IP & Licensing Policy

1. Ownership of User Content

You retain full ownership of all original content you create, upload, or submit, including text, code, images, videos, datasets, models, creative works, documentation, and derivative works created by you.

Modern Ancients does not claim ownership of your intellectual property.

2. License Granted to Modern Ancients

To operate the provenance engine, you grant Modern Ancients a limited, revocable license to process your content, generate provenance metadata, archive cryptographic records, render manifests and proof bundles, display non-sensitive metadata in provenance dashboards, maintain lineage history, perform synthetic detection, and fulfill platform security functions.

The license is non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, and restricted solely to platform operation.

We do not acquire rights to redistribute, publish, or commercialize your content beyond provenance functionality.

3. System-Generated Artifacts Are Co-Created IP

The platform generates co-authored system artifacts that embed your original content, but are produced by the provenance engine. These include:

• provenance manifests
• lineage logs
• timestamp receipts
• archival proofs
• dataset passports
• model passports
• training and inference logs
• synthetic visibility metadata
• AI-declaration fields
• sovereign zone tags
• integrity score metadata

These artifacts are owned jointly by you and Modern Ancients, cannot be stripped/removed/altered, are essential to provenance integrity, may be published where necessary (e.g., public timestamp network entries), and persist indefinitely once archived.

You may use them freely; you may not remove or falsify the metadata they contain.

4. Licensing of System Internals

The following are 100% owned by Modern Ancients and are not licensed for use outside the platform unless explicitly permitted:

• provenance manifests format
• personal or commercial workflow templates
• provenance-archive workflow
• Publishing Provenance Kit structure
• lineage log format
• passport formats (dataset, model, artifact)
• integrity scoring modules
• system metadata schemas
• sovereign zone classification logic
• identity mappings and authorship-intent fields
• Guardian Node logic and sync operations

You may not copy or replicate these formats for independent commercial use, create derivative workflows based on proprietary internals, use system internals to train AI models, or distribute/resell/open-source any part of the proprietary provenance stack.

5. User Licensing Options for Published Artifacts

The platform allows you to choose licenses for artifacts you publish. Supported license types include Creative Commons (all variants), MIT/Apache/BSD software licenses, non-commercial licenses, restricted-use licenses, and Modern Ancients IP-protective licenses.

Your chosen license is embedded into your provenance manifest. Once embedded, it becomes part of the immutable provenance record, cannot be removed from historical versions, and updates generate new lineage entries.

You must ensure you have the rights to apply any chosen license.

6. AI Training, Derivative Works, and Attribution

AI May Not Train on System Internals: Users may NOT train AI systems on proprietary provenance manifests, workflow templates, system metadata, lineage logs, passport formats, system code, provenance-archive logic, or Publishing Provenance Kit internals.

AI May Train on User-Provided Content Only If the User Owns It: If YOU upload original content and indicate that it may be used for AI training, that permission applies only to your own content.

Attribution Requirements Apply to AI Training: If your artifact is used in AI training (outside the platform), you must follow the license terms you set.

The Platform Enforces Attribution Visibility: Downstream readers will always see authorship, model lineage, AI involvement, and original license fields. These fields are immutable.

7. Derivative Work Rights and Lineage

Derivative works created from artifacts registered on SOVEREIGN\PROVENANCE must include proper attribution, lineage references, license continuity (unless explicitly disclaimed), and AI involvement visibility if applicable.

The platform automatically links derivatives to the originals, stores lineage logs, and generates version manifests.

You may not obscure origin, break lineage, falsify derivative chains, or present derivatives as independent originals.

8. Immutable IP Metadata

The following metadata persists forever after archival:

• creation timestamps
• original authorship declarations
• hash digests
• timestamp receipts
• proof bundles
• lineage references
• dataset/model passport fields
• sovereign zone tags
• synthetic disclosure metadata

This is essential to IP protection. Immutable records cannot be deleted, even if the underlying artifact is removed.

9. Fair Use and Exemptions

Nothing in this policy interferes with fair use/fair dealing, public domain materials, open data licenses, mandated government transparency, or academic citation and scholarship.

However, false claims of public domain, misuse of fair use claims, and attempts to evade attribution requirements are prohibited.

10. Violations and Enforcement

Violation of this policy may result in account restriction, workflow suspension, revocation of provenance utilities, removal of non-immutable content, legal action, or reporting to authorities.

Modern Ancients will enforce IP integrity to protect the provenance ecosystem.