Terms of Service

Last updated: August 24, 2026

1. The Service

The Ink and Quill provides: (a) the Academy, a free writing-education curriculum open to scholars of any age; and (b) the Scriptorium, a membership ($5.00/month or $50.00/year) offering publishing, Feed participation, My Guild connections, and studio tools for authors and artists. New adult accounts receive 7 days of full Scriptorium access at no charge and without a card. Afterward, Feed reading remains free; posting and other member features require a paid subscription. Linked young scholars on the free Academy add no extra charge. Each child with a Scriptorium seat (Studios from age 13, parent-monitored messaging, and a supervised Feed) adds $1.00 per month, or $10 per year on an annual plan, to the parent’s subscription.

2. Eligibility & Age Requirements

• The Academy welcomes scholars of all ages.
• Reading the public Scriptorium Feed requires the member to be at least 18 years old. New adult members may post, reply, react, bookmark, use Studios, and access public Guild discovery during their 7-day free trial; those features require an active subscription after the trial. Members under 18 use parent-created family accounts. The Academy is free. A $1/month Scriptorium seat (or $10/year) unlocks private Studios (age 13+), a parent-approved My Guild friends list, parent-monitored messaging, and a supervised Feed where young scholars may read other young scholars' posts plus parent-approved adults.
• Anyone under 13 may not create their own account. A parent or guardian with their own adult account must add them as a family member from their Account page. This is required by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and can't be waived.
• Members ages 13–17 may not create their own account directly. A parent or guardian must add them as a family member so Studio collaboration and messaging remain parent-monitored.
• Adult ("Headmaster") accounts may add family members under their care and are responsible for that family member's compliance with these Terms.
• You represent that all information you provide, including your date of birth, is accurate, and you must separately certify this at signup. Misrepresenting your age — including to gain Scriptorium access you're not entitled to — is a material violation of these Terms. We reserve the right to immediately suspend Scriptorium access, revert the account to Academy-only status, cancel any associated subscription without refund, and/or terminate the account outright, at our discretion, upon discovering a misrepresented age.
• If you believe your email address was used without your permission to create an account — for example, by a family member who understated their age to access the Scriptorium — contact us immediately at support@theinkandquill.com so we can investigate and correct it.

3. Your Account

• You're responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password and for all activity under your account. Passwords must be at least 12 characters and include both a letter and a number.
• Notify us immediately at security@theinkandquill.com if you suspect unauthorized access.
• One account per person. Headmaster/family accounts are the exception, by design, for supervising minors in your care.
• We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, provide false information, or pose a risk to other members — see Section 7.

4. Author Ownership Policy

You retain 100% ownership of your work. The Ink and Quill is a platform for writers — not a publisher claiming rights to your creations.

• All copyright in your original works remains with you, the author.
• We do not acquire any license to sell, sublicense, or commercially exploit your writing.
• By publishing on our platform, you grant only the limited right described in Section 5 to display your work to other Scriptorium members — you may remove it at any time.
• Each published work receives an official Ink & Quill Registry plaque with a unique registry number and content fingerprint for your records.
• We are not a substitute for formal U.S. Copyright Office registration, but our registry documents when your work first appeared on this platform.

5. User Content, License & Your Responsibilities

"User Content" means any writing, art, posts, replies, profile information, or other material you submit to the site.

• License you grant us: a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, back up, format, and display your User Content solely to operate and provide the Service (e.g., showing your published work to other Scriptorium members, generating thumbnails, technical copies for reliability). This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except for residual backup copies that are purged in the ordinary course of business.
• Your representations: you confirm that you own or have all necessary rights to the User Content you submit, that it doesn't infringe anyone else's copyright, trademark, privacy, or other rights, and that it complies with Section 6.
• You are solely responsible for your User Content and the consequences of posting it. We do not pre-screen content and do not endorse any User Content or opinions expressed by members.
• We may remove User Content that violates these Terms or applicable law, or that we're required to remove by legal process, without prior notice.

6. Acceptable Use

You agree not to, and not to help anyone else, do any of the following on the Service:

• Fight, harass, or engage in personal attacks against another member — disagree about the work, not the person.
• Threaten, wish harm on, or encourage violence against any real person — in posts, replies, messages, Studio work, Bookshelf volumes, profiles, or anywhere else on the Service.
• Post, upload, or share pornography or sexually explicit material of any sort — including in Studio drafts, Bookshelf volumes, and Contemporaries-only shares. Softcore, fetish, and “artistic” pornography are not exceptions.
• Upload, share, or store any sexual content involving minors (anyone under 18), including fictional depictions. Such content is illegal and will be removed and reported to the appropriate authorities when we become aware of it.
• Post or publish extreme or graphic violence (torture, gore for shock, cruelty as entertainment) anywhere on the Service. Ordinary literary conflict and non-graphic peril in fiction may be allowed; pornography and extreme violence are not.
• Use vulgar or coarse language in the public Scriptorium feed, posts, or replies. Strong language is permitted only inside a member's own Studio drafts and Bookshelf volumes, and never as a cover for banned sexual or violent content.
• Use the Scriptorium as a forum for political debate, campaigning, or soapboxing — this is a poetry and storytelling community. Poems and stories that explore political themes as creative work are welcome.
• Post content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, harassing, hateful, or discriminatory.
• Infringe or misappropriate any copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, or other intellectual property or legal right of any person.
• Plagiarize — submit another person's writing or art as your own.
• Upload malicious code, attempt to gain unauthorized access to any account or system, or interfere with the Service's normal operation.
• Harass, bully, stalk, or intimidate another member, including minors.
• Attempt to collect personal information about other members beyond what they've chosen to share, or contact minors outside the site's supervised family-account structure.
• Misrepresent your identity or age, or create an account for anyone other than yourself (except an adult creating a supervised family account for their own minor).
• Use the Service for spam, scams, unauthorized advertising, or automated scraping/bulk data collection.
• Circumvent, disable, or otherwise interfere with any security-related features, including content-reporting or blocking tools.

Full community expectations for the Scriptorium are in our Community Guidelines.

7. Enforcement, Suspension & Termination

• Members can report posts, replies, accounts, profile photos, and Bookshelf volumes, and can block other members — see Community Guidelines.
• We may, at our discretion, remove content, issue warnings, suspend, or permanently terminate any account that violates these Terms, without refund of any subscription fees already paid, to the extent permitted by law.
• You may delete your own account at any time by contacting support@theinkandquill.com. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (ownership, disclaimers, liability limits, indemnification, dispute resolution) will survive.

8. Subscriptions, Billing & Auto-Renewal

• New members age 18 and older receive 7 days of full Scriptorium access at no charge when they create an account; no payment method is required. When the trial ends, Feed reading remains free, while an active subscription is required to post, reply, react, bookmark, use Studios, join My Guild, or send messages. The Academy also remains free.
• The Scriptorium is a recurring subscription (monthly or annual, chosen at checkout) that automatically renews and charges your payment method at the end of each paid period until you cancel. The billed amount includes $1.00 per linked child with a Scriptorium seat ($10.00 per year on an annual plan). Children using the free Academy only are not billed.
• You can cancel anytime, at no cost, from your Account page — no phone call or email required. Canceling stops future renewals; you keep access through the end of the period you already paid for.
• We don't offer prorated refunds for partial billing periods, except where required by law.
• If we change the subscription price, we'll notify you in advance and the new price will apply starting with your next renewal after the notice period; continuing your subscription after that point means you accept the new price.
• Payments are processed by NMI. We never store your full card number, CVV, or bank account number — see our Privacy Policy.
• Failed or declined payments may result in suspension of Scriptorium access until resolved.

9. Copyright Infringement Claims (DMCA)

We respect intellectual property rights and expect members to do the same. If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a written notice to our designated agent that includes:

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or their authorized representative;
2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to be infringed;
3. Identification of the material claimed to be infringing and information reasonably sufficient for us to locate it (e.g., a link);
4. Your contact information (address, phone number, and email);
5. A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
6. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you're authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.

A member who receives repeated, valid infringement notices will have their account suspended or terminated. A member whose content was removed may submit a counter-notice under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) to the same agent.

10. Educational Content

Academy materials from Khan Academy (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) and OpenStax (CC BY 4.0) with full attribution. See content credits.

11. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DON'T WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE, OR THAT ANY CONTENT IS ACCURATE OR RELIABLE. YOU USE THE SERVICE AT YOUR OWN RISK. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONDUCT OR CONTENT OF ANY MEMBER, ON OR OFF THE SERVICE.

12. Limitation of Liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE INK AND QUILL SOCIAL MEDIA GROUP, LLC AND ITS MEMBERS, MANAGERS, STAFF, AND CONTRACTORS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, RESULTING FROM YOUR USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE, OR (B) $50.

Some jurisdictions don't allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so some of the above limitations may not apply to you.

13. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless The Ink and Quill Social Media Group, LLC and its members, managers, staff, and contractors from any claims, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from: (a) your User Content; (b) your violation of these Terms; (c) your violation of any law or the rights of a third party; or (d) a family member account you manage.

14. Governing Law & Dispute Resolution

• These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.
• Informal resolution first: before filing any claim, please contact legal@theinkandquill.com so we can try to resolve the issue informally.
• Arbitration: if we can't resolve a dispute informally within 30 days, any claim arising from these Terms or the Service will be resolved by binding, individual arbitration rather than in court, except that either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court. You and The Ink and Quill Social Media Group, LLC each waive the right to a jury trial and to participate in a class action.
• This arbitration/class-action-waiver clause does not apply to Academy-only minor accounts, since those members have no billing relationship with us and this clause is intended to cover paid Scriptorium disputes.

15. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we'll update the "Last updated" date above and, for significant changes, notify active members (e.g., by email or an in-app notice) before the changes take effect. Continuing to use the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

16. General Terms

• Severability: if any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest remain in full effect.
• No waiver: our failure to enforce a provision isn't a waiver of our right to do so later.
• Entire agreement: these Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and Community Guidelines, are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service.
• Assignment: we may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets; you may not assign your account or these Terms to anyone else.

Contact

The Ink and Quill Social Media Group, LLC
legal@theinkandquill.com