# Data terms — who may re-share what

One page, four rules. It applies to every fix, track and race that passes through Telltale, and it is
the answer we give partners, contributors and clubs when they ask "can I use this?".

The short version: **you own what you contributed, we own what we heard ourselves, and everything else
carries the terms of whoever we got it from.**

---

## 1. Your own data — yours, without restriction, forever

Anything **you** contributed — your phone tracks, your boat's NMEA, the captures from a receiver you
run — is yours. Re-share it, sell it, publish it, feed it to another platform, delete your account and
keep using it. No attribution required, no time limit, no permission to ask for.

We only hold a copy. Losing us must never mean losing your data, so every track is exportable as GPX
and every race as Open Sail Data (see `OPEN-SAIL-DATA.md`). Owner-shares-own-data: the export button
gives you *your* boat, not the fleet.

## 2. What Telltale heard on its own receivers — re-share it, with attribution

Positions tagged `src: "own"` came off a receiver we run (currently Sorrento Bay and *Laissez Faire*).
We heard them ourselves, so they carry nobody else's terms and we can grant them outright.

You may re-share them provided you:

- credit **Telltale Racing** as the receiver, and
- carry the line **"not for navigation"** wherever a position is shown.

That's the whole condition. No commercial gate, no per-request approval.

## 3. Data from another network passes through with that network's terms

Where a position came from someone else's network, their rules travel with it — we cannot grant more
than we were granted. Every record is tagged with its source so this is always checkable:

| Tag | Source | What we can pass on |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `own` | Our own receivers | Everything — see rule 2. Also dedicated **CC0** via Open Waters (below). |
| `ais` | aisstream.io | No published redistribution restriction we have found. Passed through attributed. |
| `aishub` | AISHub | AISHub's own terms apply — they supply it to contributing members, and it is not ours to re-licence. Ask them. |
| `openwaters` | Open Waters / aiscast | Aggregate is **ODbL** — share it on, keep the attribution and keep it open. Volunteer receptions inside it are CC0. |
| ADS-B | airplanes.live | Community feed, redistribution-friendly. Attributed. |
| (contributed) | A contributor's receiver or boat | Rule 1 — theirs. We hold a copy; the contributor decides. |

**Where a source hasn't stated its terms, we don't grant what we haven't got.** We pass it through
attributed and say who it came from, and if that source later states a restriction we honour it from
that day. AIS redistribution to partners runs with no licence gate — a deliberate decision, and one
flag re-gates it.

### Our own receivers are now public domain, on purpose (20 Sep 2026)

We contribute our shore station's reception to **[Open Waters / aiscast](https://openwaters.io/ais/)**,
and their terms are ours: *"you dedicate your receptions to the public domain under CC0."* Permanent
for anything already sent. The aggregate they publish is ODbL, and they undertake never to relicense
it, never to put it behind terms forbidding redistribution, and never to grant anyone an exclusive
licence — including a future buyer of the company.

**Why we would give away the thing we collect.** Because it is not the thing we are worth. Anyone can
put an aerial on a roof; nobody else has the fleet rosters, the handicaps, the results, the season or
the clubs. Raw positions are plumbing, and plumbing is better shared — a boat heard by two stations is
heard better, and a club in a bay we cannot reach is covered by somebody else's aerial rather than by
nothing. What stays gated is unchanged and is the part that matters: consented races, instrument
channels, and anything involving a minor.

This also makes rule 2 *checkable* rather than a promise. "Our own receivers' capture, unrestricted"
used to be us saying so; it is now a licence you can read.

## 4. Consent still governs, separately

These terms say what may be re-shared *once it may leave at all*. They do not override consent:

- A race is **private by default**. Nothing leaves until a human flags it (`share`: `private` → `club`
  → `partners` → `public`).
- A boat's **instrument channels** (heel, pitch, true and apparent wind, speed through water) belong to
  its owner and are stripped unless the owner has opted in.
- **Youth**: sail numbers, not names; club-gated views; parental consent. When in doubt, protect the
  minor — that outranks every rule above.

---

## For partners

Your key's scopes decide what you can *fetch* (`PARTNER-API.md`). This page decides what you can *do
with it afterwards*. Each response names the source of every record, so the rule that applies is
always on the record itself rather than in a contract you have to remember.

In practice that means the AIS we serve you is **our own receivers' capture, unrestricted**: no licence
gate, no approval per request, re-shareable under rule 2 — and now formally CC0, so you do not have to
take our word for it. You can equally take the same receptions straight from aiscast; we would rather
you had them from whichever source is easier. The aggregated feed is not relayed, because a
rebroadcast right we never held is not ours to hand on — get that stream from its own source and it
comes with its own terms, which is cleaner for both of us.

Users carry their own data across platforms under rule 1 — that is the point of the shared format. We
don't scrape you; please don't scrape us. Data moves between us through the API or through the user,
and it is always credited.

## For contributors

Running a receiver or feeding your boat's NMEA in doesn't hand us anything. Rule 1 is unconditional:
what you contributed stays yours to use anywhere. What changes is that the fleet gets covered, which
is the whole reason the thing works.

## The line that keeps us honest

We only re-grant what we heard ourselves or were given the right to. If we can't name the source of a
record, it doesn't leave.