Copyright and AI Disclosure

Effective date: 23rd May 2026 Last updated: 23rd May 2026

1. Ownership

All content published on Branchwriter — including but not limited to chapter prose, season covers, character art, the world bible, the homepage map, season titles, brand marks, and the underlying source code — is © {{BUSINESS_LEGAL_NAME}} unless explicitly attributed otherwise on the page where it appears.

"Branchwriter", "One Summer at Honeyford", and the Branchwriter logo are trademarks of {{BUSINESS_LEGAL_NAME}}. Use of them in a way that suggests endorsement requires our prior written permission.

2. AI-assistance disclosure

Branchwriter chapters might be drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence and edited by a human author (Marek Čermák). We might use AI as a drafting tool the way another writer might use a thesaurus, an outliner, or a writing partner. Every published chapter passes through a human editorial pass before it appears on the site.

What this means concretely:

AI involvement is disclosed publicly and visibly. We do not pretend the chapters are unassisted unless explicitely stated.
Voting outcomes are real. Reader voting decides which branch the canon takes; the AI does not pick the winner and the author does not override it (except in documented tiebreak procedures).
No reader data is sent to AI tools as story input. Your email, name, and votes are not used to generate prose.
Style and continuity are the author's responsibility. When AI output drifts from the editorial style guide, the author rewrites it.

We support the position that transparent AI-assisted creative work is a legitimate genre.

3. Your licence as a reader

Your account (Free, Premium, or Patron) grants you a personal, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to:

Read chapters and the world bible from your account.
Listen to audio versions if and when introduced.
Cast votes and otherwise interact with the Service.
Quote short passages (a few sentences) for non-commercial commentary, criticism, or review, with attribution to Branchwriter and a link to the source.

What this licence does not include:

Redistribution, posting, mirroring, or making available any part of a chapter to a public audience.
Commercial use of any kind.
Use of any Branchwriter content (chapter prose, world bible, character art, source code) to train, fine-tune, evaluate, or otherwise build artificial intelligence or machine-learning models. This is an explicit reservation of rights under the EU "text and data mining" opt-out (Directive (EU) 2019/790, Art. 4(3)).
Creating derivative works for distribution (fan fiction etc.) without our prior permission — we are friendly to non-commercial fan creativity; please ask at {{CONTACT_EMAIL}} and we will usually say yes.

4. Reservation against AI training

We reserve all rights under EU and Czech copyright law against the use of Branchwriter content for training generative AI models. This applies to chapter prose, world-bible material, character art, season covers, and any other creative work on the site. The reservation is given pursuant to Art. 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 (the "DSM Directive"); it is also expressed in our robots.txt and (where supported) in HTTP headers and <meta> tags.

Crawlers that ignore this reservation are not authorised users of the Service and may have their access blocked or rate-limited without notice.

5. Notice and takedown for alleged infringement

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a written notice to {{COPYRIGHT_EMAIL}} that includes:

Identification of the copyrighted work you claim is being infringed (title, link to original).
The URL on Branchwriter where the alleged infringing material appears.
Your contact details (name, email, postal address).
A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
A statement under penalty of perjury that the information is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act on their behalf.
Your physical or electronic signature.

We will acknowledge receipt within 5 business days and act on substantiated notices within a further 10 business days. We may publish a redacted summary of substantiated takedowns at our discretion, in line with Article 17 of the DSM Directive.

If you believe content was removed in error, you may send a counter-notice to the same address.

6. Open-source notices

The Branchwriter platform is built on open-source software. We thank the maintainers of Next.js, React, Drizzle, NextAuth, Tailwind, shadcn/ui, Stripe SDK, Resend SDK, and many others. Each component remains subject to its own licence; the application source itself is not currently open-sourced.