Laidline Source-Available Licence

Copyright (c) 2026 Harrison Bootes, licensed exclusively to Laidline LLC.

Acceptance

By using the Software, You agree to all of the terms and conditions below.

You are not required to accept these terms in order to receive a copy of the
Software, and Detection and Verification applies to everyone, whether or not
they accept these terms. However, nothing other than these terms grants You
permission to use, copy, distribute, make available, or prepare derivative works
of the Software beyond what the law allows without the Licensor's permission,
and You indicate Your acceptance of these terms by doing any of those things.

Copyright Licence

The Licensor grants You a non-exclusive, worldwide, non-sublicensable,
non-transferable licence to use, copy, distribute, make available, and prepare
derivative works of the Software, in each case subject to the limitations and
conditions below. Within the Allowance the licence is royalty-free. The Software
is licensed, not sold.

Detection and Verification

Anyone may use the Software to detect, decode and verify marks, signatures,
certificates and evidence produced with the Software, and to run the
verification script it places in evidence exports, free of charge, for
themselves or for others. This right applies in every licence state, whether or
not the user has registered, is within the Allowance or holds a Laidline
Licence, and it does not end when any licence under these terms ends. Nothing in
these terms, including the limitations below, may be read as restricting it.

This right does not extend to embedding a watermark in content or attaching a
signed manifest to content; those acts are Marking and remain subject to the
Marking Allowance and the Limitations. A service that offers detection and
verification together with Marking is within this right only as to the detection
and verification.

Marking Allowance

You may use the Software to Mark content without charge up to the Allowance. The
Allowance is the number of Credits per calendar month (UTC) that the Licensor
publishes for that month. It is one Allowance per month for You together with
every member of Your Company that uses the Software, not one Allowance for each
evidence log, installation or entity: the Credits of all Marking by those users,
in every evidence log, count towards that one Allowance. The Software counts
Credits per evidence log; that is a technical limit, not a grant of a separate
Allowance for each log. Credits are computed, from the facts the Software
records in Your evidence log, by the weight table in force for that month, which
the Licensor signs and identifies by version. The weight table in force for a
month is the newest signed weight table the Licensor has published whose
effective_from date is at or before the start of that month, whether or not Your
installation holds it; the Software applies the newest table Your installation
holds, so its figures can differ from the Credits under these terms until Your
installation receives the published table. The Licensor may change the Allowance
or the weights only (a) to add a medium or Marking method that the previous
table lacks, (b) to reflect a change in its measured cost of serving a medium,
stated in the notice, or (c) to correct an error that the notice identifies by
row, with the measurement that shows it. It makes a change by publishing a new
signed weight table in a release and on its website, with a notice stating the
reason. A table that raises any weight or lowers the Allowance applies only from
a month that begins at least 30 days after its publication, and the Licensor
also emails the notice to registered users when it publishes the table. A table
that raises no weight and does not lower the Allowance applies from the first
day of the month after its publication, without that wait. A change never
applies to a month already begun or past. If You do not accept a change, You may
stop Marking at no cost.

Marking above the Allowance in a calendar month is licensed only on one
condition, which limits the scope of that permission and is not a promise: that
before 23:59:59 UTC on the last day of the following calendar month the Licensor
has issued to You or Your Company a Laidline Licence other than a Legal-Process
Licence whose coverage includes that month. The condition applies separately to
each calendar month. If it is met, that Marking is licensed from the start. If
it is not met, Marking in that month is unlicensed from the first Credit above
the Allowance, and the Licensor has the remedies available for unlicensed Use;
that Marking can become licensed later only by the late issue of a Laidline
Licence under Termination (a). The condition does not by itself end Your other
licences; a notice under Termination governs when they end. Where a Laidline
Licence already applies to the month, Marking above its grant is settled as its
Customer Agreement provides.

Above the Allowance the Software behaves as follows, by design and not as a
failure. Every mark is still watermarked, signed, logged, checkpointed and
timestamped exactly as before, and mark and proxy responses do not change.
Unless a paid Laidline Licence is current or in its grace period, new marks
carry the shared pool key and a trial issuer number instead of a private key and
a registered issuer number. Without a Laidline Licence that unlocks the month,
an evidence export still produces the complete signed bundle, but the compliance
paperwork (the filled-in compliance texts, the licence clause and the packaged
robustness and phantom figures) is withheld and the bundle's summary opens with
an unlicensed-use notice. In every case the raw evidence log, checkpoints and
certificates stay on Your systems, readable and copyable with any tool; the
Software does not delete, encrypt or lock them.

Limitations

You may not provide the Software to third parties as a hosted or managed
service, where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of
the features or functionality of the Software.

You may not use the Software, or any derivative work of it, for a Competing Use.

Using the Software to Mark, sign and record the outputs of Your own products and
services, including outputs You deliver to Your customers, is neither a hosted
or managed service nor a Competing Use.

Marking, signing or recording the outputs of third parties' own generators as a
service to those third parties is a Competing Use unless a Laidline Licence that
includes the tenant-reports feature applies. You may let a contractor use the
Software on Your behalf, for Your own outputs; You remain responsible for its
compliance.

You may not move, change, disable, or circumvent the Licence Key Functionality
in the Software, and You may not remove or obscure any functionality in the
Software that is protected by the licence key. The Licence Key Functionality
includes the Meter, the meter block in evidence entries, the Licence-State
Surfaces and the Payload-Key Switch. You may not re-enable by other means any
functionality that the licence key protects. Any such change ends Your Licences
under Termination. This paragraph does not restrict detection and verification,
writing Your own compliance documents, reading, copying, verifying or exporting
Your own records, or correcting an error that stops the Software working as
documented, to the extent the law gives You that right and only as far as
necessary to correct it.

You may have rights under the law that these terms cannot limit, including the
rights to make a back-up copy of the Software, to observe, study and test its
functioning, and to decompile it for interoperability to the extent the law
allows. These terms do not limit them.

You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing, copyright, or other notices
of the Licensor in the Software. Any use of the Licensor's Trademarks is subject
to applicable law.

Benchmarks

If You are a Competitor, You may not disclose to any third party any benchmark,
comparison or performance data about the Software without the Licensor's prior
written permission.

If You are not a Competitor, You may benchmark the Software, and You may publish
or otherwise disclose the results only if (a) the disclosure names the Software
version, the configuration, the decoder mode, the data and the published run of
the benchmark harness used, so that the result can be replicated, and (b) You
grant the Licensor, to the extent You are entitled to grant it, the right to
benchmark Your products and services and to publish the results on the same
terms, irrespective of any restriction on benchmarks in the terms of Your
products and services. Disclosing results grants that right.

Nothing in this section restricts acts the law allows despite a contrary term,
or disclosure to a court or public authority. The first paragraph does not cover
testing by public authorities, research institutions or independent experts not
paid by a Competitor.

Patents

The Licensor grants You a licence, under any patent claims the Licensor can
license, or becomes able to license, to make, have made, use, sell, offer for
sale, import and have imported the Software, in each case subject to the
limitations and conditions in this licence. This licence does not cover any
patent claims that You cause to be infringed by modifications or additions to
the Software. If You or Your Company make any written claim that the Software
infringes or contributes to infringement of any patent, Your patent licence for
the Software granted under these terms ends immediately. If Your Company makes
such a claim, Your patent licence ends immediately for work on behalf of Your
Company.

Notices

You must ensure that anyone who gets a copy of any part of the Software from You
also gets a copy of these terms.

If You modify the Software, You must include in any modified copies of the
Software prominent notices stating that You have modified the Software.

Third-party components distributed with the Software keep their own licences,
listed in docs/licences.md; these terms do not apply to them.

Your Records

As between You and the Licensor, the evidence logs, checkpoints and
certificates, the signing and payload keys You generate, and the media You
create or process with the Software are Yours. The Software does not send them
to the Licensor, and these terms give the Licensor no right to them.
Registration and the usage report, if You use them, send only what the
Software's documentation lists, which includes no media, evidence entries or
private keys.

Nothing in these terms restricts You from reading, copying, verifying or
exporting Your own raw evidence log, checkpoints and certificates, with the
Software or any other tool, during or after Your Licences. The compliance
paperwork that the Software withholds above the Allowance is text and figures
written by the Licensor, into which the Software merges facts from Your own
evidence log; those facts stay in Your log, readable and copyable, and
withholding the paperwork withholds none of Your data.

Your records are available to You in every licence state for any legal or
regulatory proceeding. If You receive a lawful order for them, the Licensor's
published legal-process policy describes how to obtain, free and on presentation
of the order, a Legal-Process Licence unlocking the compliance paperwork for the
months demanded.

Issuer Numbers

Trial issuer numbers, which the Software draws at random, are not registered
with the Licensor, carry no claim about who made a mark, and may be held by more
than one user at the same time. Registered issuer numbers are allocated only
under a Customer Agreement.

Compliance Texts

The compliance texts that the Software places in evidence exports are templates
written by the Licensor. They are not legal advice and do not establish that You
comply with any law. You remain the provider responsible for Your own
compliance, including any duty to mark content, disclose it or keep records.

No Other Rights

These terms do not imply any licences other than those expressly granted in
these terms.

Termination

Use of the Software in violation of these terms is not licensed. Your Licences
end only after You receive a written notice of the violation from the Licensor,
as follows.

(a) A notice about Marking above the Allowance names each calendar month
concerned and the Credits above the Allowance in it. Your Licences end at
23:59:59 UTC on the 30th day after You receive the notice, unless by then the
Licensor has issued to You or Your Company a Laidline Licence other than a
Legal-Process Licence whose coverage includes every month the notice names. In
that case nothing ends, and the Marking in those months is licensed from the
start.

(b) For any other violation, Your Licences end at 23:59:59 UTC on the 30th day
after You receive the notice, unless by then You have ceased the violation and,
where the notice asks, confirmed in writing that You have done so.

You receive a notice when it reaches the email address of Your registration, if
You have registered, or otherwise any address through which You offer the
Software or Marked content to the public. A notice sent by email is treated as
received on the next business day after it is sent, unless it bounces.

Termination never affects the right under Detection and Verification or Your
rights under Your Records.

No Liability

AS FAR AS THE LAW ALLOWS, THE SOFTWARE COMES "AS IS" AND "WITH ALL FAULTS",
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. THE LICENSOR DISCLAIMS
ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, ANY
IMPLIED WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF
TITLE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. THE LICENSOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY
DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THESE TERMS OR THE USE OR NATURE OF THE SOFTWARE, UNDER
ANY KIND OF LEGAL CLAIM.

NOTHING IN THESE TERMS EXCLUDES OR LIMITS LIABILITY FOR FRAUD, FRAUDULENT
MISREPRESENTATION OR FRAUDULENT CONCEALMENT, FOR INTENTIONAL ACTS, WILFUL
MISCONDUCT OR GROSS NEGLIGENCE, FOR INJURY TO LIFE, BODY OR HEALTH TO THE EXTENT
THE LAW DOES NOT ALLOW ITS EXCLUSION, OR FOR ANY OTHER LIABILITY THAT THE LAW
DOES NOT ALLOW TO BE EXCLUDED OR LIMITED. NOTHING IN THESE TERMS LIMITS ANY
RIGHT THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, INCLUDING ANY RIGHT UNDER THE
FLORIDA DECEPTIVE AND UNFAIR TRADE PRACTICES ACT.

Governing Law

These terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them
or the Software (including non-contractual disputes or claims), are governed by
the laws of the State of Florida, United States of America, without regard to
its conflict-of-laws rules, and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for
the International Sale of Goods (1980) does not apply. The state and federal
courts located in Florida, and within Florida the courts of the county of
Laidline's principal office, have exclusive jurisdiction over any such dispute
or claim, as far as the law allows the parties to agree on it. If You are a
consumer, nothing in this clause limits Your right to bring proceedings in the
courts of the place where You are domiciled or habitually resident, or in the
courts located in Florida, and the Licensor may bring proceedings against You
only in the former. This clause also does not deprive You of the protection of
any provision of the law of Your habitual residence (or, for a business,
establishment) that cannot be excluded by agreement.

Definitions

The Licensor (also called Laidline) is Laidline LLC, a Florida limited liability
company, which holds an exclusive licence of the copyright in the Software from
its author, with the right to grant licences, and the Software is the software
the Licensor makes available under these terms, including any portion of it.

You refers to the individual or entity agreeing to these terms.

Your Company is any legal entity, sole proprietorship, or other kind of
organization that You work for, plus all organizations that have Control over,
are under the Control of, or are under common Control with that organization.
Control means ownership of substantially all the assets of an entity, or the
power to direct its management and policies by vote, contract, or otherwise.
Control can be direct or indirect.

Your Licences are all the licences granted to You for the Software under these
terms.

Use means anything You do with the Software requiring one of Your Licences.

Trademark means trademarks, service marks, and similar rights.

To Mark content is to use the Software to embed a watermark in it or to attach a
signed manifest to it.

A Laidline Licence is a licence file that the Licensor signs and issues for the
Software under a Customer Agreement or under the Licensor's published
legal-process policy. A Legal-Process Licence is a Laidline Licence issued under
that policy: it unlocks export and the compliance paperwork for the months a
lawful order demands, and it licenses no Marking. A Customer Agreement is a
separate agreement between You and the Licensor under which the Licensor issues
Laidline Licences and registered issuer numbers.

The Licence Key Functionality is the functionality in the Software that reads,
verifies or applies Laidline Licences, issuer certificates and signed weight
tables, or that counts Credits. The Meter is the functionality that records and
counts Credits. The Licence-State Surfaces are the licence state and usage
figures the Software reports in its status commands, logs, metrics, response
headers and evidence exports, including the unlicensed-use notice and the
export's licence block. The Payload-Key Switch is the Software's choice of
payload key and issuer number for each new mark, and the evidence event it
records when that choice changes.

A Competing Use is making available to others, commercially or free of charge, a
product or service that (a) substitutes for the Software; (b) substitutes for
any other product or service the Licensor offers using the Software that exists
when the Licensor makes the Software available; or (c) offers the same or
substantially similar marking, watermarking, signing or detection of
AI-generated content as the Software. Products and services compete even when
they work through different interfaces or on different platforms, or are free of
charge; one marketed as a practical substitute for the Software competes.
Detecting and verifying marks made with the Software, as Detection and
Verification permits, is never a Competing Use.

A Competitor is anyone who offers, or has publicly announced that it will offer,
a Competing Use or a hosted or managed service built from the Software. If You
are a Competitor, so is Your Company.
