliable for your intended purpose. You must independently verify material information before relying on it, especially where an error, omission, delay, mistranslation, misclassification, incorrect location, outdated information, incomplete context, or other limitation could materially affect a decision or result in harm, loss, injury, damage, or other adverse consequence. The greater the potential consequence of reliance, the more appropriate independent verification may be.

3.5 Maps, locations, times, and automated processing

Coordinates, boundaries, timestamps, event durations, translations, deduplication, classifications, and risk estimates may be approximate or generated automatically. Display on a map does not establish legal ownership, sovereignty, jurisdiction, territorial status, exact event location, or the presence or absence of a risk at a particular point.

3.6 No consumer-reporting or high-impact use

Waketrace does not authorize use of the Service:

• as a consumer report or background-screening product;
• to determine eligibility for employment, housing, credit, lending, insurance, tenant screening, education, healthcare, immigration, public benefits, or another similarly consequential opportunity or service;
• for any purpose regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act or a similar law unless Waketrace has expressly agreed in a separate written agreement that the relevant service is designed and operated for that purpose.

Waketrace does not represent that the Service is designed, certified, or approved for any particular regulated decision-making purpose. Whether a User may lawfully rely upon or use Content for a particular purpose is determined by the User and Applicable Law. Nothing in this section independently creates a restriction on otherwise lawful downstream use or transfers responsibility for a User’s independent decision to Waketrace, except for express restrictions elsewhere in these Terms, applicable data licences, feature-specific terms, or Applicable Law.

3.7 Availability and preservation

The Service and its sources may change, become temporarily unavailable, or be affected by a Continuity Event. Waketrace does not guarantee that any particular source, item, event record, account, feature, API field, historical item, or geographic area will remain continuously available except to the extent that Waketrace has expressly committed to a specific availability, retention, archival, service-level, or other performance obligation in a published service description, paid service terms, service-level agreement, or other separate written agreement.

An interruption or unavailability of a particular endpoint, provider, domain, infrastructure component, or distribution path does not by itself constitute termination of the Service or destruction of the underlying records or data assets. Sections 16.4, 19A, 19B and 20 preserve applicable commitments, continuity measures, notice, cancellation, refund, preservation and other rights.

Keep independent copies of lawful records you need. Unless an agreed service expressly provides archival storage, Waketrace is not your sole backup or permanent recordkeeping provider. Independent copies remain subject to applicable rights and restrictions.

4. Accounts, Identity, and Security

You agree to:

• provide complete, current, and materially accurate registration and billing information;
• keep that information updated;
• protect your credentials, authentication devices, API keys, and recovery methods;
• use multifactor authentication where made available or required;
• limit organizational account access to authorized personnel;
• promptly notify security@waketrace.com of suspected compromise or unauthorized access; and
• cooperate with reasonable account-security and identity-verification measures.

A public display name may be pseudonymous where Waketrace permits pseudonyms. You must not, however:

• impersonate another person or organization;
• falsely claim governmental, military, defence, intelligence, law-enforcement, journalistic, professional, or institutional status;
• conceal your identity from Waketrace for fraud, manipulation, retaliation, evasion, or abuse; or
• provide false information in response to a lawful verification request.

Waketrace may require verification of identity, organizational affiliation, source authority, payment information, or official capacity before enabling submissions, non-public data, bulk access, government features, or other higher-risk functions.

You may not sell, lease, transfer or share an account or API credential except through an organizational feature expressly designed for that purpose. You are responsible for maintaining the security of credentials and access mechanisms under your control and must take reasonable available steps to prevent unauthorized access or use.

Nothing in this section makes you automatically responsible for activity performed without your authorization or knowledge, or for another person’s conduct merely because it passed through your account or credentials. Responsibility for any particular loss, incident or security event remains subject to the applicable facts and Applicable Law, including the conduct, knowledge, authorization, causation and legally attributable contribution of the relevant parties. Nothing in this section transfers Waketrace’s own security obligations or independent legal duties to you.

Notify security@waketrace.com promptly after you become aware, or reasonably should become aware, of suspected compromise or unauthorized access, and take reasonable available steps to secure the affected account, credential or access mechanism. No liability is imposed under this section for failing to report an incident before you knew, or reasonably should have known, of it.

5. User Content and Your Responsibility

5.1 Responsibility for submissions

You are responsible for your own collection, submission and authorised use of User Content, including the accuracy of your representations and the rights you grant. Waketrace’s review or publication does not relieve you of that responsibility.

Waketrace remains responsible for its own conduct and applicable duties, including its collection, editing, analysis, publication, disclosure, security and response to notices. Responsibility for a loss depends on applicable law and each party’s contribution; these Terms do not transfer Waketrace’s own liability to an uploader or bind an affected person who has not agreed to them. The specific indemnity, if applicable, is in section 23.

5.2 Your representations and warranties

Each time you submit User Content, you represent and warrant that:

• you created it or possess all rights, licences, consents, permissions, and authority necessary for the submission and the licence granted below;
• you obtained, possess, and disclose it lawfully;
• its submission and the uses expressly disclosed and authorised by you comply with applicable rights and duties to the extent within your responsibility; this is not a guarantee of Waketrace’s independent conduct or every unauthorised downstream use;
• you have not materially falsified or concealed its source, author, date, time, location, procedural status, or context;
• any Personal Data included is relevant, reasonably necessary, proportionate, and lawfully disclosed;
• you have complied with applicable source licences, access conditions, confidentiality duties, and attribution requirements; and
• it complies with these Terms.

5.3 Ownership

You retain ownership rights you lawfully hold in User Content. Submission does not transfer ownership to Waketrace.

5.4 Licence granted to Waketrace

By submitting User Content, you grant Waketrace a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, and sublicensable licence to receive, host, store, cache, reproduce, format, transcode, translate, adapt, summarize, and technically modify it;

analyze, compare, verify, classify, tag, geocode, annotate, and combine it with other records;

publish, display, perform, communicate, distribute, syndicate, and make it available through websites, applications, maps, feeds, alerts, APIs, reports, archives, backups, continuity infrastructure and authorized peer-to-peer delivery;

create excerpts, structured event records, compilations, analytical or technical derivatives, and other transformations reasonably necessary to operate, secure, maintain, improve, investigate, moderate, correct, contextualize, preserve, migrate, restore, reconstruct, archive, license and distribute the Service and its data assets;

operate, secure, maintain, market, license, commercialize, monetize, and improve the Service and Waketrace’s lawful media, publishing, research, accountability, distribution, and public-information activities, including paid and enterprise features; and

sublicense the foregoing rights to infrastructure providers, contractors, professional advisers, data processors, distribution partners, archival operators, media partners, and customers to the extent reasonably necessary for authorized Service functions or activities described in this licence.

Commercial media, editorial, and distribution uses. The licence expressly includes the right, to the extent permitted by the rights actually held by the submitting User, to use User Content, including photographs, video, audio, recordings, documents, screenshots and other audiovisual or multimedia material, for commercial, editorial, journalistic, research, educational, promotional, advertising, marketing, public-interest, publishing and distribution purposes connected with Waketrace or its authorized activities.

Waketrace may, in its discretion, choose whether, when, where, and in what format to exercise these commercial-media rights, including whether to publish or distribute material through advertising-supported or monetized channels, provided that the applicable licence, source restrictions, privacy requirements and other Applicable Law are respected.

This includes incorporating User Content into documentaries, news or analysis programs, articles, reports, compilations, broadcasts, podcasts, social-media posts, websites, applications, video channels and other audiovisual or published works; publishing or distributing such works through third-party platforms and services, including monetized or advertising-supported platforms and channels such as YouTube; displaying advertising or sponsorship in connection with such works; licensing, syndicating or distributing such works to third parties; and receiving advertising, subscription, licensing, sponsorship or other lawful commercial revenue associated with those uses.

No such use transfers ownership of User Content to Waketrace. The licence is non-exclusive unless separately agreed, and Waketrace’s rights are limited to rights the submitting User is legally capable of granting. The submitting User represents that it possesses the rights, licences, permissions and authority necessary for the foregoing uses to the extent represented in section 5.2.

Nothing in this licence authorizes Waketrace to disregard a third-party copyright, licence restriction, privacy right, publicity or personality right, moral right, confidentiality obligation, source restriction, or other Applicable Law that Waketrace is independently required to respect. A separate privacy consent is not implied where Applicable Law requires one for a particular processing purpose.

This licence continues while the User Content is maintained through the Service and may continue afterward to the extent reasonably necessary for backups, security and integrity records, continuity operations, dispute resolution, evidence preservation, public-interest archives, historical record integrity, migration or reconstruction, de-identified or aggregated outputs, and copies already lawfully distributed.

For Content knowingly designated for public publication, the licence necessary to maintain the disclosed public-information, journalistic, research, accountability, commercial media, and historical-record functions is not automatically revoked by account closure, a later change of preference, or a request by the submitting User to withdraw or remove the Content. A withdrawal or removal request does not by itself require Waketrace to erase, conceal, or represent as nonexistent the Content, its associated event record, publication history, provenance, or other historical record. Waketrace may preserve and, where lawfully permitted, continue to use or publish the Content or an appropriate representation of it where reasonably necessary for those functions. This remains subject to Applicable Law and any mandatory copyright termination, privacy, correction, erasure, source-licence, court or regulatory order, or other legally binding restriction.

Waketrace may retain genuinely anonymised or aggregated outputs where no natural person is reasonably identifiable. Removing a name, assigning an identifier, hashing, embedding or aggregating does not alone establish anonymity. Attribution and feature-specific sharing choices remain governed by the applicable submission controls and Privacy Notice.

To the extent permitted by law, you waive or agree not to assert moral rights that would prevent the uses authorized by this section, and no compensation is owed for those uses unless a separate written agreement expressly provides otherwise.

5.5 Public submissions and peer-to-peer distribution

Public by default; peer-to-peer distribution. Unless a feature is expressly identified as private, assume that User Content may become public, searchable, indexed, copied, archived, translated, cached, downloaded, and redistributed.

Waketrace may distribute selected public event data peer-to-peer, so that selected public Content is transmitted directly between participating users’ devices and browsers rather than only from Waketrace’s servers. Peer-to-peer continuity is part of the Service architecture and is intended to reduce dependence on any single server, provider, network or endpoint.

If you submit a report, the report may be distributed to other users’ devices and browsers as part of the Service’s distribution architecture. Because that distribution is specific, consequential, and cannot be fully recalled once distributed, Waketrace presents a feature-specific notice describing the applicable distribution and obtains separate affirmative acceptance at the point of submission where that acceptance is required by the applicable feature. By proceeding with a submission after the required notice and acceptance, you authorize the distribution described in that notice. Where the required separate acceptance is declined, Waketrace will not proceed with that particular submission through the feature requiring that acceptance. Where a feature-specific notice imposes narrower permissions or additional restrictions, that notice controls only to the extent of the feature and permission it specifically governs. It does not by itself revoke, narrow, or override rights or obligations established elsewhere in these Terms, including rights concerning ownership, preservation, historical records, lawful publication, security, continuity, or previously granted licences, unless the notice expressly states such an effect and the change is legally effective.

If you use the Service without submitting anything, your browser or device may hold and re-share event records that have already been shown to you, so that they remain available to other users. This can occur to people who never submit anything, can use the device’s connection and resources, and is a disclosed characteristic of how the Service operates. It is covered by acceptance of these Terms where those Terms are presented as a condition of using the relevant feature.

Eligible peer-to-peer material is selected public event data and associated integrity information that Waketrace determines is suitable for relay. Waketrace does not exclude material from relay solely because it identifies a person or depicts, reports, or provides evidence concerning alleged criminal conduct. Waketrace may nevertheless exclude or restrict credentials, private keys, non-public account or source identifiers, precise personal locations, protected-source information, or other material where relay would create disproportionate privacy, safety, security, legal or operational risk.

Waketrace-controlled and cooperating relay clients may use authenticated validity, correction, withdrawal, expiry, and integrity information so that packages that Waketrace has lawfully removed, restricted, expired, or superseded from the relevant relay path are not unnecessarily restored to active distribution. A client or peer that cannot reliably validate sharing authority may pause the affected sharing path. Lawfully obtained independent copies held by unrelated third parties may persist beyond Waketrace control.

Nothing in this section requires Waketrace to disclose non-public continuity architecture, relay topology, credentials, security configuration, peer identities, operational procedures, infrastructure locations, replication arrangements, or other operational information where disclosure could materially increase the risk of compromise, disruption, coercion, unauthorized access, interference, or loss of continuity. Waketrace may withhold, limit, delay, or redact such information to the extent reasonably necessary to protect the Service, its users, its infrastructure, its records, and the continuity of its operations, subject to Applicable Law.

5.6 No confidential relationship through ordinary submissions

An ordinary submission does not create an attorney-client, journalist-source, fiduciary, confidential, or other protected relationship with Waketrace. This description does not waive or exclude any source protection, privilege, whistleblower protection or confidentiality duty that independently arises under Applicable Law. Do not assume that an ordinary form provides secure or confidential source handling.

Do not use an ordinary submission form to provide passwords, access credentials, privileged material, classified information, unlawfully obtained confidential information, export-controlled technical data, protected-source information, or material whose disclosure would create an unlawful or immediate safety risk. Use only a channel that Waketrace expressly designates for the relevant protected communication.

5.7 Publication, retention and applicable commitments

Subject to applicable law, paid commitments, the published moderation procedures and the permissions actually granted, Waketrace may accept, decline, prioritise or restrict submissions. Submission does not guarantee publication, verification, compensation or a particular remedy. A refusal is not an automatic finding that a report is false.

Any retention after a correction, restriction or withdrawal is limited by sections 5.4, 8, 18 and 19A and the Privacy Notice. An evidentiary copy is access-restricted and justified separately; it is not a substitute for correcting or removing an unlawful public presentation. Required reasons, review and complaint rights remain available.

5.8 Product feedback

If you voluntarily provide a non-confidential product suggestion, you grant Waketrace a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to evaluate and implement that suggestion and improve the Service, to the extent you hold the necessary rights. No compensation is due unless separately agreed. Do not include confidential material or third-party rights that you cannot license.

This permission does not authorise public identification of you as an endorser, publication of private communications, unrelated exploitation of Personal Data or use inconsistent with the Privacy Notice. Feedback that also contains a risk report follows the report’s own publication and sharing controls. Mandatory rights and separately agreed confidentiality remain unaffected.

6. Truthfulness, Accuracy, Provenance, and Corrections

6.1 Do not lie or mislead

You must not knowingly, recklessly, or with wilful blindness submit or distribute Content that is:

• false or fabricated;
• materially misleading;
• deceptively edited, translated, cropped, captioned, or summarized;
• falsely attributed;
• presented with fabricated or materially inaccurate source, authorship, date, time, location, or procedural-status information;
• submitted through an impersonated or materially deceptive identity; or
• made misleading through omission of material context.

An honest and reasonable mistake is not automatically a violation. Failing to correct a material error after learning of it may be.

6.1A Manipulation of the Service

You must not knowingly, recklessly, or with wilful blindness use the Service to conduct, coordinate, or materially assist a campaign or pattern of submissions, edits, reports, accounts, interactions, or other activity intended to materially distort Waketrace’s representation of events, conditions, locations, risks, source reliability, confidence, or historical records. This includes deliberately submitting false or misleading material at scale, coordinating multiple identities or accounts to create a false appearance of independent corroboration, or otherwise attempting to manipulate the Service’s informational or evidentiary record.

This section does not prohibit good-faith disagreement, independent reporting of conflicting information, correction, criticism, advocacy, legitimate research, satire that is not presented as factual information, or the submission of information that later proves to be inaccurate despite reasonable care.

6.2 Reasonable basis and evidentiary status

You must have a reasonable basis for factual claims. You must clearly distinguish among:

• directly observed facts;
• statements made by an official source;
• statements reported by a third party;
• allegations or accusations;
• opinions and commentary;
• predictions, estimates, or risk assessments;
• model or automated outputs; and
• information that has not been independently verified.

You may not present an allegation, suspicion, rumour, model output, or inference as established fact.

6.3 Source and provenance information

Where reasonably available and relevant, a factual submission should include:

• the original source or a sufficiently specific source description;
• the underlying event date and time, if known;
• the source-publication or source-supply date and time;
• the location and degree of location certainty;
• whether the material is original, copied, translated, edited, summarized, simulated, or generated using artificial intelligence;
• material evidentiary limitations, conflicting reports, or uncertainty; and
• any known correction, retraction, dismissal, acquittal, superseding notice, or official update.

A confidential source may be withheld from public attribution only where Waketrace permits it. Waketrace may require confidential verification before publication.

6.4 Criminal and serious-misconduct allegations

When referring to alleged criminal, terrorist, extremist, fraudulent, corrupt, or similarly serious conduct, you must accurately distinguish the evidentiary status of the underlying information from the legal status of the conduct or person involved. Available information may support a factual description of an observed or recorded event, including where photographs, video, audio, documents, direct observation, multiple independent sources, or other evidence provide a reasonable basis for that description.

You must not represent a person as legally guilty, convicted, or otherwise finally determined to have committed an offence unless that status is supported by the available evidence and applicable official record. Where the legal status remains unresolved, you should accurately identify it — for example, reported, alleged, investigated, arrested, charged, convicted, acquitted, dismissed, overturned, pardoned, sanctioned, or delisted — while preserving any materially supported factual description of the underlying event.

The absence of a conviction or other final legal determination does not, by itself, require Waketrace or a User to describe an otherwise well-supported observed or recorded event as merely hypothetical or unsupported. A factual description must remain consistent with the available evidence and must not be presented as a legal determination where it is not one.

6.5 Synthetic or manipulated media

Materially altered, simulated, synthetic, or AI-generated media must be clearly identified as such. You may not use manipulated media to misrepresent an actual person, event, place, document, or source.

6.6 Continuing correction duty

If you later learn that your User Content is materially inaccurate, misleading, unlawfully disclosed, or outdated in a manner that creates a materially false impression, you must promptly:

• use available tools to correct or withdraw it;
• notify Waketrace where the Content has already been distributed or relied upon; and
• cooperate with a reasonable correction, provenance, or authenticity review.

Waketrace may maintain a visible correction history or preserve prior versions where appropriate.

6.7 Cooperation with verification and editorial assessment

Waketrace may request proportionate supporting sources, provenance information, original files or other evidence reasonably necessary to assess a report. Use the specified secure channel for protected evidence and do not expose a confidential source through a public response. Failure to provide necessary substantiation may justify a warning, restricted distribution, temporary removal or account measure, even where deliberate deception has not been established.

For Waketrace’s own editorial reporting, and before relying on a particular journalistic or expression-based legal protection, Waketrace applies a documented editorial assessment appropriate to the information and jurisdiction. This considers source reliability and independence, what has actually been verified, public-interest significance, the necessity of identification and location, procedural status, less intrusive alternatives, safety and retaliation risks, fair context and any appropriate opportunity to respond. An opportunity to respond is not required where unsafe or otherwise inappropriate; the reason is recorded where material. A sensitive or person-level allegation requiring review is not released as an established fact merely because it is human-submitted, officially sourced, cryptographically signed or repeated by an automated tool.

Unverified community reports and automated assessments are identified as such and handled under the applicable publication safeguards. Paid access, a database format or the word journalism does not establish an exemption. Lawfully justified factual reporting and proportionate accountability records may be maintained despite disagreement; corrections, source updates and substantiated rights requests are assessed against the same evidence and legal standards.

7. Lawful OSINT and Source Acquisition

7.1 Lawful source acquisition

Waketrace will obtain, process, preserve, and publish information through lawful means and will assess applicable rights and restrictions relevant to its own acquisition and use of that information.

Users must not knowingly provide Waketrace with material that they obtained through unauthorized access to systems, accounts, devices, networks, databases, or other restricted resources where the submission or requested use would itself be unlawful or would knowingly require Waketrace to participate in the unlawful conduct.

The fact that information may have been obtained by another person through means that were unlawful, unauthorized, improper, or contrary to a private duty does not, by itself, determine whether Waketrace may lawfully receive, assess, preserve, report, publish, or otherwise use that information. Waketrace will assess its own legal rights, duties, source restrictions, privacy obligations, and other applicable requirements based on the circumstances of the particular material and use.

7.2 No solicitation of unlawful disclosures

You must not use Waketrace to knowingly commission, direct, or materially assist another person to obtain information through conduct that is unlawful in the circumstances, including unauthorized access, theft, unlawful interception, or other unlawful acquisition of protected information.

This section does not prohibit lawful reporting, receipt, publication, preservation, investigation, follow-up, or discussion of information that another person independently possesses or provides, and does not by itself determine whether information may lawfully be received, published, preserved, or otherwise used by Waketrace. Questions concerning the legality of the underlying acquisition and Waketrace’s own conduct are assessed separately under Applicable Law and the circumstances of the particular material.

7.3 Disputed provenance and independently lawful reporting

The legality of how a source originally obtained information and the legality of Waketrace’s receipt, assessment, preservation, reporting, publication, or other use of that information are distinct questions. Information does not become unlawful for Waketrace to receive or report merely because its provenance is disputed, because another person may have obtained it improperly, or because it has circulated as leaked or open-source material.

Waketrace assesses its own conduct, applicable rights, source restrictions, privacy and safety obligations, and other requirements under Applicable Law based on the circumstances of the particular material and proposed use. Nothing in this section requires Waketrace to determine or guarantee the complete upstream provenance of information before receiving or assessing it, and nothing in this section creates an automatic right to publish, preserve, or distribute material merely because another person has provided it.

This section does not authorise unlawful acquisition, unauthorized access, or other unlawful conduct by a User or Waketrace. It also does not limit lawful reporting, protected disclosure, quotation, publication, preservation, investigation, or discussion of information where those activities are independently lawful.

7.4 Source rights and proportional copying

You must comply with applicable copyrights, database rights, licences, attribution requirements, and lawful access or use conditions that govern material you submit to Waketrace or rights you purport to grant to Waketrace. Where a link, citation, factual summary, or limited excerpt is sufficient for the intended purpose, you should not upload a full article, photograph, video, report, database, or other protected work where doing so would exceed the rights available for that submission.

You must not knowingly remove, falsify, or materially obscure copyright-management information, attribution, watermarks, source identifiers, or provenance metadata associated with submitted material, except where a lawful technical, privacy, security, editorial, or formatting process requires its alteration or removal and the relevant provenance is otherwise preserved where reasonably practicable.

7.5 Protected reporting and whistleblowing

Nothing in these Terms prohibits lawful whistleblowing, protected labour or employment activity, communications with legal counsel, reports to competent regulators or authorities, or other disclosure protected by Applicable Law. Such protections do not automatically authorize publication through an ordinary Waketrace submission form.

8. Personal Data, Sensitive Information, and Safety

8.1 Lawful basis, necessity, and proportionality

Users must not knowingly submit Personal Data where the submission itself is unlawful, unauthorized, materially misleading, or contrary to an applicable confidentiality or safety restriction.

Where a User is independently subject to a legal obligation governing the collection, disclosure or submission of Personal Data, the User remains responsible for complying with that obligation.

Waketrace independently determines the purposes, legal basis, necessity, safeguards and permitted uses applicable to its own processing of Personal Data. A User’s permission, submission, account acceptance or description of the information does not determine Waketrace’s legal role or authorize processing that Applicable Law prohibits.

Personal Data may form part of a lawful report concerning an event, person, vessel, organization or other subject where its inclusion is relevant and reasonably necessary to the Service and Waketrace’s own processing and publication obligations are satisfied.

8.2 Public availability is not universal permission

The fact that Personal Data appears in a public record, search result, website, social-media post, news report, or leaked dataset does not by itself establish that the information may lawfully be copied, combined, profiled, republished, sold, or used for every purpose.

8.3 Criminal, sanctions and other sensitive information

Waketrace may receive, preserve, process, analyse, publish and distribute information concerning alleged or established criminal conduct, including photographs, video, audio, descriptions, locations, vessel or vehicle information and identifying characteristics of persons shown or described in connection with an event.

The identification of a person does not by itself make a submission ineligible for the Service. Waketrace may retain and present contributor-supplied identifying material as part of the historical and evidentiary record of a reported event.

Waketrace distinguishes source material and contributor allegations from Waketrace’s own assessments. Where relevant, the Service may record source, date, provenance, procedural status, evidentiary context, corrections, competing information and other material developments. A contributor’s identification of a person is not automatically represented as a Waketrace determination of guilt or legal responsibility.

Where Applicable Law imposes a mandatory restriction, condition, safeguard or other requirement on particular processing or publication, Waketrace may apply that requirement to the extent legally applicable. Such requirements do not create a general Service rule prohibiting contributors from submitting or publishing identifying evidence of alleged criminal conduct.

Public or peer-to-peer distribution does not by itself establish that a person shown in source material has been convicted or otherwise adjudicated responsible for an offence. Material remains subject to its stated source, status and evidentiary context.

8.4 Minors

Do not knowingly use an ordinary public feature to expose identifying information about a child where Applicable Law prohibits that disclosure. A limited exception may be considered through a specifically designated safeguarding process, such as an authenticated official missing-person notice, only after a documented legal and safety assessment establishes the relevant basis, necessity, proportionate fields, restricted audience where needed and enhanced safeguards. A contributor’s preference or Waketrace’s approval alone is not a legal basis.

Such identifying information is not eligible for open P2P. Where a lawful exception cannot be established, identifying details are withheld or removed and only independently justified non-identifying event information may be considered. The Service is not directed to children and account eligibility remains governed by section 1.4.

8.5 Prohibited exposure of sensitive information

Certain information is inappropriate for ordinary public or peer-to-peer distribution because its disclosure may directly compromise security, access, or the safety of individuals. Do not submit through ordinary public features or P2P:

• passwords, authentication or recovery secrets, private keys, financial credentials, or other credentials whose disclosure would enable unauthorized access; or
• other material whose submission through the particular feature would itself unlawfully disclose protected information, defeat an access control, or create an immediate and material security risk.

Sensitive personal information, identifying information, confidential-source material, medical or other legally protected information, and information concerning a person whose identity is specifically protected by Applicable Law, a court order, or an applicable source-protection obligation may be submitted where relevant to a lawful reporting, evidentiary, public-interest, safety, accountability, research, or other legitimate purpose. Waketrace may assess the appropriate handling, access, publication, location precision, retention, redaction, contextualization, or distribution of such material under Applicable Law and the circumstances of the particular submission.

Public or peer-to-peer availability of Content is subject to the controls and restrictions applicable to the relevant feature. Nothing in this section creates a general prohibition on receiving or preserving sensitive information or prevents Waketrace from maintaining restricted or evidentiary records where lawfully permitted and reasonably necessary.

Do not submit credentials, authentication secrets, private keys, or similar access material except through a channel expressly designated for their secure handling.

8.6 Statutory rights are not waived

No person waives a non-waivable privacy, access, correction, deletion, objection, restriction, appeal, or other statutory right merely because information about that person appears through the Service or because another user accepted these Terms.

Waketrace may redact, generalize, delay, aggregate, pseudonymize, deindex, restrict, or remove Personal Data where reasonably necessary for safety, proportionality, data protection, source protection, provider compliance, or Applicable Law.

9. Prohibited Content and Conduct

You must not use the Service to:

• submit or distribute credentials, authentication secrets, private keys, or comparable access material for the purpose of enabling unauthorized access;
• submit or distribute malware, ransomware, spyware, credential-stealing code, destructive code, or other code primarily intended to compromise or damage systems;
• knowingly submit or distribute materially false or fabricated information for the purpose of deceiving users or materially manipulating Waketrace’s informational or historical record;
• impersonate another person or organization or knowingly misrepresent an authority, affiliation, source, or evidentiary status;
• use the Service to threaten, stalk, harass, intimidate, or deliberately direct or materially facilitate imminent serious physical harm to a person; or
• knowingly use the Service to circumvent a security control, access restriction, or other binding restriction applicable to the Service itself.

The existence, sensitivity, classification, confidentiality, disputed provenance, or disputed legal status of information does not by itself make the information prohibited Content or determine whether Waketrace may receive, preserve, assess, report, publish, distribute, or otherwise use it. Information concerning crime, conflict, military activity, government, intelligence, law enforcement, public safety, sensitive locations, protected persons, or other matters of public concern is not prohibited merely because of its subject matter.

Waketrace may apply lawful and proportionate measures to particular Content or activity where required by Applicable Law, a valid and applicable legal order, a specific contractual restriction binding on Waketrace, or a demonstrable security or operational necessity. Such measures may include correction, contextualization, redaction, reduced location precision, access restriction, delayed publication, preservation, or removal. A complaint, allegation, classification claim, demand, provider communication, or assertion that Content is unlawful does not by itself establish that the Content is prohibited or require its removal.

Nothing in this section limits lawful reporting, journalism, research, documentary use, evidence preservation, whistleblowing, criticism, public-interest analysis, or other lawful receipt or publication of information.

10. Prohibited Conduct and Uses

You may not:

• gain or attempt to gain unauthorized access to any account, system, network, source, administrative interface, API, database, or non-public data;
• bypass authentication, rate limits, paywalls, geographic controls, access restrictions, or technical protection measures;
• scan, probe, penetration-test, exploit, or test Waketrace or an upstream provider without prior written authorization;
• conduct or facilitate a denial-of-service attack, flooding, resource exhaustion, excessive automated traffic, or another disruption;
• scrape, crawl, harvest, mirror, index, copy, or download the Service through automated means except through a documented API, an expressly permitted indexing mechanism, or written authorization;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive source code except to the limited extent a non-waivable law permits;
• use the Service, Content, or Service data to train, pre-train, fine-tune, distill, test, evaluate, benchmark, enrich, augment, or otherwise develop or improve any artificial-intelligence or machine-learning model or system unless expressly authorized by Waketrace in a separate written agreement, data licence, or other written authorization specifically covering AI use; access to the Service, public availability of Content, API or feed access, or any other permission that does not expressly authorize AI use does not authorize such use;
• remove, obscure, or alter source attribution, confidence indicators, dispute notices, correction history, safety warnings, copyright-management information, or provenance data;
• re-identify de-identified or pseudonymized information, or combine data to identify a person whose identity is specifically protected by Applicable Law, a court order, or an applicable source-protection obligation, contrary to that restriction;
• stalk, locate, intimidate, threaten, discriminate against, exploit, or retaliate against a person;
• make a High-Impact or consumer-reporting decision prohibited by section 3.6;
• use facial recognition, biometric matching, or sensitive-trait inference against Waketrace Content unless expressly authorized in writing and lawful;
• conduct coordinated inauthentic activity, manipulate reports or ratings, fabricate support for an event, or submit duplicate or mass reports to distort visibility;
• submit a knowingly false, materially misleading, impersonated, retaliatory, or abusive legal, privacy, copyright, safety, or provider complaint;
• interfere with a correction, appeal, investigation, audit, or lawful evidence-preservation process;
• send spam, unsolicited bulk communications, or messages contrary to recipients’ stated or reasonably understood wishes;
• share or traffic in account credentials, API keys, access tokens, or security vulnerabilities;
• conceal your identity or affiliation where Waketrace lawfully requires verification; or
• assist another person in doing any of the foregoing.

Where a User violates these Terms or an applicable feature restriction, Waketrace may preserve and process relevant information to investigate, establish, document, prevent, remediate, or enforce the violation and to protect the Service, its records, users, infrastructure, and legal interests, subject to Applicable Law.

11. Moderation, Verification, and Enforcement

11.1 Review and moderation

Waketrace may apply different levels of automated or human review, verification, contextualisation, restriction, or other moderation measures depending on the nature of the Content, the circumstances of its submission or publication, available evidence, applicable legal requirements, security considerations, and other relevant factors. These measures may include automated detection, source comparison, duplicate detection, anomaly analysis, account or submission history, requests for additional evidence, human review, and consultation with specialists, counsel, providers, or competent authorities.

Waketrace does not undertake to pre-screen or continuously monitor every item of Content and does not guarantee that every error, violation, or other issue will be detected.

11.2 Investigation of reports

Waketrace may review reports, complaints, notices, or other information concerning suspected misuse, inaccuracy, privacy issues, safety issues, security issues, or other matters affecting the Service or its Content. Waketrace may assess the available information, request additional information or evidence, consult appropriate specialists or advisers, preserve relevant records, and take proportionate interim or final measures where required or reasonably necessary under Applicable Law or to protect the Service, affected persons, or the integrity and continuity of its records.

You agree to respond truthfully to reasonable inquiries concerning your User Content or contracted use where the requested information is reasonably necessary for the matter being assessed. Failure to provide reasonably necessary information may support a proportionate temporary restriction while the matter is assessed, but does not by itself establish that disputed Content is false, unlawful, or otherwise improper.

No fixed response or resolution time applies unless required by Applicable Law or expressly stated in these Terms, or a separate agreement. A general timing statement does not extend a more specific applicable deadline. Where Applicable Law or an established security, safety, or continuity obligation requires action before a matter can be fully resolved, Waketrace may take the necessary interim action and continue its assessment afterward.

11.3 Available actions

Waketrace may, in its reasonable discretion and subject to Applicable Law:

• request additional sources, identity verification, or provenance evidence;
• add attribution, context, dispute labels, confidence indicators, or warnings;
• correct formatting, translations, categories, dates, coordinates, or metadata;
• reduce visibility, recommendation, search indexing, or distribution;
• redact Personal Data or sensitive operational details;
• delay publication or distribution;
• restrict Content by territory, age, account type, user role, API, feed, or data field;
• suspend monetization, exports, or peer-to-peer distribution;
• preserve an evidentiary or audit copy;
• temporarily restrict or disable access while investigating, securing, or remediating an issue;
• remove Content;
• limit, suspend, or terminate an account or service feature;
• refer a matter to an infrastructure provider, rights holder, professional adviser, or competent authority where lawful and appropriate;
• temporarily pause, restrict, degrade, or suspend all or any part of the Service, a feature, API, feed, distribution path, account function, or other access mechanism for as long as reasonably necessary to investigate, remediate, secure, restore, comply with Applicable Law, respond to a Continuity Event, or protect the Service, its users, its infrastructure, or its records;
• take another proportionate measure reasonably necessary to protect the Service, affected persons, or Waketrace’s legal and contractual interests, including measures necessary to preserve continuity, integrity, availability, provenance, or historical records.

11.4 Proportionate remedies and public interest

Where lawful and reasonably protective, Waketrace prefers a targeted remedy, such as correction, contextualisation, redaction, delayed publication, reduced location precision, account-specific action or territorial restriction, over unnecessary removal of unrelated lawful information. A dispute alone does not establish that Content is false or unlawful. Lawful public-interest information is not ordinarily removed solely because it is embarrassing, politically inconvenient or critical of an institution. These preferences do not override a valid legal obligation, safety requirement or infrastructure-provider right.

Waketrace distinguishes an allegation about a person, an event, its sources, relationships between events and an analytical inference. That distinction is substantive only where the remaining information is independently lawful and does not continue the same infringement. A coordinate, timestamp, category, source link, hash or derived assessment may remain Personal Data or convey the same harmful allegation when combined with other available information. A person need not be named to be identifiable.

Waketrace assesses the remaining record and reasonably foreseeable combinations when responding to a complaint. Where necessary it restricts linked records and derivatives, stops controllable redistribution and issues a correction or update. It may retain a minimal restricted evidentiary record where justified, without maintaining the offending public presentation. Independently lawful, non-identifying information and genuinely unrelated records may remain available. Disputed analysis may be presented with meaningful uncertainty, provenance and competing explanations only where that continued presentation is lawful and proportionate.

Identifying reporting or an identified historical record may also remain available where its continued publication is independently lawful and proportionate, including under an applicable freedom-of-expression or journalistic protection. Waketrace assesses the continuing public-interest value, accuracy and status, necessity of identification, passage of time, foreseeable harm, audience and less intrusive alternatives. A complaint does not itself establish illegality; an archive label does not itself establish a right to retain or publish.

11.5 Reasons and review

Where Waketrace materially restricts Content, an account or access, Waketrace may provide information about the nature or basis of the measure where reasonably appropriate and lawful. Nothing in these Terms requires Waketrace to disclose confidential security measures, detection methods, internal investigations, source information, privileged material, personal information concerning another person, or other information whose disclosure could create additional risk.

Where Applicable Law requires reasons, explanations, human review, appeal, out-of-court redress or other procedural safeguards in relation to a particular measure, Waketrace will comply with those requirements to the extent they apply. Otherwise, no particular explanation, review procedure, response format, human review or appeal process is guaranteed by these Terms.

Affected persons and eligible notifiers may use any review or notice process expressly provided under section 12.6, subject to its terms and any Applicable Law.

11.6 Editorial status and responsibility

Reviewing, labelling or displaying a source does not by itself guarantee its accuracy or express agreement with every statement. The Service distinguishes source material from Waketrace’s own statements, alterations and analytical outputs. Legal responsibility depends on the actual activity and applicable law; this description does not eliminate responsibility for Waketrace’s own contribution or a non-waivable publication duty.

Nothing in these Terms waives an intermediary defence, publication privilege or other protection available under Applicable Law. Its availability depends on the actual claim, function, knowledge and contribution to the relevant information, rather than a label in these Terms.

12. Notices, Corrections, Removal Requests, and Appeals

12.1 Accessible notice channels

Anyone, including a person without an account, may send an electronic notice to abuse@waketrace.com. Use privacy@waketrace.com for Personal Data requests, dmca@waketrace.com for copyright notices and government@waketrace.com for official requests. A notice does not require account creation, agreement to these Terms, a payment or a waiver of rights. Where Applicable Law requires a particular electronic notice, notice-and-action, complaint-handling, or other procedural mechanism, Waketrace will provide or designate the mechanism required by that law for the relevant Service and jurisdiction.

An identifiable notice received through another published Waketrace support or rights channel is routed to the appropriate team. An internal routing choice does not restart a statutory deadline or make an otherwise effective notice invalid. Formal service of legal proceedings is addressed separately in section 26.10.

12.2 Information that helps us assess a notice

Where reasonably available, a notice should provide:

• the URL, event identifier, account identifier or other information sufficient to locate the relevant Content;
• the nature of the issue alleged, including any claimed inaccuracy, illegality, rights infringement or safety risk, together with supporting information where available;
• the outcome requested; and
• contact information for follow-up where appropriate.

Additional information or verification may be requested where reasonably necessary to assess the notice or comply with Applicable Law. A notice should not include unnecessary sensitive information.

Where Waketrace receives multiple materially identical notices, complaints, legal demands, automated submissions, or substantially coordinated submissions concerning the same Content, account, event, or underlying issue, Waketrace may consolidate those submissions for assessment and record them as one underlying matter while preserving materially new evidence or independently applicable legal deadlines. The use of automated systems, multiple senders, templates, generated text, or coordinated submission systems does not by itself increase the legal priority or substantive weight of a notice.

Where a particular type of notice is subject to additional requirements under these Terms or Applicable Law, those requirements apply.

12.3 Receipt, assessment and outcomes

Waketrace may acknowledge, classify, assess, investigate, or otherwise respond to a notice, complaint, report, or request as appropriate to the circumstances. For a notice that does not create a mandatory response or action under Applicable Law, a separate written agreement, or an expressly applicable Service procedure, Waketrace may decline to investigate, negotiate, or provide a substantive response.

Waketrace may request additional information or verification, preserve relevant records, consult appropriate specialists or advisers, seek a response from an affected contributor where lawful and reasonably appropriate, and take interim measures where reasonably necessary to protect the Service, affected persons, or the integrity of relevant records.

Where Applicable Law requires Waketrace to take action, provide a response, conduct a review, or provide particular information or redress in relation to a notice, those requirements apply to the extent applicable.

Submission of a notice does not guarantee removal, restriction, correction, disclosure, or any other particular outcome. Waketrace determines the appropriate response based on the available information, applicable rights and obligations, and the circumstances of the matter.

Waketrace may preserve disputed or restricted information where reasonably necessary for legal, evidentiary, security, continuity, historical, or accountability purposes, subject to Applicable Law.

12.4 Emergency reports

A report alleging an imminent threat of death, serious bodily harm, kidnapping, or similarly grave danger should be marked EMERGENCY and submitted to abuse@waketrace.com.

Waketrace is not an emergency service. The reporter should also contact the competent local authority. Misuse of the emergency channel may result in restriction or other action.

12.5 Notice to affected contributors

Waketrace may notify or seek information from an affected contributor where it considers this useful and appropriate to the circumstances. Any such contact or disclosure is subject to Applicable Law and considerations of confidentiality, privacy, safety, security, evidence preservation, and other legitimate interests.

12.6 Appeals and reconsideration

Waketrace may provide a means for an affected person, affected recipient, or eligible notifier to request reconsideration of a decision. A request should identify the relevant decision and explain the grounds for reconsideration, with additional information or evidence where available.

Waketrace may review new information or other grounds raised and may affirm, modify, reverse, or otherwise revise the relevant decision where appropriate.

Where Applicable Law provides a right to review, appeal, human oversight, out-of-court dispute settlement, regulatory review, or judicial recourse, those rights and any applicable procedures or deadlines apply. Nothing in these Terms requires use of an internal review process before exercising a legal right unless Applicable Law permits or requires such a condition.

12.7 Abusive notices

You must not submit a knowingly false, fabricated, impersonated, or materially misleading notice, or knowingly misuse a copyright, privacy, safety, legal, regulatory, or infrastructure-provider process by materially misrepresenting authority, jurisdiction, legal effect, facts, or other material circumstances for the purpose of suppressing lawful Content.

This restriction does not limit good-faith complaints, protected disclosures, whistleblowing, regulatory reports, or access to courts.

12.8 Necessary onward disclosure

Waketrace may share complaint information with recipients where reasonably necessary for an identified lawful purpose, such as assessment, a required counter-notice process, legal advice, or a valid authority request. Waketrace may minimise or redact personal details, consider retaliation, confidentiality, source, and other relevant risks, use appropriate protected channels, and record the basis for sensitive disclosures where appropriate.

A complete complaint is not routinely sent to all listed categories of service providers or other parties. Required copyright counter-notice and legal-process disclosures are addressed through the relevant procedure. Waketrace does not promise confidentiality where disclosure is required by law, but submission of a complaint does not constitute unrestricted permission to disclose it.

13. Government, Defence, Intelligence, Law-Enforcement, and Public-Sector Users

13.0 No advance consent to governmental jurisdiction

Access to or use of publicly available Service content does not constitute consent by Waketrace to governmental jurisdiction, regulatory supervision, venue, service of process, disclosure obligations, contractual obligations, or other authority beyond that otherwise established by Applicable Law.

Nothing in these Terms constitutes an agreement by Waketrace to submit to the jurisdiction of a foreign government, ministry, agency, intelligence service, military authority, law-enforcement authority, regulator, administrative body, court, tribunal, or other public authority solely because that authority or a person acting for it accesses the publicly available Service.

A Government-Affiliated User’s acceptance of these Terms binds that user only to the extent that the user has legal capacity and authority to enter into the agreement. It does not, by itself, create contractual obligations of the user’s government, ministry, agency, employer, sovereign, or other organization unless that organization separately accepts a written agreement through an authorized representative.

Nothing in this Section prevents a competent authority from exercising jurisdiction or authority that Applicable Law independently confers. Waketrace does not waive any objection concerning jurisdiction, service, venue, sovereign immunity, official immunity, territorial reach, extraterritorial application, authenticity, proportionality, or legal sufficiency.

13.1 Scope and authority

This section applies to Government-Affiliated Users. A Government-Affiliated User who creates an account, accesses non-public data, obtains an API or feed, submits an official request, or enters a government-specific feature must accurately identify, as requested:

• the relevant organization;
• the user’s name and professional role;
• the jurisdiction;
• whether the access is official or personal; and
• the authority under which the user acts.

Viewing a public page does not, by itself, bind a government, agency, military, or public body. Organization-level access requires a separate written agreement signed by a person with appropriate contracting authority where such authority is required.

False, misleading, impersonated, or pretextual access to non-public features is prohibited.

Keep information about a known official purpose for future restricted access accurate, as described in section 13.2. A later change of purpose does not retrospectively change earlier lawful personal access or create unagreed fees.

13.2 Official access, changes of purpose and agreed pricing

A Government-Affiliated User may use personal access for personal safety, travel and other genuinely personal purposes. Employment by or affiliation with a public body does not by itself make that use official. For non-public features, a user must accurately disclose a known official purpose when Waketrace reasonably requests that information and must not knowingly misrepresent an official purpose to evade applicable access controls or a clearly disclosed licence restriction.

Before enabling a restricted official tier, feed, dashboard, export or other paid official service, Waketrace will identify the contracting entity and provide the applicable scope, permitted uses, prices, currency, billing basis, term and any renewal arrangements for acceptance. A government organization is bound only through a separately signed agreement executed by a person with actual contracting authority. An individual user’s acceptance or later conduct does not create an agency contract, a sovereign-immunity waiver or procurement authority. An individual is not personally liable for an organization’s fees merely because the individual accesses the Service in connection with work.

If the purpose of future non-public access changes from personal to official, notify government@waketrace.com and obtain the appropriate authorization before continuing the restricted official use. This applies equally to obtaining restricted non-public Content through an intermediary with the knowing purpose of circumventing the relevant controls. A later change of role, purpose or recipient does not reclassify earlier lawful access as official from its first use and does not retrospectively impose a different price.

Only fees that accrued under pricing already validly agreed by the liable contracting party are due. Any new tier or price applies prospectively after the required agreement. If Waketrace alleges deliberate misrepresentation, unauthorized access or another breach, Waketrace must establish the breach, the responsible person’s legally attributable conduct, causation and any recoverable loss. Waketrace may seek lawful access restrictions and actual damages or other remedies available under Applicable Law; these Terms do not impose an automatic penalty, hypothetical unagreed licence fees, or liability on a non-contracting government.

This section does not restrict public browsing; personal safety use; reporting a suspected crime, missing person or imminent danger; compliance with a reporting duty or valid legal process; protected whistleblowing; a lawful disclosure to a regulator, inspector general, ombudsman or court; or any other disclosure or activity that cannot lawfully be restricted. No identification, notification, payment or advance-approval requirement in this section applies to those protected activities. Nothing requires a person to withhold information from a competent authority or obstruct a lawful investigation.

13.3 Permitted official use

A Government-Affiliated User must not use an account, credential, restricted feature, non-public Content, or other access provided for an official purpose to obtain or use the Service for the user’s private commercial, financial, or other personal benefit outside the permissions and purposes applicable to that access. This does not restrict information the User independently obtains through lawful personal or public access.

13.4 Non-interference, anti-circumvention, and anti-retaliation covenant

To the fullest extent enforceable against the individual user and, where accepted through an authorized written agreement, the relevant organization, a Government-Affiliated User must not directly or indirectly:

(a) conduct, direct, facilitate, procure, fund, encourage, or knowingly assist an unauthorized cyber operation, intrusion, denial-of-service attack, disruption, technical interference, credential attack, or other unlawful interference against Waketrace, its Service, its users, contributors, sources, personnel, contractors, advisers, archives, or infrastructure;

(b) knowingly submit a false, fabricated, impersonated, materially incomplete, or materially misleading legal notice, demand, preservation request, legal process, regulatory complaint, provider complaint, or other formal request;

(c) use official authority, coercive authority, regulatory authority, procurement authority, licensing authority, investigative authority, or other governmental power for the purpose of retaliating against Waketrace or another person for lawful publication, lawful research, protected activity, protected disclosure, or good-faith exercise of legal rights;

(d) knowingly make a materially false representation concerning Waketrace’s legal status, ownership, activities, content, users, security, source provenance, or compliance status to an infrastructure provider or other intermediary for the purpose of causing service interruption or restriction;

(e) knowingly use deceptive or coercive means to cause a hosting provider, registrar, DNS provider, certificate authority, content-delivery network, security provider, app store, payment provider, financial institution, communications provider, archive, data provider, or other intermediary to disable, impair, suspend, seize, restrict, or materially interfere with Waketrace or its lawful distribution of Content;

(f) seek service-wide blocking, seizure, deplatforming, domain suspension, infrastructure termination, or equivalent broad interference where the stated legal objective can reasonably be addressed through a narrower lawful measure;

(g) interfere with Waketrace’s lawful ability to authenticate, investigate, preserve evidence, obtain legal advice, challenge or appeal a request, seek judicial review, narrow a request, comply with a valid order, or maintain an evidentiary record;

(h) circumvent access controls or misrepresent identity, authority, purpose, affiliation, or capacity to obtain restricted, non-public, source-identifying, or account information; or

(i) use the Service or information obtained through it for retaliation against a confidential source, whistleblower, victim, witness, journalist, humanitarian worker, lawful contributor, or other person exercising a protected legal right.

For purposes of this subsection, an otherwise lawful communication, regulatory filing, court proceeding, lawful investigation, compulsory process, judicial order, statutory reporting obligation, or other action that a competent authority is legally authorized or required to undertake is not prohibited merely because it may result in restriction of the Service or Content.

The existence of a governmental interest, national-security interest, law-enforcement interest, intelligence interest, public-order interest, diplomatic interest, or policy disagreement does not by itself establish that a request is lawful, binding, proportionate, properly directed, or sufficient to require service-wide restriction.

Nothing in this subsection prevents any person from making a truthful good-faith complaint, contacting a competent authority, complying with a legally binding obligation, exercising a statutory right, or seeking judicial relief.

13.5 Notice-first consultation for voluntary requests

For a genuinely voluntary non-emergency request, Waketrace asks the requesting official to send an authenticated written request to government@waketrace.com so that it can be assessed promptly. This preferred route is not a condition of exercising lawful authority and does not delay a binding shorter deadline or necessary lawful emergency action.

The request should identify:

• the requesting authority and responsible official;
• the official’s authority and verified contact information;
• the precise Content, account, data, or service concerned;
• the relevant jurisdiction and requested territorial scope;
• the applicable legal or policy basis;
• the facts supporting the request;
• the exact action requested;
• whether the request is compulsory or voluntary;
• the response deadline and authority imposing it; and
• any confidentiality, preservation, or user-notice restriction.

For an ordinary non-emergency voluntary request, Waketrace may request a cooperation period of up to 10 business days to assess the request, preserve appropriate records, seek clarification, propose a narrower lawful remedy, or obtain legal advice. A voluntary request does not require Waketrace to enter substantive negotiations or take the requested action unless an independent legal or contractual obligation applies. Any agreement to that period is effective only within the requesting person’s actual authority and where law permits. The request itself neither binds a government nor suspends a legal deadline.

Waketrace may seek clarification of the stated lawful objective and may consider whether correction, contextualization, redaction, reduced location precision, delayed publication, account-specific action, data-field restriction, territorial restriction, or item-specific removal would adequately address the concern.

This subsection governs voluntary or discretionary requests. It does not purport to delay or prevent execution of valid compulsory process, a binding order, a non-waivable governmental duty, or proportionate emergency action.

13.5A Specificity, necessity, proportionality, and least-restrictive measures

A request seeking restriction, removal, disclosure, preservation, blocking, disabling, or other interference with the Service or Content must, where legally applicable and to the extent reasonably practicable, be directed to the smallest reasonably identifiable Content, account, data field, feature, territory, or conduct necessary to accomplish the stated lawful objective.

Waketrace may reject, challenge, or seek clarification of a request that is materially broader than its stated legal objective, seeks information or action unrelated to the identified legal basis, seeks global restriction for a geographically limited issue, seeks removal of lawful Content when contextualization or another narrower remedy would adequately address the stated concern, or otherwise exceeds the authority identified in the request.

Where legally permissible, Waketrace may preserve the disputed Content and relevant provenance records while seeking clarification, judicial review, or a narrower remedy.

A request directed at a particular event, account, contributor, jurisdiction, data field, or item does not by itself authorize restriction of unrelated Content, unrelated users, independent archives, the broader event database, or the Service as a whole.

13.6 Legal process and official demands

A request seeking non-public account information, preservation, disclosure, restriction, removal, blocking, seizure, or other compulsory action should, where applicable:

• (a) identify the issuing authority and responsible official;
• (b) be transmitted through an authentic official channel capable of verification;
• (c) identify the jurisdiction and specific legal authority relied upon;
• (d) identify the person, entity, Content, account, data, service, territory, or activity concerned with reasonable specificity;
• (e) state the precise action sought;
• (f) state the factual and legal basis for the requested action;
• (g) state the requested response date and any legally binding deadline;
• (h) identify any prohibition on user notice or disclosure of the request;
• (i) be signed or otherwise authenticated in a manner reasonably sufficient to establish its origin and authority; and
• (j) use process legally binding upon Waketrace or another legally recognized mechanism applicable to the requested action.

Waketrace may verify authenticity, authority, jurisdiction, legal sufficiency, territorial reach, specificity, necessity, proportionality, and enforceability. Waketrace may seek clarification, object, challenge, appeal, seek judicial review, seek protective relief, seek to narrow the request, or require a foreign authority to use applicable treaty, mutual legal assistance, judicial-assistance, domestication, recognition, or other legally recognized procedures where direct process is not legally binding upon Waketrace.

No employee, contractor, service provider, or other person acting for Waketrace is authorized by these Terms to waive these requirements merely by receiving, acknowledging, forwarding, or discussing a governmental request.

A request does not become binding merely because it is marked urgent, confidential, classified, national-security related, diplomatic, intelligence-related, or otherwise sensitive.

Where immediate action is legally required, Waketrace may comply to the minimum extent required while preserving, to the fullest extent legally permitted, the affected Content, provenance information, audit records, and evidence necessary to challenge, review, or accurately document the action.

Waketrace will not disclose information where disclosure is prohibited by Applicable Law.

13.7 User notice and transparency

Unless prohibited by law, inconsistent with a valid confidentiality obligation, or reasonably likely to create a material safety, retaliation, evidence-preservation, or investigative risk, Waketrace may notify an affected user before or after disclosing non-public account information or taking restrictive action.

Waketrace may publish aggregate or appropriately redacted transparency information concerning government, legal, safety, privacy, copyright, and removal requests.

13.7A Government-request record

Subject to Applicable Law and valid confidentiality restrictions, Waketrace may maintain an internal record of material governmental, regulatory, law-enforcement, military, intelligence, defence, or judicial requests affecting the Service.

The record may include:

• (a) the requesting authority;
• (b) the date and time received;
• (c) the asserted jurisdiction;
• (d) the legal authority identified;
• (e) the Content, account, data, territory, or feature concerned;
• (f) the action requested;
• (g) whether the request was voluntary or compulsory;
• (h) the authentication or verification performed;
• (i) the response or action taken;
• (j) any objection, challenge, appeal, or request for narrowing;
• (k) the final disposition; and
• (l) any legally permissible transparency information.

Where lawful and reasonably practicable, Waketrace may publish aggregate, redacted, delayed, or otherwise protected transparency information concerning such requests.

A request is not converted into a lawful or binding request merely by being recorded, acknowledged, reviewed, or published.

13.8 Requests for data, analytics, or services

Enhanced or non-public datasets, bulk access, continuous feeds, custom analytics, monitoring, historical exports, research, integrations, priority support, source-development services, and government-specific deployments are available only under a separate written agreement.

A Government-Affiliated User seeking such access or services must use Waketrace’s authorized procurement, licensing, or business channel and obtain any required authorization before using the relevant service outside the permissions of the public Service.

A Government-Affiliated User or public-sector contracting entity remains responsible for agreed fees and other payment obligations arising under a validly executed agreement, subject to any mandatory law governing that entity. Internal procurement procedures, administrative delay, personnel changes, budgetary processes, approval delays, payment-processing failures, or changes in the identity or role of officials do not by themselves amend, suspend, or extinguish an agreed payment obligation.

For avoidance of doubt, the payment obligations under this section are subject to section 26.7 and are not suspended merely because the paying entity experiences circumstances that do not qualify as a Force Majeure Event under that section.

Where lawful and permitted by the applicable agreement, non-payment or materially delayed payment may result in suspension, restriction, non-renewal, or termination of the relevant paid service or access, without requiring Waketrace to continue providing the affected paid service indefinitely without compensation. Any such action remains subject to mandatory law, the governing agreement, and any non-waivable public-sector requirements.

Nothing in this section conditions compliance with a valid legal obligation on payment, purchase, contract award, gift, benefit, or other commercial consideration. The parties remain responsible for complying with Applicable Law governing the relevant transaction and their respective conduct.

13.9 No waiver of lawful authority or immunity

Nothing in these Terms:

• requires any person to violate Applicable Law or a binding legal obligation;
• creates immunity from Applicable Law;
• requires disclosure prohibited by law; or
• waives sovereign, diplomatic, governmental, or official immunity to the extent such immunity cannot lawfully be waived.

Nothing in this section limits a competent authority from exercising authority that Applicable Law independently confers, or prevents an infrastructure provider or other third party from independently responding to a lawful request or protecting its systems.

13.10 Consequences of misuse

A violation of this section may result in immediate suspension or termination of non-public access, preservation of relevant evidence, notice to the relevant organization or provider, and any other remedy available under Applicable Law or a separate written agreement.

14. Copyright Policy

14.1 Respect for copyright and action on notices

Users must submit material only where they have permission or another lawful basis, including an applicable copyright exception. Public accessibility does not itself establish permission to reproduce or distribute copyrighted material.

Waketrace may operate the copyright-notice, counter-notice, and repeat-infringer procedures described below and, where applicable, take the actions required to preserve any available safe-harbour protection under 17 U.S.C. § 512. A copyright notice is an allegation and does not constitute a judicial finding of infringement.

Copyright matters may also be governed by laws other than those of the United States. Nothing in this section excludes applicable copyright exceptions, licences, lawful uses, remedies, or court orders.

14.2 Copyright notice

A copyright owner or authorized representative may send a notice to the designated agent identified in section 14.5.

For a notice intended to qualify under the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the notice should include:

• (a) a physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act for the owner of the exclusive right allegedly infringed;
• (b) identification of the copyrighted work, or, where multiple works at one online site are covered, a representative list;
• (c) identification of the material claimed to infringe or to be the subject of infringing activity, together with information reasonably sufficient to locate it, such as a URL or event identifier;
• (d) information reasonably sufficient to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, email address;
• (e) a statement of a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or law; and
• (f) a statement that the information is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act for the owner of the exclusive right allegedly infringed.

A notice that does not contain the elements required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3) may not qualify as a notification under that provision. A materially deficient notice may also be assessed under any other applicable legal regime or obligation.

The existence of a licence, fair use, other copyright exception, or other lawful basis may be relevant to the assessment of a copyright complaint. Nothing in this section requires Waketrace to treat a copyright allegation as an established infringement before assessing the applicable rights and circumstances.

14.3 Counter-notice and restoration

Where material supplied by a subscriber has been removed or access disabled pursuant to a qualifying United States copyright notice and the subscriber believes the removal or disabling resulted from mistake or misidentification, the subscriber may send a counter-notice to the designated agent identified in section 14.5.

A counter-notice intended to qualify under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) must include substantially the required information, including:

• (a) the subscriber’s physical or electronic signature;
• (b) identification of the material removed or disabled and the location at which it appeared before removal or disabling;
• (c) a statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good-faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification; and
• (d) the subscriber’s name, address, and telephone number, together with the jurisdictional-consent and service-of-process statements required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3).

A qualifying counter-notice may be disclosed to the original notifier as required by applicable law. The statutory restoration period and requirements applicable to a qualifying counter-notice govern where 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) applies. Unless the required exception applies, the statute provides for restoration or cessation of disabling not less than 10 and not more than 14 business days after receipt of the qualifying counter-notice.

A counter-notice does not itself determine ownership, infringement, fair use, licence rights, or the merits of any judicial claim.

A separate restriction arising from an independent legal requirement or another lawful and independently applicable basis may remain in effect where permitted by Applicable Law. Such a restriction is not a substitute for compliance with a valid copyright counter-notice process where that process applies.

Do not include unrelated sensitive personal, security, source, or other confidential information in a copyright counter-notice.

14.4 Repeat infringement, misrepresentations, and technical measures

To the extent required for applicable safe-harbour protection, Waketrace maintains and reasonably implements a policy addressing termination of access in appropriate circumstances for subscribers or account holders who repeatedly infringe copyright.

In applying that policy, Waketrace may consider reliable evidence of repetition, withdrawals, successful counter-notices, mistaken identification, relevant court decisions, and other information bearing on whether repeated infringement has occurred. A fixed number of notices is not required before appropriate action is taken.

Waketrace may apply warnings, restrictions, suspension, or termination where justified by the circumstances and Applicable Law. It may also take reasonable measures to prevent a terminated subscriber or account holder from knowingly using another account to evade a termination imposed under this policy.

Waketrace will accommodate standard technical measures within the meaning of 17 U.S.C. § 512(i)(2) where applicable and to the extent required by that provision.

Knowingly materially misrepresenting that material or activity is infringing, or that material was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, may create liability under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).

A good-faith copyright notice, counter-notice, or lawful challenge is not treated as misconduct merely because it is disputed or ultimately unsuccessful.

14.5 Copyright contact and designated agent

Service provider: Waketrace LLC
Service-provider address: 16192 Coastal Highway, Lewes, Delaware 19958, United States of America
Website / alternate service name: waketrace.com / WakeTrace
Designated agent: Waketrace DMCA Compliance Department, Waketrace LLC
Agent mailing address: 16192 Coastal Highway, Lewes, Delaware 19958, United States of America
Telephone: +507 6335 9110
Email: dmca@waketrace.com

Where Waketrace relies on the designated-agent provisions of 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(2), it will maintain the required designation and the required publicly accessible information and will keep that information current as required by applicable regulation.

A designated-agent registration must be made electronically with the U.S. Copyright Office, and the applicable regulation requires the service provider to maintain current and accurate information and renew the designation on the applicable three-year cycle.

The existence of this policy or a designated agent does not itself establish eligibility for any particular safe harbour. Safe-harbour protection depends on satisfying the statutory conditions applicable to the relevant activity and claim.

This policy does not exclude other applicable copyright laws, lawful exceptions, remedies, or court orders.

15. Waketrace Intellectual Property and Permitted Use

Waketrace and its licensors retain all rights in Waketrace Content.

Rights are claimed only to the extent they actually exist. Waketrace does not claim exclusive copyright in underlying facts merely because they appear in its dataset, or in third-party material beyond the rights lawfully granted. Human-authored expression, original selection or arrangement, applicable database rights, trademarks, contractual access permissions and source rights are distinct. Any protection, reservation or restriction depends on its actual legal requirements; it does not override an applicable open licence or non-waivable exception.

Subject to these Terms, Waketrace grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and non-sublicensable licence to access and use the Service for its intended lawful purposes.

Where you separately enable device relay under section 5.5, this licence expressly permits your client to temporarily cache and transmit currently eligible packages solely through that feature and within the applicable sharing permissions. It does not authorise general mirroring, independent redistribution, a competing archive or AI training. This limited relay permission ends for a package when sharing authority expires or is withdrawn, or the package is removed or superseded, and remains subject to client controls and source rights. An express open-data or other licence supplied with particular material may grant additional lawful rights.

Unless Waketrace expressly authorizes it in writing or a separate data licence permits it, you may not:

• reproduce, publish, distribute, or reutilize a substantial portion of a Waketrace database;
• systematically extract smaller portions in a manner that substitutes for the Service;
• resell, sublicense, white-label, syndicate, or commercially exploit Waketrace Content;
• use Waketrace Content or other Service data controlled, supplied, licensed, or made available by Waketrace, in whole or in part, to train, pre-train, fine-tune, distill, test, evaluate, benchmark, enrich, augment, or otherwise develop or improve any artificial-intelligence or machine-learning model or system unless Waketrace has expressly authorized that use in a separate written agreement, data licence, or other written authorization specifically covering AI use. General access to the Service, public availability of Content, API or feed access, an ordinary Content licence, or any other permission that does not expressly authorize AI use does not authorize such use;
• mirror, frame, or create a confusingly similar version of the Service;
• remove attribution, rights notices, source warnings, confidence indicators, or provenance information;
• reverse engineer the Service except to the limited extent a non-waivable law permits; or
• use Waketrace names, logos, or marks in a manner likely to cause confusion or imply endorsement.

Rights in third-party source material remain with their respective owners. An open-data licence, public-domain designation, source-specific licence, or separate Waketrace licence may grant additional lawful rights in particular third-party material to the extent those rights independently apply. Such a licence does not by itself authorize use of Waketrace’s database, selection or arrangement, derived Service data, or other Waketrace-controlled data for artificial-intelligence or machine-learning purposes where these Terms require separate authorization.

16. APIs, Data Feeds, Bulk Access, Paid Services, and Enterprise Use

16.1 Additional terms

API access, bulk exports, data feeds, subscriptions, enterprise accounts, government accounts, custom research, and professional services may require an order form or separate agreement covering permitted users and purposes, data fields, territories, rates, security, confidentiality, retention, audit rights, service levels, and fees.

16.2 Credentials and technical limits

You must protect API keys and other credentials, comply with documentation and rate limits, and use reasonable security controls. Waketrace may rotate credentials, change schemas, correct or withdraw data, impose technical limits, and suspend access that threatens security, stability, legal compliance, or provider relationships.

16.3 Restricted downstream uses

Unless expressly permitted in writing, API, feed, export, and enterprise users may not:

• redistribute or resell data;
• create a competing database or substitute service;
• use data obtained through API, feed, export, bulk access, enterprise access, or another downstream delivery mechanism to train, pre-train, fine-tune, distill, test, evaluate, benchmark, enrich, augment, or otherwise develop or improve any artificial-intelligence or machine-learning model or system unless that use is expressly authorized in the applicable written agreement, data licence, or other written authorization specifically covering AI use; access to an API, feed, export, bulk dataset, enterprise account, or paid data service does not by itself authorize AI use;
• retain deleted, corrected, or restricted Personal Data contrary to law or the applicable agreement; or
• remove required attribution, provenance, correction, or confidence information.

Waketrace may require downstream recipients to delete, correct, restrict, or stop using particular data where reasonably necessary for legal compliance, safety, source rights, or data integrity.

16.4 Prices, supply, cancellation and refunds

Before a paid order becomes binding, the purchase page or order form states the supplier, material service characteristics, total price and applicable taxes or their calculation, currency, billing interval, minimum term, renewal mechanism, cancellation method, relevant technical requirements, material limitations and any applicable withdrawal or refund rights. No undisclosed charge or retrospective price increase is created by these Terms. An optional extra requires an affirmative order, not a preselected paid option.

The purchase is confirmed in a durable form where required. The consumer’s legal status is determined by law, including where a business purchaser qualifies for statutory protection. A consumer may exercise applicable cooling-off, withdrawal, cancellation, conformity and other mandatory rights. Early supply of digital content or services, and any lawful effect on withdrawal rights or proportionate charges, require the particular advance request, consent, acknowledgement and confirmation mandated for that product and jurisdiction. General acceptance of these Terms is not a substitute.

Renewal prices and timing are clearly disclosed before purchase, with reminders and renewed agreement where law requires. Cancellation is available through the disclosed, accessible purchase or account channel; a user may also contact support@waketrace.com if that channel fails. Cancellation stops further renewals as stated at purchase without reducing accrued statutory rights. A material price or service change is notified before it takes effect and does not rewrite a prepaid fixed commitment without a valid agreement or legal basis.

Waketrace honours express paid-service descriptions and applicable statutory guarantees. If Waketrace discontinues or materially fails to supply an agreed paid feature, it provides the remedy required by law or agreement, including any applicable repair, re-supply, price reduction, cancellation or refund. Where Waketrace ends a prepaid service for its own convenience, the unused portion is refunded unless the user freely agrees to an equivalent alternative. A user-caused breach does not justify retaining amounts that law requires to be returned.

For commercial purchases outside mandatory consumer protection, disclosed agreed refund and cancellation terms govern, subject to the foregoing express commitments. A purchase does not guarantee an unpromised source or third-party field. Material availability limitations must be stated before payment, not first introduced after purchase.

17. Third-Party Sources, Services, and Infrastructure Providers

17.1 Third-party sources and links

The Service may include information from or links to governments, media organizations, social networks, research institutions, mapping services, data vendors, and other third parties. Waketrace does not control and does not necessarily endorse those sources.

Third-party content, availability, licences, accuracy, and policies may change without notice. Your use of a third-party service is governed by that third party’s terms. You may not use Waketrace to circumvent a source’s lawful access restrictions.

17.2 Infrastructure providers and continuity

Waketrace may use multiple independent hosting, storage, networking, DNS, security, content-delivery, communications, archival, and other infrastructure providers.

No single infrastructure provider is represented as being subject to these Terms merely because Waketrace uses that provider. Infrastructure providers remain entitled to exercise their own lawful contractual and legal rights.

Where Waketrace receives a provider complaint, suspension notice, termination notice, governmental demand, regulatory demand, or other action that may materially affect Service continuity, Waketrace may, where lawful and reasonably practicable:

• (a) authenticate and document the request or notice;
• (b) preserve the affected Content, provenance records, configuration records, audit records, and other evidence reasonably necessary to establish what occurred;
• (c) request the specific contractual, legal, security, or policy basis;
• (d) seek clarification, correction, reconsideration, or a narrower remedy;
• (e) seek judicial, regulatory, contractual, or other lawful review;
• (f) transfer or reproduce lawful Service data and operational capability to independent infrastructure where permitted;
• (g) reduce reliance on the affected provider;
• (h) use independent archival or peer-distribution mechanisms; and
• (i) maintain continuity through alternative lawful infrastructure where reasonably practicable.

A provider’s contractual or legal rights are not restricted by these Terms. Conversely, Waketrace does not represent that a provider’s action is lawful merely because the provider asserts a contractual, governmental, security, or policy basis for that action.

Waketrace will not knowingly misrepresent the legal status, ownership, provenance, or nature of Content to an infrastructure provider.

Where a provider requests restriction of specific Content, Waketrace may, where lawful and reasonably practicable, seek a targeted remedy rather than service-wide suspension.

Nothing in this subsection requires Waketrace to breach a binding infrastructure agreement, Applicable Law, or a valid legal order.

18. Privacy and data protection

The Privacy Notice describes how Waketrace processes information, including relevant categories and sources, purposes, applicable legal bases, recipients, retention, international processing, automated tools, and available rights.

The legal character and responsibility of any processing are determined by the actual activities, relationships, establishments, instructions, infrastructure, transactions, persons involved, and other circumstances relevant under Applicable Law. No label, allocation, licence, consent, contractual provision, or infrastructure arrangement in these Terms by itself creates, removes, transfers, or determines a legal responsibility that Applicable Law independently imposes.

Waketrace may establish, maintain, relocate, replace, mirror, replicate, distribute, or discontinue principal or supporting processing infrastructure, including server hardware, in any jurisdiction or jurisdictions selected by Waketrace. The location or relocation of infrastructure does not by itself amend these Terms, constitute consent or submission to the jurisdiction, venue, regulatory supervision, service of process, disclosure regime, or other authority of the jurisdiction in which infrastructure is located, or waive any objection, immunity, protection, remedy, or procedural safeguard otherwise available to Waketrace.

No change in the location, ownership, operation, replication, or routing of processing infrastructure by itself changes the contractual identity of Waketrace, creates a separate contracting party, establishes an exclusive governing law, or constitutes a waiver of rights or protections applicable before the change. Waketrace may continue to rely on any protection, right, exemption, immunity, procedural safeguard, jurisdictional objection, or other legal position that remains available under Applicable Law notwithstanding a change in infrastructure location.

Nothing in this section is intended to exclude a law that Applicable Law validly makes applicable to a particular processing activity, person, establishment, transaction, infrastructure component, or circumstance. Where multiple legal regimes apply, Waketrace may assert and preserve all rights, protections, objections, exemptions, remedies, and procedural safeguards available under each applicable regime to the extent they are legally compatible.

Waketrace may use infrastructure, service providers, personnel, communications systems, security services, payment providers, processors, subprocessors, or other operational resources in multiple jurisdictions. Where Applicable Law requires a specific agreement, transfer mechanism, safeguard, notice, authorization, or other instrument for particular processing or a particular relationship, the applicable instrument or requirement governs that processing or relationship to the extent legally required.

Where Waketrace acts as a processor, joint controller, controller, or in another legally recognised capacity, that status and the corresponding obligations are determined by the actual circumstances. Where Applicable Law requires a data-processing agreement, controller arrangement, transfer mechanism, or other legal instrument, Waketrace may establish that arrangement separately for the relevant service or relationship. No such arrangement authorises processing that Applicable Law otherwise prohibits.

Waketrace applies technical and organisational safeguards appropriate to the nature and circumstances of relevant processing. No system is guaranteed completely secure.

Privacy requests may be submitted through the contact method identified in the Privacy Notice. Applicable legal periods, verification requirements, procedures, and available remedies are governed by Applicable Law and the Privacy Notice.

19. Sanctions, Export Controls, and Data-Security Restrictions

Nothing in these Terms authorizes or requires Waketrace or any User to violate Applicable Law, including applicable sanctions, export controls, restrictions on prohibited transactions, or legally binding controls governing restricted information or transfers.

A User must not knowingly use the Service in a manner that would cause Waketrace to undertake a transaction or provide access that Waketrace is legally prohibited from providing.

The subject matter, sensitivity, classification, defence-related character, governmental character, or disputed provenance of User Content does not by itself make that Content prohibited under this section. Waketrace may receive, preserve, assess, contextualize, or publish information concerning restricted, classified, defence-related, governmental, intelligence, security, or other sensitive matters where doing so is lawful.

Waketrace may apply reasonable identity, account, access, transaction, geographic, technical, contractual, or other controls where reasonably necessary to comply with Applicable Law or protect Waketrace from a legally prohibited transaction. Waketrace may restrict, suspend, refuse, or terminate affected access where reasonably necessary for that purpose.

Nothing in this section requires Waketrace to determine, regulate, or monitor the lawful downstream purpose of information after it has been lawfully provided, except to the extent such action is necessary to protect Waketrace’s own legal rights, obligations, systems, or services.

Users must not knowingly circumvent a restriction imposed under this section.

19A. Service Continuity, Distributed Preservation, and Resilience

19A.1 Continuity Objective

Waketrace’s continuity architecture is intended to support the availability, integrity, provenance, accountability, and historical continuity of the Service and its records notwithstanding interruption, restriction, suspension, termination, compromise, or unavailability of individual infrastructure components, subject to Applicable Law and the actual continuity resources available at the relevant time.

The Service is not defined solely by any particular domain name, website address, server, hosting provider, network, application interface, storage system, or other technical endpoint. The loss or unavailability of any such component does not, by itself, constitute termination of the Service or extinguish records, provenance, publication history, preservation rights, licenses, or other rights associated with material previously processed or published through the Service.

19A.2 Continuity Event

A “Continuity Event” means any actual, threatened, anticipated, or reasonably foreseeable circumstance that may materially impair the availability, integrity, provenance, preservation, distribution, or continued operation of the Service or its records. A Continuity Event may include infrastructure failure, provider termination or restriction, domain or DNS disruption, network blocking, cyberattack, unauthorized access, seizure or loss of equipment, governmental or regulatory action, legal process, coordinated abuse or complaint activity, financial or payment disruption, telecommunications failure, natural disaster, armed conflict, civil disorder, or other event capable of materially impairing a Service endpoint or infrastructure dependency.

19A.3 Distributed Infrastructure

To support continuity, Waketrace may maintain or establish redundant, geographically distributed, independently administered, independently operated, or otherwise separately controlled infrastructure, including alternative hosting, storage, databases, networks, DNS, domains, content-distribution systems, security systems, archival systems, backup systems, publication endpoints, APIs, feeds, and peer-to-peer distribution systems.

No individual infrastructure dependency is intended to constitute the sole repository of the Service or its historical records where reasonably practicable alternatives can be maintained.

19A.4 Activation of Continuity Measures

Upon a Continuity Event, Waketrace may, to the extent lawful and reasonably practicable, activate continuity measures without waiting for the affected endpoint or infrastructure component to become permanently unavailable. Such measures may include migration, replication, restoration, reconstruction, reconfiguration, geographic redistribution, activation of alternate infrastructure, restoration from preserved records, publication through alternate lawful endpoints, and reduction or replacement of affected infrastructure dependencies.

Nothing in this Section requires Waketrace to disclose the location, identity, architecture, credentials, security configuration, personnel, operators, or other sensitive details of continuity infrastructure where disclosure would materially increase security or continuity risk.

19A.5 Preservation of Records During a Continuity Event

Where reasonably practicable and legally permissible, Waketrace may preserve affected records and associated evidence before, during, or following a Continuity Event. Preservation may include the relevant Content, event identifiers, timestamps, publication history, source and provenance information, integrity information, hashes or cryptographic signatures where used, correction history, moderation history, relevant system records, and records sufficient to establish the existence and historical status of material.

Preservation may occur independently of the continued availability of the public presentation layer.

19A.6 Independence of Presentation and Preservation

The public availability of a record through a particular Service endpoint and the continued existence of the underlying record are separate matters. A record may remain preserved, replicated, archived, or otherwise maintained notwithstanding temporary or permanent unavailability of a particular public endpoint.

Conversely, restoration of an endpoint does not require Waketrace to disregard an established preservation, correction, restriction, or archival state.

19A.7 Historical Integrity and Provenance

Waketrace may retain an archival or evidentiary representation of material that has been corrected, restricted, removed, superseded, migrated, or otherwise altered where retention is reasonably necessary to preserve provenance, historical continuity, evidence of publication, correction history, evidence integrity, or accountability, subject to Applicable Law and legitimate privacy, safety, and other legally protected interests.

Where material is materially altered or restricted, Waketrace may retain records sufficient to establish, where reasonably practicable, what material existed, when it existed, its relevant provenance, what alteration or restriction occurred, and the stated basis for that action.

19A.8 No Retroactive Erasure of Historical State

Subject to Applicable Law, a later correction, restriction, removal, dispute, provider action, governmental request, or other event does not require Waketrace to represent that previously published material never existed. Where lawful and reasonably necessary for historical integrity, Waketrace may preserve the existence, provenance, publication history, correction history, and relevant disposition of previously published material even when the material is no longer publicly displayed in its original form.

19A.9 Distributed and Independent Copies

Where Content or Service records have been lawfully distributed through peer-to-peer systems, independent archives, backups, replicas, syndication, APIs, feeds, or other distribution mechanisms, Waketrace may maintain or facilitate continuity of such lawful copies to the extent permitted by Applicable Law.

Waketrace does not represent that a copy previously distributed to an independent recipient can be recalled, deleted, modified, or otherwise controlled by Waketrace.

19A.10 Continuity Does Not Depend Upon a Single Operator

Where reasonably practicable, Waketrace may structure continuity arrangements so that interruption, termination, compromise, incapacity, or unavailability of one provider, operator, administrator, facility, jurisdiction, or infrastructure component does not automatically eliminate the ability to preserve or restore the Service and its records through other lawful means.

The existence of such arrangements does not require Waketrace to publicly identify every continuity resource or disclose operational details whose disclosure could reasonably compromise continuity or security.

19A.11 Integrity of Continuity Copies

Where technically available and reasonably practicable, Waketrace may use integrity controls for preserved or replicated records, including timestamps, hashes, signatures, immutable or append-only records, provenance metadata, version histories, or comparable mechanisms. Such mechanisms may be used to establish continuity and detect unauthorized alteration but do not independently establish the truth of an underlying allegation, event, or analytical conclusion.

19A.12 Preservation of Suppression or Restriction Events

Where lawful and reasonably necessary for accountability or historical integrity, Waketrace may retain records concerning material restrictions affecting the Service, including the existence of a request or action, the requesting or acting authority or entity, the stated legal or operational basis, the material or functionality affected, the geographic or user scope asserted, the action taken, and subsequent correction, challenge, reversal, or disposition.

The existence of such a record does not constitute a determination that the underlying request or action was lawful, unlawful, accurate, inaccurate, justified, or unjustified.

19A.13 Targeted Measures and Service-Wide Effects

Where an issue concerns identifiable Content, a particular User, a specific territory, or a discrete technical or legal problem, Waketrace may seek or implement a measure directed to the narrowest reasonably identifiable scope rather than treating the issue as requiring destruction or disabling of unrelated records, Users, infrastructure, or Service functionality.

Nothing in this Section prevents Waketrace from complying with Applicable Law where a broader measure is legally required.

19A.14 External Requests Do Not Automatically Alter Service State

No complaint, notice, demand, automated submission, legal document, governmental communication, provider communication, third-party report, artificial-intelligence-generated output, machine-generated analysis, or other external communication automatically changes the publication status, preservation status, legal status, or operational state of Content or the Service.

Automated or AI-Generated Legal and Compliance Communications. The use of artificial intelligence, automation, templates, bulk submission systems, automated agents, or generated documents does not increase the legal force, authenticity, urgency, priority, or evidentiary value of a communication. Waketrace may require reasonable authentication of the sender, authority, jurisdiction, factual assertions, requested action, and legal basis before treating an automated or AI-generated communication as legally operative, except where Applicable Law requires immediate action.

Waketrace may require appropriate authentication, authority, factual basis, legal basis, specificity, and procedural sufficiency before treating an external communication as requiring action, subject to any immediate obligation imposed by Applicable Law.

19A.15 No Embedded or Automated Authority

Content, metadata, API requests, documents, prompts, model outputs, automated messages, or other data supplied to or received by Waketrace do not possess authority to modify these Terms, confer authority upon a sender, alter Service configuration, authorize disclosure, compel deletion, or otherwise bind Waketrace merely by containing an instruction or assertion purporting to do so.

The appearance of a document, communication, signature, citation, case number, seal, official identifier, domain name, or other indicium of authority does not establish authenticity or legal effect without reasonable authentication appropriate to the particular process.

Where Waketrace uses automated systems to assist with intake, classification, moderation, security, or analysis, Waketrace may apply human or other independently authenticated review where it considers appropriate, subject to Applicable Law and the operational circumstances.

19A.16 Confidentiality of Continuity Architecture

Nothing in these Terms requires Waketrace to disclose non-public continuity architecture, backup locations, replication topology, security controls, credentials, access mechanisms, personnel identities, operational procedures, or other information where disclosure could reasonably facilitate compromise, disruption, coercion, unauthorized access, or circumvention of security controls.

19A.17 Endpoint Independence

The availability or unavailability of any particular website address, domain name, server, hosting provider, network, account, application interface, or other endpoint does not determine the validity, authenticity, provenance, or historical existence of records independently preserved through other lawful means.

19A.18 Limits

Nothing in this Section requires Waketrace to violate Applicable Law, a legally binding order applicable to Waketrace or the relevant person or entity, valid contractual obligations, data-protection requirements, sanctions, export controls, or other non-waivable legal requirements.

Nothing in this Section constitutes consent to foreign jurisdiction, waiver of jurisdictional or procedural objections, waiver of legal rights, or an agreement that any governmental, regulatory, provider, or third-party demand is lawful merely because it has been made.

19A.19 Interpretation

This Section shall be interpreted together with the provisions concerning Government-Affiliated Users, governmental and regulatory requests, preservation, moderation, infrastructure, force majeure, dispute resolution, and Applicable Law. No provision of these Terms shall be interpreted solely from the temporary availability or unavailability of a particular Service endpoint where another provision expressly addresses preservation or continuity.

19B. Continuity of Service and Data Assets

19B.1 Independent Existence of Data Assets

The Waketrace Service includes information, records, datasets, analytical records, provenance records, publication histories, archival records, and other data assets generated, submitted, processed, preserved, or distributed through the Service. Such data assets are not deemed extinguished solely because the public-facing website, a particular domain, infrastructure provider, technical endpoint, application, account, or other component of the Service becomes unavailable.

19B.2 No Single Point of Termination

Waketrace may be structured and operated so that no single provider, infrastructure component, domain, jurisdiction, administrator, account, facility, or technical endpoint constitutes the sole means by which the Service or its preserved data assets can continue to exist.

19B.3 Continuity Following Interruption

If any component of the Service becomes unavailable, restricted, terminated, compromised, seized, blocked, disconnected, or otherwise impaired, Waketrace may preserve and restore the Service and its data assets through other lawful infrastructure, providers, domains, networks, archival systems, distribution systems, or technical means.

Such continuity does not require the replacement infrastructure to be identical to the affected infrastructure and may involve changes in providers, jurisdictions, technical architecture, domains, interfaces, or distribution methods.

19B.4 Preservation of the Underlying Dataset

Subject to Applicable Law, Waketrace may maintain independent copies, backups, replicas, archives, exports, or other preservation representations of the Service’s data assets so that loss or unavailability of the primary presentation layer does not necessarily result in loss of the underlying dataset.

19B.5 Restoration and Reconstruction

Where a Service component is lost or unavailable, Waketrace may reconstruct or restore substantially equivalent functionality from preserved code, configuration, data, documentation, records, and other lawful resources.

A reconstructed or migrated Service may operate under a successor domain, infrastructure arrangement, technical architecture, or service endpoint without constituting creation of an entirely new Service for purposes of historical continuity, provenance, or preservation.

19B.6 Preservation of Historical Identity

Migration, reconstruction, replication, or restoration does not by itself sever the historical continuity of the Service. Waketrace may preserve records sufficient to establish relationships between predecessor and successor infrastructure, including publication history, dataset lineage, timestamps, provenance, version history, and other integrity information.

19B.7 Continuity After Provider Termination

Termination or suspension by an infrastructure, hosting, storage, network, domain, security, payment, communications, or other service provider does not by itself constitute termination of Waketrace or its data assets. Subject to Applicable Law and applicable contractual obligations, Waketrace may transition affected functions or data to alternative infrastructure.

19B.8 Continuity After Governmental or Regulatory Action

Governmental, regulatory, law-enforcement, intelligence, military, judicial, or administrative action affecting one component of the Service does not, by itself, establish that unrelated components, records, Users, infrastructure, or data assets must also be terminated, deleted, disabled, or destroyed.

Where legally permissible, Waketrace may seek to limit any such action to its legally required scope while preserving unaffected Service components and records.

19B.9 Preservation of Legal and Operational Rights

No interruption, suspension, termination, migration, compromise, provider action, governmental action, or other Continuity Event automatically extinguishes accrued contractual rights, intellectual-property rights, preservation rights, evidentiary rights, dispute rights, claims, defenses, licenses, or other rights that survive under these Terms or Applicable Law.

19B.10 Continuity Is Not Circumvention

Continuity measures under this Section are intended to preserve lawful Service operation, records, provenance, and historical continuity. Nothing in this Section authorizes circumvention of Applicable Law, a legally binding order, sanctions, export controls, valid contractual restrictions, or other non-waivable legal requirements.

19B.11 Preservation of the Record of Interference

Where lawful, Waketrace may preserve records concerning material attempts to impair the Service or its data assets, including relevant requests, notices, provider actions, restrictions, outages, technical events, or other circumstances materially affecting availability or continuity.

Such records may be retained as part of the historical record of the Service regardless of whether the affected endpoint or infrastructure component is subsequently restored, replaced, or permanently discontinued.

19B.12 No Representation of Permanent Availability

Nothing in these Terms constitutes a guarantee that the Service will be continuously available, that any particular endpoint will remain operational, or that any particular infrastructure provider will continue to provide services. The purpose of this Section is to establish that reasonable interruption or loss of an individual component does not necessarily constitute termination of the Service or destruction of its preserved data assets.

20. Suspension, Restriction, and Termination

20.1 Grounds for action

Waketrace may restrict, suspend, or terminate access where it reasonably believes that:

• you breached these Terms or supplemental terms;
• your Content or conduct is unlawful;
• your access creates a material security, safety, privacy, legal, sanctions, or operational risk;
• your identity, affiliation, authority, billing, or account information is false or cannot reasonably be verified;
• you failed to cooperate with a reasonable misuse, security, provenance, or provider investigation;
• action is required by legal process or Applicable Law;
• action is required to comply with an infrastructure-provider obligation;
• your activity impairs or threatens the Service or another system;
• required fees remain unpaid; or
• action is reasonably necessary to protect Waketrace, its users, sources, personnel, vendors, or the public.

20.2 Notice and cure

Where reasonably practicable and lawful, Waketrace may provide notice and an opportunity to correct a remediable breach. Immediate action may be taken for serious, repeated, deceptive, unlawful, security-related, provider-related, or emergency conduct.

20.3 Effect of termination

After termination:

• your permission to access the Service ends;
• Waketrace may disable credentials and access tokens;
• unpaid amounts remain due;
• public User Content may be removed, retained, corrected, de-identified, or archived in accordance with these Terms and the Privacy Notice; and
• Waketrace may retain records reasonably necessary for legal compliance, security, fraud prevention, audit, dispute resolution, source integrity, and evidence preservation.

Account deletion does not necessarily remove copies already lawfully distributed, independently archived, or retained under a legal obligation.

Sections that by their nature should survive — including licences already granted, intellectual-property provisions, payment obligations, disclaimers, liability limits, indemnity, dispute provisions, and preservation rights — survive termination.

For avoidance of doubt, termination or suspension of a User’s access, or interruption of any particular Service endpoint or infrastructure component, does not prevent Waketrace from exercising its rights under Section 19A to preserve, archive, replicate, migrate, restore, or otherwise maintain continuity of Service records and lawful publication infrastructure, subject to Applicable Law.

21. Service limitations and express commitments

The opening risk notice and section 3 describe the informational nature of Waketrace Content, including source status, uncertainty, verification limitations, and the limits of availability and dynamic information. Waketrace does not promise complete event detection, perfect source accuracy, uninterrupted availability, or prevention of every loss. Coordinates, translations, classifications, risk predictions, alerts, and other dynamic information may be affected by uncertainty, source changes, connectivity, timing, incomplete information, technical limitations, or other circumstances outside Waketrace’s control. Users should independently verify consequential information using sources appropriate to the circumstances.

Those limitations do not retract an express service description, paid commitment, the Privacy Notice, a separately agreed service level, or a duty imposed on Waketrace by Applicable Law. Waketrace will not represent a report as verified, an alert as guaranteed, or a route as safe beyond what its available evidence and actual functionality support.

For commercial users to whom the relevant exclusions may lawfully apply, the Service is otherwise supplied as is and as available, without implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement to the extent such warranties can lawfully be excluded. Mandatory guarantees, remedies, and liabilities, including applicable consumer, privacy, and personal-injury rights, remain unaffected.

Section 22 states the specific liability allocation. Nothing in this section transfers Waketrace’s own legal responsibilities to a User merely because information or risk limitations are disclosed, and no warning in this section constitutes a waiver of rights or liabilities that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

22. Limitation of Liability

22.1 Rights and liabilities that are preserved

Nothing in these Terms, including sections 21–23, excludes or limits any liability, right, remedy, guarantee, or obligation that Applicable Law does not permit to be excluded or limited. This includes, where and to the extent applicable, liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, wilful misconduct, gross negligence, death or personal injury caused by legally actionable conduct, mandatory consumer guarantees and remedies, and non-waivable data-protection rights and remedies.

Regulatory powers, investigations, enforcement rights, penalties, and remedies that cannot lawfully be restricted by contract are unaffected.

Whether a person has consumer or comparable statutory protection is determined by Applicable Law and the circumstances of the transaction, not solely by account type, citizenship, server location, or designation as a Business User. Nothing in these Terms is intended to contract out of mandatory consumer, privacy, personal-injury, or other non-waivable rights.

22.2 Consumer and personal use

For personal or household use, liability and available remedies are governed by the express commitments in these Terms and Applicable Law. The commercial exclusions and monetary cap in section 22.3 do not apply to the extent their application would be prohibited by Applicable Law.

Nothing in this section guarantees complete event detection, accuracy, uninterrupted delivery, continuity, frequency, timeliness, or prevention of harm. Considering or relying upon an alert, report, photograph, coordinate, recording, third-party source, or other Content does not by itself establish liability or constitute a guarantee of any particular result.

22.3 Ordinary commercial risk and information value

For a Business User’s use other than personal or household use, and subject always to section 22.1, the Service is supplied as an information and data service and not as a guarantee of any particular informational, operational, commercial, financial, intelligence, investigative, security, safety, or other outcome.

Fees paid for the Service purchase access to the applicable Content, data, functionality, feed, export, or other service as provided under the relevant agreement. Fees do not represent payment for any particular frequency, completeness, accuracy, timeliness, continuity, discovery rate, economic value, avoided loss, commercial opportunity, decision outcome, operational effect, intelligence value, or downstream result.

No Service, Content, feed, alert, report, coordinate, image, recording, dataset, or other information supplied by Waketrace constitutes a guarantee of any particular intelligence, operational, tactical, investigative, security, financial, commercial, safety, or other result.

Waketrace does not assume responsibility for the value attributed to particular Content after publication or delivery, or for any consequence arising from a User’s or third party’s receipt, interpretation, reliance upon, failure to receive, delay in receiving, or use of that Content. The economic, strategic, operational, investigative, intelligence, or other importance subsequently attributed to particular information does not by itself determine or increase Waketrace’s liability.

To the extent permitted by Applicable Law, Waketrace is not liable for indirect, consequential, special, incidental, exemplary, punitive, or similar loss, or for lost profits, revenue, business opportunity, goodwill, anticipated savings, avoided loss, economic advantage, or other downstream value arising from the Service.

The parties acknowledge that the value of individual information, data points, reports, photographs, recordings, coordinates, alerts, or other Content may be unknowable at the time of publication or delivery and may vary substantially depending on subsequent circumstances and independent third-party decisions. No subsequent valuation of particular Content establishes a contractual measure of damages or expands Waketrace’s liability beyond the allocation stated in these Terms or the applicable agreement.

Subject to section 22.1, the total aggregate liability of Waketrace and the persons protected by section 22.4 for ordinary commercial claims arising from the same event or materially connected series of events will not exceed the greater of US$100 or the fees actually paid by the Business User to Waketrace for the affected Service during the 12 months immediately preceding the first event giving rise to the claim, unless a separately signed agreement expressly provides a different limitation.

The allocation in this section applies to contractual claims and, where Applicable Law permits, corresponding claims arising under tort, negligence, misrepresentation, equity, statute, or another legal theory. It does not exclude an essential remedy or liability that Applicable Law requires to remain available.

22.4 Scope and attribution

The protections in section 22.3 extend to Waketrace’s members, managers, officers, employees, contractors, affiliates, licensors, and service providers only to the extent they may lawfully receive the benefit of those protections and only in relation to the contracted Service. Each such person is an intended third-party beneficiary of the applicable protection to the fullest extent permitted by Applicable Law.

The limitation is shared for the same event or materially connected series of events and is not multiplied by the number of protected persons. It does not alter corporate separateness, the law governing an individual’s own conduct, or liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Nothing in these Terms imposes a liability limitation on a regulator, a person identified in Content, or another non-party that has not otherwise validly accepted these Terms.

A source error, third-party act, outage, unauthorized access, governmental action, infrastructure event, or other external event does not by itself constitute a blanket exclusion of Waketrace’s own legally attributable conduct. Loss attributable to a User or independent third party is allocated according to Applicable Law.

The limitations and verification guidance in section 21 describe the nature and reasonable use of the Service but do not, by themselves, eliminate liability that remains applicable under this section or Applicable Law.

23. Indemnification for Attributable Business Misuse

23.1 Limited scope and indemnity

This section applies only to a Business User acting as the contracting party for commercial or organizational use. It does not impose an indemnity on a person acquiring the Service as a consumer to the extent prohibited by Applicable Law, and it does not impose an indemnity on an individual merely because the individual uses an employer’s account or credentials.

A covered Business User will indemnify and hold harmless Waketrace and its affiliates, members, managers, officers, employees, contractors, agents, licensors, and service providers from and against damages, liabilities, losses, settlements, judgments, costs, and reasonable and necessary expenses, including legal fees and other defence costs, arising from a third-party claim to the extent caused by that Business User’s material breach of these Terms.

Covered breaches may include, where applicable, material breaches concerning rights in User Content, deliberate material misrepresentation, unauthorized redistribution or use, prohibited access, or other conduct expressly prohibited by these Terms.

Conduct of personnel, agents, contractors, or other persons acting for a Business User is attributable to the Business User only to the extent provided by the applicable agreement and Applicable Law. Use of compromised credentials alone does not establish attribution.

The indemnity applies only to the legally attributable portion of the claim and resulting loss. No indemnity applies to the extent a claim or loss results from a protected person’s own breach, negligence, unlawful conduct, unauthorized modification or use of Content, or other legally attributable fault. There will be no double recovery or recovery for amounts caused by unrelated conduct.

The indemnity does not transfer a regulator’s powers, a non-transferable legal duty, or fines or penalties that Applicable Law does not permit to be shifted. A mere allegation does not establish an indemnity obligation. The obligation arises from the covered conduct and resulting third-party claim as established under these Terms and Applicable Law.

23.2 Defence and settlement

Waketrace will provide reasonably prompt written notice of a covered third-party claim and reasonably available supporting information. A delay in notice reduces the Business User’s obligations only to the extent the delay materially prejudices the defence.

The Business User may assume the defence with competent counsel reasonably acceptable to Waketrace and is responsible for reasonable and necessary defence costs attributable to the covered claim as they are incurred. Waketrace may participate with its own counsel where it reasonably determines that separate representation is appropriate, including where an actual or reasonably foreseeable conflict of interest exists.

If the Business User fails to conduct a timely and reasonable defence after notice, or separate representation is reasonably required because of a conflict, Waketrace may take reasonable steps to protect its interests and recover the reasonable and necessary costs attributable to the covered claim.

Neither party may settle a covered claim at the other’s expense or impose on the other an admission of liability, non-monetary obligation, restriction, continuing obligation, or payment without that party’s written consent. Consent will not be unreasonably withheld where the settlement is paid in full by the indemnifying party, provides the protected persons with a complete and unconditional release from the covered claim, and imposes no admission or continuing obligation upon them.

The parties will cooperate reasonably in the defence, settlement, and allocation of covered and uncovered portions of a claim. Nothing requires either party to waive a legal privilege, confidentiality protection, or independent legal right.

23.3 Public-sector agreements

A government or public body has an indemnity obligation only if a separately signed agreement expressly creates it, the signatory has actual authority, and the obligation is valid under the body’s governing and procurement laws.

These Terms do not create a government indemnity by inference, account use, access to the Service, or retroactive classification, and do not make an official personally guarantee an organizational indemnity obligation unless that person separately and lawfully undertakes such an obligation.

23.4 Advancement and Separate Representation

Where a Protected Person becomes subject to a claim, investigation, proceeding, subpoena, demand, interview request, deposition, regulatory inquiry, administrative proceeding, or other process arising from authorized Waketrace activity, Waketrace may provide or arrange separate counsel and, to the fullest extent permitted by Applicable Law and the organizational agreements governing Waketrace, advance reasonable and necessary defence expenses before final resolution.

Waketrace may determine that separate counsel is appropriate where the interests of Waketrace and a Protected Person may diverge. No Protected Person is required to make an admission, waiver, settlement, disclosure, or other concession on behalf of Waketrace without actual authority to do so.

24. Governing Law and Disputes

24.1 Informal resolution

A party may contact legal@waketrace.com with a description of a dispute and the remedy sought. Waketrace may consider the matter and respond through an appropriate contact channel.

For a dispute solely between commercial contracting parties, either party intending to bring a non-urgent contractual claim will first give the other reasonably sufficient written notice and an opportunity of 30 days to discuss resolution. This requirement does not postpone a limitation period, delay urgent or protective relief, obstruct legal process, require disclosure prohibited by law, or restrict any mandatory remedy. Either party may make a protective filing where reasonably necessary to preserve its rights.

Consumers may use informal resolution voluntarily and are not required by this section to do so before approaching a court, regulator, ombudsman, or other competent dispute-resolution body.

24.2 Applicable law

These Terms and the contractual relationship they create are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, except to the extent Applicable Law requires otherwise.

This choice of law does not remove protections a consumer would otherwise have under mandatory law applicable to the transaction, the consumer’s habitual residence, or another jurisdiction whose law cannot lawfully be excluded. It does not determine the authority of a regulator or displace non-waivable privacy, consumer, copyright, safety, tort, data-protection, or other legal duties.

Other laws may apply concurrently where their own territorial or substantive rules make them applicable. The location of Waketrace’s infrastructure, incorporation, personnel, users, transactions, data subjects, software development, or other operations does not by itself determine the exclusive governing law of every activity or relationship.

No party may rely solely on a choice made after a dispute arises to convert otherwise applicable mandatory law into a discretionary contractual choice. The applicable law for a particular issue is determined according to these Terms and the mandatory rules applicable to that issue.

24.3 Courts and complaints

For contractual disputes between Waketrace and a Business User that are not protected consumer disputes, the parties agree to the state courts located in New Castle County, Delaware, or the United States District Court for the District of Delaware where federal subject-matter jurisdiction exists.

Either party may seek urgent interim, protective, or provisional relief in another court with jurisdiction where reasonably necessary to preserve rights, prevent immediate harm, protect evidence, or maintain the status quo. This exception is mutual and does not constitute a waiver of the agreed forum for the underlying dispute.

A consumer may bring proceedings in any court that Applicable Law entitles the consumer to use, including a court where the consumer habitually resides where such law permits. Waketrace will bring proceedings against a consumer only in a forum permitted by applicable mandatory law.

Nothing in this section restricts a data subject’s statutory judicial remedies or a person’s right to complain directly to a competent authority.

This section creates no compulsory arbitration, class-action waiver, or restriction on legally available representative proceedings unless a separate agreement expressly and lawfully provides otherwise.

24.4 Jury trial

These Terms do not waive a consumer’s right to a jury trial.

Any waiver of jury trial for a commercial dispute must be set out conspicuously in a separately signed agreement, be knowing and voluntary, and be enforceable under the applicable procedural and substantive law. No jury waiver is inferred from public browsing, ordinary acceptance of these Terms, or use of the Service.

24.5 Government agreements

A separately signed public-sector agreement may expressly specify governing law, courts, dispute procedures, procurement provisions, or other contractual mechanisms for its covered services, but only through a representative with actual authority and within Applicable Law.

Neither these Terms nor an official’s account access creates a waiver of sovereign or official immunity, consent to a jurisdiction, or an agreement by a government beyond what is otherwise validly established.

25. Changes to These Terms

Waketrace may change, replace, add to, or remove parts of the Service, website, applications, infrastructure, features, interfaces, APIs, feeds, distribution methods, security measures, or other operations at any time as part of its normal development and operation. Such changes do not by themselves amend these Terms.

Waketrace may also change these Terms prospectively when necessary or appropriate because of changes to the Service, Applicable Law, security, continuity, moderation, technology, risk, business operations, commercial arrangements, or other operational requirements. Each revised version will state its effective date, and Waketrace may retain prior versions and acceptance records so that the Terms applicable to earlier activity or transactions can be established.

Where Applicable Law or a separate agreement requires advance notice, a particular form of notice, or affirmative acceptance of a change to these Terms, Waketrace will comply with that requirement. Otherwise, no particular notice period, notice method, or fresh acceptance is required merely because Waketrace changes the Service or updates these Terms, unless Waketrace states otherwise.

A revised version does not automatically alter rights, obligations, licences, fees, remedies, or other contractual matters that accrued before its effective date. It will not retrospectively impose a fee or breach, broaden a licence for past submissions, reduce an accrued right or remedy, or alter the contractual terms governing an existing dispute, except to the extent Applicable Law or a separately applicable agreement requires otherwise.

Waketrace may make continued use of a Service, feature, subscription, account, API, feed, distribution path, or other functionality after revised Terms become effective subject to the revised Terms, where legally permissible. Future purchases, renewals, upgrades, expanded access, or materially different services may be made subject to current Terms or additional service-specific terms.

Nothing in this section requires Waketrace to continue providing a particular Service, feature, access method, endpoint, pricing arrangement, distribution path, or commercial offering indefinitely or on unchanged terms unless a separate agreement or Applicable Law expressly requires continued performance.

Where a change is required by Applicable Law, necessary to address an urgent security matter, necessary to respond to a Continuity Event, necessary to prevent material harm to the Service, its users, infrastructure, or records, or otherwise reasonably necessary to preserve lawful operation, the change may take effect sooner to the extent reasonably necessary. Where advance notice is not reasonably practicable, notice may be provided as soon as reasonably practicable afterward.

Separate consent or affirmative acceptance will be obtained where Applicable Law, a separate agreement, or a feature-specific permission expressly requires it. Acceptance of revised Terms does not by itself constitute consent to processing, distribution, disclosure, or another activity for which a separate legal basis or affirmative permission is required.

Changes to these Terms do not by themselves create consent to governmental jurisdiction, disclosure, or other authority, and do not retrospectively validate conduct that was unlawful or unauthorized when it occurred.

Nothing in this section limits Waketrace’s ability to correct errors, address security vulnerabilities, preserve continuity, comply with Applicable Law, respond to changing technical or operational conditions, or protect the Service and its records.

26. General Provisions

26.1 Agreement and consistent interpretation

These Terms and supplemental terms that have been validly incorporated into your agreement govern the contracted Service. The Privacy Notice explains our processing and the processing, applicable privacy information, and rights described for affected individuals; its publication or your acceptance of these Terms does not create a processing consent. This section does not exclude an express representation, warranty, pre-contractual statement or remedy which Applicable Law requires us to honour.

A separately signed agreement controls the commercial subject matter it expressly identifies when it lawfully conflicts with these Terms. An applicable data-processing agreement controls the processing it specifically covers, subject to the actual roles and legal duties of the parties. A commercial order form does not by itself displace a privacy right, restriction, or requirement that Applicable Law requires Waketrace to honour.

For Personal Data, the Privacy Notice, any applicable data-processing agreement, the individual’s recorded choices, and a narrower feature-specific privacy or distribution notice govern within their respective scopes and prevail over a general permission or disclaimer in these Terms. In particular, a narrower publication or P2P permission, a valid withdrawal, and a restriction on sensitive data are not displaced by a general Content licence or continuity provision. Any proposed broadening must follow the applicable notice, change and consent requirements before the processing occurs.

Other supplemental documents control only the subject they clearly address and only where properly incorporated. Read the documents consistently where possible. An unresolved conflict is not permission to adopt the broadest data use, charge an undisclosed fee, or reduce a mandatory protection. Mandatory law always controls, and nothing in this order of interpretation binds a non-party or changes a regulator’s powers.

26.2 Assignment and continuity of obligations

Waketrace may transfer this agreement or operation of the Service in a lawful merger, reorganisation or asset transfer, provided that the transfer does not reduce rights that cannot lawfully be reduced. A successor must assume applicable service obligations to the extent law permits, maintain current permissions and restrictions, and comply with required notice, consent and transfer safeguards. Materially adverse changes to a consumer’s service preserve applicable cancellation and refund rights; a transfer is not a substitute for obtaining a consent that law requires.

Accrued rights and properly continuing obligations are not extinguished merely by a change in ownership or infrastructure. Their scope remains subject to applicable law, including insolvency law, source licences, statutory rights and court powers. Archives, evidentiary copies and Personal Data retained by Waketrace after a transfer require their own lawful purpose, limited access and retention assessment under section 19A. A transfer does not confer indefinite rights over a former user’s data or revive a removed record.

26.3 Severability

If a competent court or authority determines that a provision is unlawful, unfair, invalid or unenforceable, that provision will not be relied on to the extent of that determination. The remaining agreement continues only if it can lawfully and coherently operate without the affected provision. This clause does not authorize Waketrace to replace an unfair consumer term with the closest enforceable version, rewrite the bargain unilaterally, or require a court to modify a provision where the law does not permit that remedy. The court’s or authority’s lawful powers and the user’s mandatory remedies remain unaffected.

26.4 No waiver; no implied consent

Failure, delay, silence, technical accommodation, temporary compliance, partial compliance, settlement discussion, correspondence, acceptance of service, continued operation, or failure to immediately challenge a demand does not constitute a waiver of any contractual, statutory, constitutional, jurisdictional, procedural, evidentiary, intellectual-property, privacy, immunity, or other right.

No waiver is effective unless expressly made in a written instrument identifying the specific right waived and the specific matter to which the waiver applies.

Acceptance of a governmental, regulatory, judicial, provider, or third-party request for processing or review does not constitute agreement that the request was lawful, valid, properly served, proportionate, jurisdictionally applicable, or otherwise enforceable.

Any temporary action taken to comply with a legally binding obligation is limited to that obligation and does not constitute consent to broader or future obligations.

26.5 Relationship

These Terms do not create an employment, agency, partnership, fiduciary, franchise, or joint-venture relationship between a User and any individual member, manager, officer, employee, contractor, adviser, or agent of Waketrace. Such persons are not individually parties to these Terms merely because they communicate or act on Waketrace’s behalf. No such person may amend these Terms, waive Waketrace’s rights, admit contractual liability on Waketrace’s behalf, or otherwise bind Waketrace except within actual authority granted to that person. This provision does not negate legally attributable conduct or any liability that Applicable Law independently imposes on an individual.

Waketrace shall indemnify, defend, and hold harmless each member, manager, officer, employee, contractor, adviser, agent, administrator, moderator, editor, investigator, engineer, security personnel, and other person acting at the direction or for the benefit of Waketrace (each, a “Protected Person”) from and against claims, proceedings, liabilities, judgments, settlements, and reasonable and necessary legal expenses arising from or relating to the Protected Person’s good-faith performance of authorized Waketrace functions, including publication, moderation, verification, preservation, security, legal-process response, continuity operations, source protection, and administration of the Service.

To the fullest extent permitted by Applicable Law, Waketrace shall advance reasonable and necessary defence expenses incurred by a Protected Person in a proceeding arising from such service, subject to repayment only to the extent ultimately determined that the Protected Person was not entitled to indemnification under Applicable Law or the applicable organizational agreement.

No indemnification or advancement is provided for conduct for which such protection is prohibited by Applicable Law, including any non-waivable liability arising from the Protected Person’s own legally attributable conduct.

26.6 Third-party beneficiaries

Only the persons expressly protected within the lawful scope of sections 22, 23, and 26.5 may enforce the particular benefit stated for them. The Protected Persons identified in section 26.5 are intended third-party beneficiaries of the indemnification, defence, advancement, and related protections expressly granted to them in that section, to the fullest extent permitted by Applicable Law. They receive no greater protection than that section permits and cannot override a statutory right, a non-party’s claim or their own legally attributable responsibility. No other third-party benefit is created by these Terms. Infrastructure providers are not made parties or subject to Waketrace’s government-request procedures merely because Waketrace uses their services; any additional obligation requires their own valid agreement.

26.7 Force Majeure and Continuity Events

Neither Waketrace nor a User is liable for delay or failure to perform an obligation to the extent the affected obligation is actually prevented, delayed, or materially impaired by an extraordinary circumstance beyond the affected party’s reasonable control that could not reasonably have been avoided or overcome through lawful measures, including natural disasters, war, armed conflict, civil disorder, terrorism, labour disruption, power failure, telecommunications or Internet failure, infrastructure failure, hosting or service-provider failure, cyberattack, widespread sanctions disruption, or other comparable events.

The existence of governmental, regulatory, judicial, or administrative activity does not by itself constitute a Force Majeure Event. Routine regulatory requirements, ordinary legal-process obligations, investigations, requests, disputes, enforcement activity, licensing requirements, procurement processes, internal administrative delay, staffing changes, budgetary processes, payment processing delay, or other reasonably foreseeable incidents of operating or purchasing the Service are not Force Majeure Events merely because they require additional work, expense, delay, or compliance.

A governmental, regulatory, judicial, or administrative action may contribute to a Force Majeure Event only where the action or its consequences actually creates an extraordinary disruption that materially prevents, delays, or impairs the affected obligation and could not reasonably have been avoided or overcome through lawful measures.

A Force Majeure Event does not, by itself, suspend or extinguish an obligation to pay amounts that became due before the event or amounts attributable to Service or other performance already provided, except to the extent Applicable Law or a separately applicable agreement requires otherwise. A payment obligation is not excused merely because the paying party experiences internal administrative delay, procurement delay, budgetary delay, personnel changes, payment-system delay, or other circumstances within its institutional control or ordinary operating environment.

A Force Majeure Event does not by itself establish that any governmental, regulatory, judicial, provider, or third-party action was lawful, valid, properly served, proportionate, enforceable, or justified, and does not determine responsibility for the action or its consequences.

Nothing in this section excuses performance to the extent the affected party caused or materially contributed to the relevant failure or could reasonably have avoided or mitigated the effect through lawful means.

Where reasonably practicable and legally permissible, Waketrace may preserve relevant records and evidence, activate continuity measures, migrate or restore Service components, maintain alternative lawful infrastructure, and preserve historical publication and provenance records during or following a Force Majeure Event.

Nothing in this section requires Waketrace to violate Applicable Law or a legally binding order applicable to Waketrace or the relevant person or entity.

26.8 Interpretation

Headings assist navigation and do not change the substantive text. ‘Including’ introduces examples and does not expand a permission beyond its stated purpose, scope or legal limits. References to legislation include applicable amendments and successor provisions. Applicable rules of interpretation apply, including mandatory rules protecting consumers and, where applicable, rules governing ambiguity in form contracts. No clause changes the burden of proof, creates agency or authority by inference, or makes a disputed factual assertion conclusive merely because Waketrace prepared or published it.

26.9 Language

Waketrace may provide translations of these Terms for accessibility or convenience. The English version is the controlling version of these Terms and governs their interpretation. A translation does not modify or expand the substantive rights or obligations established by the English version.

To the extent Applicable Law mandatorily requires another language, translation, or interpretation to be used for a particular transaction, person, or issue, that mandatory requirement applies only to the extent required by that law. It does not otherwise displace or amend the English version of these Terms.

26.10 Notices and formal service

Ordinary contractual, privacy and content notices may be sent through the channels identified in section 27 and are handled under the relevant procedure. Formal service of proceedings follows applicable service rules and any valid agreement or waiver. These Terms neither require duplicate postal and electronic service where law does not nor invalidate legally effective service because a preferred channel was not used. Waketrace may preserve any procedural objection that the law actually permits.

27. Contact information

Waketrace LLC
16192 Coastal Highway
Lewes, Delaware 19958
United States of America

This address is for legal correspondence, not emergency assistance.

• General support: support@waketrace.com
• Corrections and content disputes: corrections@waketrace.com
• Abuse and illegal-content notices: abuse@waketrace.com
• Privacy and data-subject requests: privacy@waketrace.com
• Government and law-enforcement requests: government@waketrace.com
• Legal correspondence: legal@waketrace.com
• Copyright notices: dmca@waketrace.com (designated contact details in section 14.5)
• Security reports: security@waketrace.com

The listed addresses are electronic points of contact for their respective purposes. Government and law-enforcement requests should be directed to government@waketrace.com. English is accepted. Where Applicable Law requires an additional accepted language or communication method for a particular notice or process, that requirement applies to the extent legally required.

Requesting assistance or reporting a concern does not require acceptance of these Terms.

Where Applicable Law requires a local representative, designated contact, or other legally prescribed point of representation for a particular processing activity or service, Waketrace will comply with that requirement to the extent applicable. Any required representative or additional contact details may be identified in the Privacy Notice or other legally required notice.