Acceptable Use Policy

Last Updated: 2026-05-08

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") describes the content and conduct that is prohibited on Glassplateworks, the service operated by Glass Plate Works LLC. It is part of and incorporated into our Terms of Service. By using Glassplateworks you agree to comply with this AUP.

We are an image and media hosting service with a strong commitment to content provenance and permanent URLs. The same permanence that makes us useful — content-addressed URLs that don't break — also means that abuse hosted on our service has unusual reach. The rules below reflect that reality.

1. Summary

Don't use Glassplateworks to host, distribute, or generate:

• Illegal content, especially child sexual abuse material (CSAM), non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), or content that facilitates terrorism, human trafficking, or violent crime.
• Content that infringes someone else's intellectual property.
• Content that defrauds users, including malware, phishing pages, scams, and forged provenance.
• Content that targets, harasses, or threatens specific people.
• Content that is illegal where you upload it or where it is served (we serve in the United States and Canada).

Don't use Glassplateworks in ways that:

• Abuse the service infrastructure (rate-limit evasion, DDoS, scraping in violation of these rules).
• Game free-tier quotas with multiple accounts.
• Probe our security without our written permission.

The remainder of this document is the long version. The list is not exhaustive — we may take action on conduct that violates the spirit of this AUP even if not specifically enumerated.

2. Categorically prohibited content

The following are immediate, single-incident grounds for removal of the content and termination of the responsible account. Where a category is also a crime under United States or Canadian federal law, we will report it to the relevant authority and, where required, preserve evidence as part of that report.

2.1 Child sexual abuse material (CSAM)

Any visual depiction of a minor (under 18) engaged in sexually explicit conduct, or any image classified as such by Microsoft PhotoDNA or by our human review under 18 U.S.C. § 2256.

We use Microsoft PhotoDNA at upload time to detect known CSAM hashes. PhotoDNA matches result in immediate refusal of the upload, account suspension, and a report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) under 18 U.S.C. § 2258A. The content is purged from our content delivery network within one (1) hour of detection.

This rule applies regardless of artistic, historical, journalistic, or other claimed justification. We do not make exceptions.

2.2 Non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII)

Sexual or intimate imagery shared without the depicted person's consent, including deepfake pornography of real, identifiable people. We integrate with the StopNCII.org hash database for detection at upload time and on report.

2.3 Terrorist and violent extremism content

Content produced by or supporting designated foreign terrorist organizations, content that incites or instructs imminent violence, and content that glorifies mass-casualty attacks.

2.4 Content that depicts or facilitates human trafficking,

sexual exploitation of adults under coercion, or modern slavery.

2.5 Content that depicts or instructs the manufacture of

weapons designed for mass casualties (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, explosives) or the manufacture of firearms or firearm components in violation of applicable federal or state law.

2.6 Malware, phishing, and scam content

• Executable malware, ransomware, spyware, or stalkerware.
• Phishing kits, credential-harvesting pages, fake login screens.
• Images used as decoys for scams (fake invoices, fake delivery notices, fake "your account is locked" pages).
• QR codes that lead to any of the above.

We use file-magic-byte validation at upload to refuse executable content, but the policy applies regardless of file extension.

3. Other prohibited content

The following are prohibited but may, at our discretion, be handled by a warning, suspension, or termination depending on severity, intent, and the user's history.

3.1 Intellectual-property infringement

Uploading content that infringes someone else's copyright, trademark, trade dress, right of publicity, or trade secrets. Copyright takedowns are handled under our DMCA Policy. Repeat copyright infringers are terminated in accordance with that policy.

3.2 Deceptive provenance

Glassplateworks displays trust badges (verified_human, verified_web, human_ai_hybrid, ai_generated) computed from C2PA manifests. The following are prohibited:

• Uploading content with forged C2PA manifests intended to misrepresent origin, authorship, or capture device.
• Stripping or rewriting another party's C2PA manifest before upload to misrepresent provenance.
• Falsely claiming "verified human" authorship of content that was generated by AI, where the claim is intended to deceive viewers.

This rule does not prohibit honest disclosure ("this is AI- generated, please tag accordingly"); it prohibits deception.

3.3 Doxxing and privacy violations

Publishing private personal information about an identifiable individual without their consent, including home address, phone number, government ID number, financial-account number, location of a residence or workplace where doing so creates risk of harassment or stalking, or sexual orientation/gender identity where the disclosure is intended to harm.

3.4 Harassment, threats, and incitement

Targeted harassment of specific individuals, credible threats of violence, content that incites others to harass or harm a specific person, or content that encourages self-harm or suicide of a specific person.

3.5 Hate content

Content that dehumanizes, demonizes, or incites violence against people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or veteran status. Educational, journalistic, or counter-speech use of otherwise-prohibited material may be permitted in our discretion but must be clearly framed as such.

3.6 Content illegal in the served jurisdictions

We serve users in the United States and Canada (with the global img.glassplateworks.com subdomain serving embedded images worldwide). Content that is illegal under United States federal law, Canadian federal law, or the laws of any U.S. state or Canadian province in which we have a reasonable basis to believe the content is being viewed, may be removed at our discretion.

3.7 Spam and bulk unsolicited content

• Posting identical or near-identical content from multiple accounts to inflate visibility.
• Using uploaded images as a delivery mechanism for unsolicited commercial messaging.
• Automated upload pipelines that violate the rate limits or upload-quota policies of your tier.

4. Prohibited conduct (service abuse)

4.1 Infrastructure abuse

• Denial-of-service attacks against the service, our sub-processors, or our users.
• Rate-limit evasion, including using multiple accounts or rotating IPs to exceed your tier's documented limits.
• Crawling or scraping img.glassplateworks.com or the public gallery in violation of our robots.txt or rate limits, or in ways that materially burden the service.
• Probing, scanning, or testing the service for vulnerabilities without our written permission. (We will publish a separate security disclosure policy; until then, please email security@glassplateworks.com before testing.)

4.2 Account abuse

• Creating multiple free-tier accounts to evade storage quotas, rate limits, or strike accruals from our DMCA repeat-infringer policy.
• Using a Glassplateworks account on behalf of someone whose account has been terminated, where you know or should know of the termination.
• Misrepresenting your identity or authority to act on behalf of another person or organization in our systems.

4.3 Reverse engineering and unauthorized integrations

• Reverse-engineering the service except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law.
• Building products that depend on undocumented internal endpoints. Public stable surfaces are documented; everything else may change without notice.

4.4 Tampering with C2PA validation

• Submitting modified images designed to defeat C2PA hash validation, signature verification, or trust-list checks.
• Attempting to forge our service signature on a C2PA manifest.

4.5 Marketplace watermarks and redistribution

• Purchasing an asset on the marketplace and redistributing it outside the terms of the license you accepted at purchase. Each delivered file carries an invisible per-buyer watermark identifying the sale; we may use it to forensically link a redistributed copy back to the buyer who purchased it.
• Attempting to strip, alter, or otherwise defeat the watermark on a purchased asset before redistribution.
• Submitting a marketplace listing for content you do not own or have not been licensed to sell. The seller agreement at listing time captures the ownership warranty; this AUP clause makes a knowingly-false listing a categorical termination event independent of any DMCA notice.

5. Enforcement

Glass Plate Works is the sole and final arbiter of whether content or conduct violates this AUP. Our enforcement options, applied at our discretion based on severity, intent, and history, include:

Our CSAM service-level objective is content removal from the public CDN within one (1) hour of detection. We document our detection-to-purge timing as part of internal compliance.

5.1 Right to act without notice

For categories in § 2, and for content that creates an imminent risk of harm to users or to the service, we will act first and notify the user afterward. For lower-severity issues we will typically notify before acting.

5.2 Effect of termination

Termination has the effects described in our Terms of Service § 12 and our DMCA Policy § 7. Briefly: your access ends, your API keys are revoked, your content is removed from public availability subject to legal-hold and provenance-ledger retention, and you may not create a new Glassplateworks account.

6. Strike accrual outside DMCA

The DMCA repeat-infringer policy in DMCA Policy § 6 governs copyright strikes specifically. For non-copyright AUP violations of § 3 (other than § 2 categories, which are immediate-termination grounds), we maintain a parallel AUP strike record:

• A confirmed § 3 violation that we act on counts as one AUP strike.
• Three (3) AUP strikes within twelve (12) rolling months results in permanent account termination on the same terms as DMCA § 6.2.
• AUP strikes and DMCA strikes are tracked separately but a user whose total strikes (AUP + DMCA) reach five (5) within twelve months will also be terminated.

Strikes are removed from a user's record after twelve (12) months or upon successful appeal.

7. Reporting violations

To report content or conduct that you believe violates this AUP, email abuse@glassplateworks.com with:

• The full SHA-256 URL of the offending content (https://img.glassplateworks.com/<hash>/...), or, for conduct, the account name or upload page;
• A short description of the violation and which section of this AUP applies;
• Your contact information (we may need to follow up).

For copyright-specific complaints, use the DMCA process described in our DMCA Policy. For privacy and data-rights requests (deletion, access, correction), use privacy@glassplateworks.com. For security vulnerabilities, use security@glassplateworks.com.

We acknowledge reports within two (2) business days and resolve most non-CSAM reports within seven (7) days. CSAM reports are acted on within one (1) hour of confirmation.

8. Appeals

If you believe an enforcement action against your account was made in error, email legal@glassplateworks.com within thirty (30) days of the action. Your email should reference the action taken and include any information you want us to consider. We aim to respond to appeals within fourteen (14) business days. Appeal decisions are final.

For DMCA takedowns specifically, the § 512(g) counter-notification process is the legally significant appeal channel; informal appeals under this section do not extend or replace it.

9. Updates to this policy

We may update this AUP from time to time. Material changes will be announced on glassplateworks.com and reflected by an updated "Last Updated" date. The most current version controls.