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Frontfiles

Terms of Service

Version 3.0, published 2026-08-29.

These terms cover the Frontfiles platform: account creation, creator uploads, AI-assisted metadata with mandatory creator review, publishing, public discovery and search, the community layer (feed posts, comments, likes, direct messages, connections, collections, sharing, and the Available-for-Work status), and licensing transactions (buying licences to published work through Frontfiles checkout, including sales at a negotiated price). Licensing features are being introduced progressively; sections 8 to 10 govern them from the moment they are available to you and you use them. Assignments and commissions, identity verification, and payouts are governed in detail by the dedicated terms named in the final section.

1. The service

Frontfiles provides journalists and creators a system of record for their work: secure storage, structured metadata, provenance records that are verifiable and tamper-evident, a public discovery surface for content the creator chooses to publish, and community features for connecting with other creators. Where licensing is enabled, Frontfiles also operates the licensing marketplace described in §8, contracting with buyers in its own name.

The service is operated by Frontfiles, Lda, a limited liability company incorporated in Portugal. Our entity name, VAT number, country of establishment and contact address are stated in the site footer and on the contact page; our registered office address is available on request from the contact address published there. These terms are a contract between you and Frontfiles, Lda, governed by Portuguese law (see §15).

2. Accounts

  • You must provide a working email address; sign-in is by email/password or Google OAuth.
  • One account per person; you are responsible for activity under your credentials.
  • Acceptance of these terms is an explicit act at signup (a required attestation checkbox; the server refuses account creation without it) and is recorded per version with a server-side timestamp against your account.
  • If your account was created before 2026-05-28, before acceptance recording existed, you will be asked to accept these terms once, the first time you sign in after they take effect; the authenticated service is unavailable to your account until you do.
  • You must be at least 16 years old to use Frontfiles, and at least 18 to operate a creator account that publishes work. Frontfiles is a professional editorial platform and is not directed at children. Organisational (newsroom) accounts are governed by separate terms that will be published together with the newsroom features; those surfaces are not generally live today.

3. Your content and your rights

  • You retain all ownership of what you upload. Frontfiles claims no ownership of your work.
  • You grant Frontfiles a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence, limited to what is necessary to operate, display, and promote the service: storing your files, generating derivative renditions (thumbnails, watermarked previews, resized images), processing them through the AI-assisted metadata pipeline described in the AI Processing Disclosure, displaying content you have published on the platform’s public surfaces, and showing published work in factual presentations of the platform itself (for example, the platform’s own discovery and landing surfaces). “Promote” means showing your published work in or about the service; it never means selling or sublicensing your work outside the licensing transactions you enable under §8. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for records retained under the Privacy Policy’s retention rules and the non-content provenance record that a published work existed and was withdrawn.
  • If you attach a licence to a published asset (including a Creative Commons licence where offered), the licence shown on the file page is the licence that governs use of that work by others outside a purchase. Licences bought through Frontfiles checkout are granted by Frontfiles under §8.
  • Unpublished content (drafts, private items) is visible only to you. Publishing is always an explicit action, and requires that you have first reviewed the asset’s details (the platform enforces this).
  • You can unpublish or delete your content. When you delete content, it is removed from public surfaces immediately and leaves operational storage per the Privacy Policy’s retention section. Records we are legally required to keep, and the provenance record described in the licence above, survive deletion. Licences already granted to buyers under §8 survive withdrawal and deletion; withdrawal stops new licensing.

4. What you promise about your content

  • You own it or have the rights to upload and publish it.
  • It does not infringe others’ rights (copyright, privacy, publicity) and is lawful in the jurisdictions you direct it to.
  • Provenance representations you make (capture details, authorship) are truthful. The platform records provenance signals; it does not certify factual truth, editorial accuracy, or legal fitness of content: see §12.

If you believe content on Frontfiles infringes your rights or is illegal, notify us at takedown@frontfiles.news or through the report controls on the content, including: why you consider it unlawful, its exact location (URL), your name and contact details, and a statement that your notice is accurate and made in good faith. We review notices promptly, remove or disable access to content where the notice is well-founded, and inform both you and the creator of the decision with reasons. The creator may contest a removal (counter-notice) through the same channel. Accounts that repeatedly infringe others’ rights are terminated.

5. Community features

The platform includes a community layer. Where you use it:

  • Feed posts, comments, and likes: posts and comments you make are attributed to your account and visible per the feature’s visibility rules. You are responsible for what you post.
  • Direct messages: messages are private to their participants. Frontfiles does not read your messages in the ordinary course of operating the service; message content may be reviewed when a participant reports a message, as part of handling that report.
  • Connections: connection requests are invitations; a connection forms only when both sides agree. You can remove a connection at any time.
  • Blocking and reporting: you can block users and report content or messages; blocks are enforced by the platform.
  • Collections and sharing: collections you create and links you share follow the visibility settings shown when you use those features.
  • Available for Work: an optional status you switch on or off; while on, it is shown publicly on your profile.

6. Acceptable use

No uploading unlawful content; no content depicting or facilitating harm to minors; no malware; no scraping or bulk extraction of other creators’ content or data; no attempts to bypass the delivery API’s access controls, watermarks, or authentication; no misrepresenting authorship or provenance; no automated account creation.

In the community features additionally: no harassment, threats, or abuse of other users in posts, comments, or direct messages; no impersonation of any person or organisation; no spam or unsolicited bulk messaging; no circumventing another user’s block; no posting of other people’s personal data without a lawful basis.

No use of the service to surveil, dox, or track private individuals. No content that you are barred from publishing by court order or by a lawful embargo you are bound by.

We enforce these rules through content moderation; where we remove or restrict your content or account, we tell you the reasons and you can contest the decision (§13).

7. AI-assisted features

AI-proposed metadata is a suggestion layer: nothing it produces is published without your explicit review and approval, and you can disable AI suggestions for your account. The AI Processing Disclosure, published at /ai-processing, is part of these terms; the version published at the time of your use applies.

8. Licensing transactions

This section governs licensing transactions on the platform: buying a licence to published work through Frontfiles checkout, at the listed price or at a price proposed through the platform’s negotiation tools.

How the contract forms

  • Frontfiles contracts in its own name with the buyer. The licence contract for a platform-originated transaction is between Frontfiles and the buyer only; the creator is not a party to it.
  • The platform’s negotiation tools produce only a proposed price and a selection among the platform’s rights templates. A binding contract arises solely on acceptance through Frontfiles checkout, on these terms, which every buyer must accept before purchase.
  • Negotiated commercial parameters (the price, and the selection among the platform’s fixed rights templates) are incorporated as terms of the contract between Frontfiles and the buyer. The rights templates are authored and owned by Frontfiles.

Where the rights come from

  • The licence delivered to the buyer is granted by Frontfiles under a back-to-back chain of rights: the creator supplies the licence rights to Frontfiles, and Frontfiles sub-licenses them to the buyer.
  • Frontfiles does not act as any creator’s disclosed agent. A creator may not conclude, or purport to conclude, a direct contract with a buyer for a platform-originated transaction; the creator’s supply runs to Frontfiles, and Frontfiles’ supply runs to the buyer.

Charge, delivery, invoice

  • Frontfiles authorises the charge: it decides whether, when, and on what preconditions the buyer pays. Payment processing is provided by Stripe, which acts as payment processor only.
  • Frontfiles authorises delivery: the licensed file is released only through Frontfiles systems, on Frontfiles’ confirmation of payment. A licence comes into force when payment settles and is recorded as a licence grant; the active grant is the sole authorisation for delivery of the unwatermarked original. No settlement, no licence.
  • Frontfiles issues the invoice and receipt to the buyer in its own name, showing Frontfiles as the supplier and any applicable tax.

Support and presentation

  • Refunds, credits, cancellations, and buyer support are handled and decided by Frontfiles; no creator approval is required. §10 states the refund rules.
  • Frontfiles controls the presentation of listings and the customer relationship data.
  • Where a creator is named on a listing, an invoice, or a delivered file, the mention is attribution only; no document identifies the creator as the supplier.

9. Fees

Licensing a work is a paid transaction. The price shown on a work is the price set by the creator: the base. When a buyer licenses the work through Frontfiles checkout:

  • the buyer pays the base plus a buyer service fee of 20% of the base, and the total is shown before the buyer confirms;
  • Frontfiles retains a creator-side platform fee of 20% of the base;
  • the creator receives the base minus that 20%.

On a work listed at EUR 220, the buyer pays EUR 264, the creator receives EUR 176, and Frontfiles retains EUR 88. Both rates are set server-side and cannot be altered by a buyer or a creator. Both fees are calculated from the base, never from each other, so the buyer’s total always equals the creator’s payout plus Frontfiles’ retained amount, to the cent. Any applicable tax is shown separately at checkout and added to the buyer’s total.

Fees are not covered by any free-of-charge status, including founding-member status: the buyer service fee and the creator-side fee apply to every transaction regardless of status.

10. Refunds, withdrawal, and disputes

Refunds and disputes on licensing transactions are handled by Frontfiles under the following rules:

  • No payment, no licence. If payment fails or never completes, no rights pass and there is nothing to refund.
  • A full refund ends the licence. If a purchase is refunded in full, the licence ends immediately and the work must stop being used.
  • A partial refund adjusts the price, not the rights: the licence stays in force unless the specific resolution says otherwise.
  • A card chargeback is treated as taking the money back: the licence ends when the chargeback lands. If the chargeback is later resolved in the platform’s favour, access is restored.
  • If something is wrong with a purchase or a commission, raise a dispute with Frontfiles, through the platform’s dispute tools where available or the contact channel otherwise; the dispute policy classifies it (fraud, quality, scope, delivery, rights) and fixes the outcome, including whether and how much is refunded. A person, not an automated system, reviews contested decisions.
  • Refunds go to the original payment method, in the original currency, within 14 days of the decision.

Frontfiles’ buy-side addresses professional and organisational buyers. If, despite the professional orientation of the service, you buy as a consumer under applicable law, you keep every right mandatory consumer law gives you, and the consumer withdrawal mechanics presented at checkout (including the express-consent acknowledgment for immediate delivery of digital content) apply to you.

11. Deleting your account

You may close your account at any time. The platform has a built erasure mechanism: deletion removes your account and personal data, withdraws your published assets from public surfaces, and scrubs identifying metadata. We retain only what we are legally required to keep, as described in the Privacy Policy’s retention section. Today deletion is performed on request through a documented internal procedure with a one-month response discipline; a self-serve delete control in account settings is planned. Requests go to the contact channel in the Privacy Policy.

12. What Frontfiles does not warrant, and the limits of liability

Frontfiles is a provenance-aware platform for professional journalism. Provenance records are verifiable and tamper-evident operational records: they are not a certification of factual truth, editorial accuracy, or legal fitness of any content.

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”. We do not promise uninterrupted availability, and you are responsible for keeping your own copies of your original files.

The limit below does not apply to, and does not reduce, any amount Frontfiles holds or owes you as a result of a completed sale, including creator payouts and buyer refunds. Those are amounts owed to you, not compensation for loss, and they are payable in full.

Subject to the paragraph above and the carve-outs below, Frontfiles’ total aggregate liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to the service in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of: the total fees you paid to Frontfiles, or that Frontfiles retained from your sales, in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim; and EUR 500. Where a claim concerns a specific transaction and that amount is higher, the limit for that claim is instead the total amount paid by the buyer on that transaction.

Founding-member status does not reduce this limit. Where a founding member has paid no platform fees, the EUR 500 floor applies.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for intent or gross negligence, for death or personal injury, or for any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. If you use the service as a consumer, you keep every right that mandatory law gives you, and nothing here reduces them.

13. Termination

  • You may close your account at any time (see §11).
  • We may suspend or terminate accounts for violations of §4 to §6; where we do, we will notify you with a clear statement of the facts and the rule applied, except where law requires or permits otherwise. You can contest the decision by replying to the notice; a person, not an automated system, reviews contested decisions.
  • On termination, published content is unpublished; data deletion follows the Privacy Policy’s retention rules. Licences already granted to buyers under §8 survive termination.

14. Changes

We may amend these terms. Acceptance is recorded per version against your account. For material changes we give at least 15 days’ notice by email and in-product notice before the amended version takes effect, and the acceptance mechanism in §2 applies. Changes required for legal compliance or security may take effect sooner, with notice.

15. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by Portuguese law. Disputes arising from them go to the courts of Lisbon, Portugal. If you use the service as a consumer, this clause does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of the country where you live, nor of your right to bring or defend proceedings in your own courts where the law gives you that right. No arbitration is imposed. If any provision of these terms is invalid, the remainder stays in effect. These terms, the Privacy Policy, and the AI Processing Disclosure are the entire agreement between you and Frontfiles about the service, together with the dedicated terms named below from the moment each is published.

Dedicated terms still to be published

Assignments and commissions, escrow, identity verification, subscriptions, and payouts are governed here only at the level these terms state. Dedicated terms for creators (the Creator Agreement), buyers (the Buyer Terms), commissions (the Assignment Terms), and refunds (the Refund and Withdrawal Terms) will be published before the corresponding features fully activate; on paid-features matters they prevail over these terms from the moment each is published. Until then, sections 8 to 10 of these terms govern licensing transactions on the platform.

Questions about terms or licensing, contact us.

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