We’ve recently updated our Terms of Service for Freebase, and I thought it would be good to explain what’s going on.
First up, you should know that there are no nasty surprises or massive changes in the new TOS, and that the changes we’ve made are mostly in the service of clarity and openness. Our two main goals here were to make it very clear that Freebase’s data is open and free, and to answer many of the questions we’ve had about ambiguity or incompleteness in the previous version.
The TOS is really four documents. There’s the main Terms of Service document, which includes three other documents by reference:
To get the full picture, you’ll have to read them right through, and like most documents of their kind they’ll probably put you to sleep pretty quickly. Sorry about that; we’ve done the best we can, but it’s kind of the nature of the beast. So, for your convenience, here’s a precis of some of the main points you probably want to know about:
- Openness: Freebase is committed to providing information under open licenses which allow you to use our stuff in as wide a range of applications as possible. We’re even going to start publishing full dumps of our data. Additionally, our API is free for any use up to 100k requests per day.
- Attribution: You must attribute Freebase when you use our data, and because some of our descriptions and images originally came from Wikipedia, sometimes you have to attribute them, too. The Licensing policy tells you how.
- Copyright: We respect copyright, and want you to as well. Never upload something for which you don’t have permission (or justification under Fair Use). If you think someone’s uploading copyright material that belongs to you, we explain how to notify us under the DMCA.
- Privacy: When you sign up with us, we don’t share the information you give us nor use it for any other sinister purposes; however, you need to realise that anything else you put into Freebase becomes very public indeed.
If you’ve got any questions, please let us know!
