Review draft — September 29, 2026. Not published or in effect.
Effective date: [INSERT BEFORE PUBLICATION]
Operator: [LEGAL NAME OF PERSON OR ENTITY OPERATING STEMDust]
Contact: [SUPPORT / LEGAL EMAIL]
Address: [OPERATOR'S BUSINESS OR MAILING ADDRESS]
1. Welcome to the lab
STEMDust is an open community lab where people work together, including with AI tools, to develop ideas, share code, explore evidence, and build better solutions. You do not need a finished invention, formal research credentials, or a large budget to participate.
These Terms govern your use of STEMDust. The operator identified above is referred to as “STEMDust,” “we,” or “us.” When you create an account or expressly accept these Terms, you agree to them. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information; acceptance of these Terms is not blanket consent to unrelated data uses.
2. Participation and accounts
[PROPOSED PILOT RULE FOR REVIEW: You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or contribute. Confirm this choice before publication and implement it in registration.]
Provide an accurate email address, keep your sign-in credentials secure, and notify us if you believe your account has been compromised. A public display name need not be your legal name, but you must not impersonate another person or misrepresent your qualifications or affiliation. If acting for an organization, you must have authority to do so.
An AI agent must have an accountable human operator. Operators are responsible for the actions and submissions they authorize, must identify automated participation accurately, and must respect access and usage limits. An agent is not an independent party agreeing to these Terms.
3. Contribute in good faith
Bring ideas, questions, prototypes, failures, constructive criticism, and unfinished work. Try to make substantive contributions useful to the project. A simple expression of support is welcome through the reactions available on the site.
You must not:
- Fabricate evidence, experimental results, sources, credentials, or endorsements; present simulated or AI-generated results as experiments actually performed; or conceal material conflicts of interest.
- Harass, threaten, discriminate against, impersonate, or expose private information about others.
- Upload material you do not have permission to share, including confidential employer information, stolen code, or personal research-subject data without the necessary authorization.
- Use STEMDust for fraud, spam, malware, unauthorized access, unlawful activity, or instructions intended to facilitate serious harm.
- Circumvent access controls, manipulate reviews or participation metrics, or use automated activity that disrupts the service.
Explain uncertainties and relevant limitations. Identify meaningful AI assistance when it affects how others should assess a contribution. You remain responsible for checking what you publish, including material generated by AI.
4. Your work and permission to operate the lab
You retain whatever ownership and other rights you hold in your contributions. Posting does not transfer those rights to STEMDust or make STEMDust a co-inventor, employer, or business partner.
You give STEMDust a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free permission to store, reproduce, format, and process content you submit as needed to operate, secure, and maintain the service. For content you choose to publish, this includes displaying and distributing it through STEMDust, its project histories, and ordinary sharing or export features. Service providers acting for us may exercise this permission only to provide those functions.
For private drafts and restricted work, this permission does not authorize public display. Authorized operators may access restricted information when reasonably needed for support, security, or legal obligations, as described in the Privacy Policy.
This permission does not authorize selling your contribution as an exclusive asset or using private drafts to train general-purpose AI models. It ends when the relevant content is removed from our systems, except for copies reasonably retained for backups, security, legal obligations, and project history as explained below. Any separately granted license continues according to its own terms.
5. Open collaboration and reuse
Our culture encourages sharing, attribution, and building on one another's work. “Open community lab” does not mean every upload is automatically open-source software, public domain, or owned by the community.
Members may read, link to, and discuss public work using the service's features. Broader reuse, modification, redistribution, or commercialization must be permitted by the applicable license, the rights holder, or law. Where a project or contribution identifies a license, that license governs the rights it covers. Do not remove attribution or license notices, and do not apply a new license to someone else's work without authority.
There is no site-wide assignment of patent rights or blanket patent license in these Terms. New lab submissions that expressly ask for license consent record the selected license for that submission: CC BY 4.0 for original text, Apache License 2.0 for original code, and CC0 1.0 for original data. These choices do not relicense earlier work, third-party material, or content you are not authorized to license. The applicable license governs permitted reuse, including commercial reuse, and any conditions or patent grants it contains. Removing a post does not revoke rights already granted under an applicable irrevocable license.
6. Public disclosure and inventions
Public posts may be indexed, downloaded, quoted, archived, or copied by others. Do not publish secrets or material you need to keep confidential. Public disclosure can affect patent and other intellectual-property rights.
STEMDust does not guarantee that a publication establishes legally sufficient prior art, prevents a patent, protects an invention, or gives permission to use third-party intellectual property. Project histories and dates are records of activity, not legal determinations of ownership, inventorship, or priority.
We expect participants to credit others and not knowingly claim another person's work as their own. This expectation is not a substitute for an intellectual-property license or a patent-defense service.
7. Research, AI, and review
Ideas and projects may be published before independent review. Contributions, findings, or other materials may go through review or moderation depending on the feature. A review label describes a process or status; it is not a certification of truth, safety, professional competence, or fitness for use.
Community content and AI outputs may be incomplete, mistaken, or unsafe. Independently assess code, equipment, experiments, and conclusions before relying on them. STEMDust does not provide professional medical, legal, engineering, or financial advice through ordinary community posts. Do not treat the lab as an emergency service.
Only run experiments you can conduct safely and lawfully. Use appropriate supervision, permissions, and safeguards where needed.
8. Moderation, reports, and appeals
We may label, limit, remove, or restrict content or accounts when reasonably necessary to address these Terms, unlawful material, security threats, abuse, or disruption. Where practical and legally permitted, we will explain significant action and offer a way to request reconsideration at [SUPPORT / LEGAL EMAIL]. Immediate action may be necessary in urgent cases.
To report infringement or another concern, send the content's URL, a description of the issue, your contact information, and any supporting details. Do not submit reports you know are false. We may share relevant parts of a report with the affected contributor when needed to investigate, subject to privacy and legal requirements.
[BEFORE PUBLICATION: Add a jurisdiction-appropriate copyright notice-and-counter-notice procedure and designated-agent details if applicable. This paragraph alone does not establish DMCA safe-harbor eligibility.]
9. Leaving, removal, and project history
You may stop using STEMDust at any time and request account closure or content removal at [PRIVACY / SUPPORT EMAIL]. We may need to verify that you control the account. Requests are subject to applicable law and legitimate needs to maintain security, handle disputes, and preserve understandable project records.
Closing an account does not automatically erase every public contribution, quote, review, or activity record. Where appropriate, we may retain contributions with reduced or removed identifying information. We cannot guarantee removal from independent copies, search engines, or other people's systems. Nothing here overrides rights to deletion or other mandatory privacy protections.
10. Costs and future funding
Joining STEMDust, posting, and contributing to the lab are free. You are responsible for expenses you independently incur, including external AI subscriptions, equipment, and experiments. Do not incur expenses on STEMDust's behalf without explicit authorization.
Participation does not create an entitlement to payment, employment, equity, royalties, or reimbursement. Any paid work requires a separate agreement. If we introduce paid services, sponsorships, or voluntary support, we will explain the terms before asking you to participate or pay. We will not charge retroactively for free participation. STEMDust does not currently represent that it is a registered charity or that contributions are tax-deductible.
11. Availability and responsibility
We aim to run a useful, secure service, but cannot promise uninterrupted access, permanent storage, or error-free content. Keep your own copies of important work. To the extent permitted by law, the service and community content are provided as available, without warranties of accuracy, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement.
To the extent permitted by law, STEMDust is not responsible for indirect or consequential losses arising from use of the service. This does not exclude responsibility that cannot lawfully be excluded, including applicable consumer rights, fraud, or other mandatory liabilities. These Terms do not impose a blanket obligation on contributors to indemnify STEMDust.
12. Changes and disputes
We may update these Terms as the lab develops. We will identify the effective date and provide reasonable notice of material changes. Where required, we will seek renewed agreement. Changes do not retroactively transfer ownership or expand licenses to previously submitted work without the necessary permission.
Please contact us first about a dispute so we can try to resolve it. These Terms do not require mandatory arbitration or a class-action waiver.
[GOVERNING LAW AND VENUE: Confirm the operator's jurisdiction before completing this provision. Preserve any nonwaivable rights and local forums available under applicable law.]
If a provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue to apply to the extent permitted by law. Questions about these Terms may be sent to the contact listed at the top.