Chapter Text
Introduction
When AO3 went into open beta in 2009, it had only a few thousand users. Today, AO3 has millions of users from all over the world, who collectively visit the site billions of times each month. AO3's Terms of Service (TOS) are the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW)'s legal contract with our users (you) – our binding promise to you about what we will and won't do, and what you can and can't do, whenever you use AO3.
During the last fifteen years, the landscape of the internet has changed and evolved. AO3's TOS have been updated several times to adapt to changing regulatory requirements as lawmakers become ever more concerned about ensuring websites disclose how they collect, use, and share user data. However, the TOS have not received similar updates to match the evolving best practices for communicating TOS information to users.
The 2024 Terms of Service revisions are designed to address AO3's growth and modernize our approach to how we present the Terms of Service. Our goals are:
- To make the Terms of Service easier for users to read and understand
- To update the abuse policy framework to a design appropriate for AO3's current scale
- To maintain our commitment to users to be a reliable, non-commercial, permanent home for all fanworks legal in the United States
This guide exists to present a summary of the changes and to explain the reasoning behind what has – and what has not – been changed.
Summary of Changes
Although the changes to the TOS may appear to be considerable, the bulk of them are in the structure and phrasing. Here are the highlights:
- We've clarified the Content Policy, but we haven't changed what works are or are not allowed. If your fanwork was allowed on AO3 before, then it is still allowed.
- The TOS has been split into three pages (General Principles, Content Policy, and Privacy Policy). This should make it easier to find what you're looking for when you want to know about a specific part of the TOS.
- We've simplified the language throughout the TOS and removed redundant or overly specific phrases and passages. When longer explanations would help to provide clarity, we've added new questions to the TOS FAQ instead.
- We've updated the descriptions of how we and our subprocessors collect and process user information (including personal information) in the Privacy Policy.
- The Abuse Policy has been generalized to provide the AO3 Policy & Abuse committee with greater flexibility to determine how to address TOS violations, while still providing protections for fanworks in accordance with AO3's mission.
- The "Underage" Archive Warning, which is used for works that depict or describe underage sex, is being renamed to "Underage Sex". This does not change the meaning of this warning or how it is enforced. When the TOS update occurs, all works with the "Underage" Archive Warning will be recategorized automatically to display the new "Underage Sex" Archive Warning label instead. If you have a work that carries the "Underage" warning and you don't want it to display the "Underage Sex" label, you can replace it with the "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" label at any time.
The updated Terms of Service have been posted for a public review period of 2 weeks, from November 4th to 18th, 2024. At the end of this period, the Board of Directors will vote on these changes. If the vote passes, then the new TOS will be updated on the site and become effective at that time. All users will be required to agree to the new TOS to continue using AO3.
Structural Changes
In order to allow users to more easily find the parts of the TOS that they are looking for, the new revision of the TOS divides the document into three separate pages:
- General Principles: The legalese, containing all the usual statements and disclaimers included in a typical "Terms of Service" document
- Content Policy: AO3's rules about what users can and cannot post
- Privacy Policy: How AO3 handles user data, including personally identifying information
All three pages together form the Terms of Service. When agreeing to the new TOS, users will be explicitly informed it has three parts and required to agree to all three portions. In addition, each of the three pages will be linked in the site footer.
Splitting the TOS in this fashion is standard practice for most websites. By conforming to common practice, we place the information in the places that users expect to see it. In addition, by placing each part on a separate page, we shorten the pages and avoid intimidating scroll lengths. This makes it easier to navigate for people on mobile devices (who form the majority of AO3 users) and users who need accessibility tools.
Part V (Assorted Specialized Policies) has been removed in full. This is because this information largely consisted of descriptions of AO3 features or of other agreements (not the AO3 TOS) that individuals may have with the OTW. While that information is important, it's not information that should be in AO3's TOS. Detailed information about why specific portions of Part V were removed from the TOS, where that information can be found instead, and what information has been retained and moved elsewhere in the TOS can be found at the end of this guide.
General Principles
The new General Principles (Part I) covers the material currently covered by Sections I (General Principles) and II (Age Policy) and Section IV.A (Content and Abuse Policies: Procedures).
In general, we have simplified sentences and removed redundant information throughout. In some cases, we've moved information to another part or section. Some sections of the General Policies have been rearranged in order to present a more logical flow.
What We Believe
These points have been shortened to remove redundancies. For example, we have removed the mention that our code is open source and available on GitHub. This information is already available in the About the Archive FAQ and by following the Development links in the site footer. In addition, the GPL 2.0 license that our code uses means that AO3's code and all future versions of it will always be open source, without needing to specify this in the TOS.
Section I.A: General terms
We've added bookmarks and "fannish next-of-kin" to the explicit definition of "Content". This is not a substantial change: it was previously included within "any other form of content".
We've added a "No assignment" clause. This means that the Terms of Service are an agreement that we have with you: you can't assign the rights or responsibilities therein to someone else instead. It is a standard clause in most TOS agreements.
The intersection of "No assignment" and "Fannish next-of-kin": Our agreement is with you, not with a specific account that you own. In order to have or become a fannish next-of-kin, you need to have an AO3 account, which means both you and your fannish next-of-kin need to have separately agreed to the Terms of Service. If your fannish next-of-kin agreement is activated (because you have died or become permanently incapacitated), then ownership of the account is transferred to your fannish next-of-kin. This doesn't transfer the rights or responsibilities you agreed to under the TOS, because those are not tied to the account.
Section I.B: Updates to the Terms of Service
We've removed the separate line about how the TOS update process may be updated. Since the update process is itself contained within the TOS, this was redundant: changing the update process requires changing the TOS.
We have slightly changed the voting procedure for updates, so that the Board of Directors may now vote on the changes any time after the end of the minimum two-week public comment period, instead of the public comment period only ending once the Board has voted. In practical terms, this doesn't affect much, since feedback can always be provided to the Board at any time using the contact form. The minimum duration of the public comment period remains two weeks.
We have specified that, if approved, the new TOS will become effective when posted to the appropriate TOS page(s), rather than at the time of the vote. It's not always possible for the site to be updated immediately after the Board concludes a vote, and it isn't reasonable to expect users to adhere to an agreement that isn't posted on the site.
Section I.C: Potential problems with AO3
In the event of a breach of personally identifying information that users have submitted to AO3, we have now explicitly promised to also notify relevant supervisory authorities as required by law, in addition to our users.
We've clarified that we're not a personal storage or file recovery service. This is because we cannot promise that content will never be lost or that it can be recovered if it is. We are not a cloud storage service. If you want your content backed up, you need to back it up somewhere else.
Section I.D: Content you access when using AO3
We've updated the list of adjectives that describe the types of content that you understand you may be exposed to on AO3. Specifically, we're no longer explicitly warning people about the possibility that they may encounter bad grammar and spelling. Such cases are covered by the descriptors "atrocious", "erroneous", and "objectionable"; and we will also have a TOS FAQ question that clearly states that we do not have any minimum standard for grammar, spelling, or punctuation.
The reason we are removing the explicit inclusion here is because the AO3 Policy & Abuse committee (PAC) often needs to deal with users who are sincerely upset about content that they have encountered on AO3. We have no intention of ever removing this content on the basis that it is offensive, but PAC finds that most people who are upset respond better when our answers avoid flippancy.
Section I.E: What we do with Content
We've cut the previously lengthy explanation about what "modify and adapt" means down to the bare bones, and moved the rest to the TOS FAQ. This is a cosmetic change only; the definition itself is unchanged.
We've updated our examples about ways you may submit content to an area of AO3 that you don't control (and how that may affect your ability to decide to remove that content) to include Orphaning. (See the discussion about V.C. Orphaning below for the reason behind this addition.)
We have included an explanation of how we host Open Doors content and a statement that we will remove such content at the request of the creator. (See the discussion about V.D. Open Doors below for the reason behind this addition.)
We've included news post comments as an explicit example of an area of AO3 that may not be under your control when it comes to removing content. This means news post moderators may delete comments that violate the OTW's news post moderation policy.
Section I.F: What you can't do
We no longer clarify that fiction is not impersonation here – we've moved that clarification to the Content Policy (Section II.G).
We've simplified the discussion of how you can't sign up if you're too young. Now we simply refer to the Age Policy instead of repeating information from there.
We've expanded our prohibition against using AO3 to make commercial content available to a prohibition against using AO3 to conduct any kind of commercial activity. This includes scraping AO3 to commercialize content, for example by creating a paid-access app or using the scraped content to train generative AI models.
We've updated the type of U.S. trade embargo that prevents residents or nationals of the embargoed country from being allowed to have an AO3 account, and now specify it is a "comprehensive trade embargo, as detailed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control". The U.S. has several different types of trade embargos – it is only comprehensive trade embargos which mean that AO3 (as a US-based entity) cannot allow residents or nationals to have accounts.
To remove redundancy, we've removed specific examples of laws which may apply to you that you shouldn't break. You can't use our services to break any law that applies to you.
Section I.G: Registration and email addresses
We've removed the explanation about what happens to your content if you're suspended, because that's now covered in the Abuse Policy.
We've removed the statement that AO3 may share your email address with the owners or moderators of Challenges you sign up for, because that (and all other information about how we share user data) is now covered in the Privacy Policy.
Removal of former Section I.H: Data and Content Processing
All information about how we handle user data and content processing is now provided in the Privacy Policy, which made Section I.H redundant. Accordingly, this section has been removed.
Section I.H: Age Policy
This section was formerly Section II of the TOS. We've moved it under General Principles and updated the phrasing significantly, with the goal of making it easier to understand while still complying with GDPR requirements.
The rules about who counts as an underage user, and how PAC may handle violations of the Age Policy, have not changed. Users who are younger than 13 are not allowed to have accounts. Users who are younger than 16 and citizens or residents of certain countries, such as those in the European Union, may not be allowed to have an account (depending on their national laws).
Section I.I: Abuse Policy
The new TOS's Abuse Policy replaces the current Section IV.A. from the Content and Abuse Policies. Because the Abuse Policy applies to any violation of the TOS – not just violations of the other sections of Section IV (which have now become the Content Policy) – we decided it made more sense to include it in the General Principles.
The Abuse Policy has been simplified. In some cases specific rules about procedures have been removed from the TOS, as it is more appropriate to have that level of specificity covered in either the TOS FAQ or internal PAC policy documents. This allows PAC the necessary flexibility to adjust procedures appropriately as AO3 continues to grow.
We have clarified that the Abuse Policy does not apply to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices. DMCA notices are handled by the Legal committee, and because such notices may be forwarded to the recipients, they are not subject to the same privacy protections afforded to users who submit Abuse reports to PAC.
The PAC confidentiality policy has been published on the OTW website and will be used as the standard for treatment of Abuse reports.
PAC has been given greater discretion to immediately remove violations of the Terms of Service, particularly for non-work content (e.g. comments and bookmarks). As AO3 is an archive for fanworks, we've loosened (but not removed) the requirement for PAC to first offer the user the opportunity to remove or edit their work when the violation is in a work. When the violation is not in a work (e.g. it's a comment), we've removed the requirement for PAC to always notify users about and/or ask them to remove the content before PAC does so.
If a work imported by Open Doors is found to be in violation, its removal will not result in a penalty for the creator or archivist unless the content is illegal or maliciously inappropriate material (e.g. malware). This has previously been internal policy, so we are simply making it explicit in the TOS.
Permanent bans no longer require a majority vote of the entire Policy & Abuse committee. At today's scale of users, requiring a dozen or more volunteers to weigh in on a single user's case is impractical. PAC is committed to operating cooperatively and has sufficient internal procedures to ensure that permanent bans are implemented in line with applicable policies and precedent and are reviewed by multiple PAC volunteers.
The OTW Board is no longer mentioned as part of the PAC workflow. We would like to emphasize that there has never been any routine Board review of cases, and that very few individual cases ever received attention from the Board. As PAC now receives tens of thousands of complaints a year, intervention in individual cases is no longer a feasible way for the Board to provide consistent direction and oversight on general policy.
Content Policy
The new Content Policy will cover material that was previously covered in Sections IV.B. through IV.K. of the Content and Abuse Policies. It's been placed on its own page because the vast majority of Terms of Service violations are violations of the Content Policy. Having the Content Policy on its own page makes it easier for users to quickly read the rules about what they are and are not allowed to post.
Some sections have been rearranged in order to present a more logical flow. Most sections have been condensed to make the list of rules easier and quicker to read.
New section: Fanworks
Half of upheld Abuse reports are about what PAC calls "non-fanworks": works uploaded by users that don't contain fanwork content. Common examples are requests for other users to provide or fill prompts, placeholders for works that the user plans to create (but hasn't created yet), roleplay ads, fic searches, and other posts that belong on social media rather than on AO3. In the previous TOS, non-fanworks were disallowed under the Illegal and Inappropriate Content Policy (Section IV.H). However, Section IV.H also described extremely serious violations, such as illegal material. PAC has internal policies for expediting the removal of illegal material and penalizing accounts that post such content, which don't apply to simple non-fanworks.
Non-fanworks are very common, while the other types of IV.H violations are very rare. In order to provide better clarity for both sets of rules, we've moved the description of "Fanworks and non-fanwork content" into a new Section II.B in the Content Policy. The other types of violations formerly covered by Section IV.H will be contained in Section II.K, the Illegal and Inappropriate Content Policy.
Previously, the TOS stated that any user-provided content that contained or linked to non-fanwork content was not allowed. The new section properly states that works must be fanworks and bookmarks must be of fanworks, without requiring that comments, notes, profile descriptions, etc. must also be fanworks.
Division of former Section IV.B. Spam and commercial promotion
Spam and violations of the non-commercialization policy were previously both considered under Section IV.B. However, since 2009 there has been an increasing trend for people to commercialize their hobbies, which means that PAC sees an increasing number of users violating the non-commercialization policy by advertising their Ko-fi, Patreon, etc. PAC's internal procedures do not treat these violations in the same way that we treat spam by spambots – we ban spambots immediately, but not real human beings. To make the difference between these behaviors clearer, we've made Section II.C of the Content Policy solely about commercial violations, and moved "spam" down into the Illegal and Inappropriate Content Policy instead. This division does not change what types of behaviors are disallowed; it is merely a reorganization of the sections to simplify the Content Policy and better reflect internal procedures.
Harassment Policy
Prior to and during these revisions, the OTW Board, PAC, and the Legal committee have engaged in various discussions both regarding the TOS and to internally clarify PAC's powers and purview. The harassment policy applies to all user behavior, including choice of usernames and icons. We have clarified in the policy that we consider harassment of groups of people (not just of specific individuals) to be a violation; explicitly included interactions with OTW volunteers as an example of something our harassment policy applies to; provided greater explanation of the difference between advocating harm and creating Real Person Fiction; added encouragement to use existing tools to avoid other users; and generally simplified the phrasing.
New section: Impersonation
Impersonation was previously prohibited by clause I.D.2. It's still prohibited by clause 2 of Section I.F. ("What you can't do") in the General Principles, but it's also now prohibited by the Content Policy. Under the old TOS, impersonation was the most frequent type of non-Content Policy violation outside of the Age Policy and Abuse Policy, and most instances of impersonation center around individuals uploading impersonating content. Adding this to the Content Policy provides a more complete description of what types of content users are not allowed to post.
Simplification of Tags Policy
This section has been condensed and generalized to specify that AO3 administrators may enforce tags in "mandatory" tag fields. Mandatory tag fields are those tag fields that must be filled out in order for AO3's interface to allow the work to be posted, and currently include Rating, Archive Warning, Fandom, and Language. Non-specific tags such as "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" are (if available) always sufficient for such fields. These, as well as the specific ratings and warnings that are available to users, will all be listed in the TOS FAQ. Further clarifications about when and how PAC and Support address specific types of insufficient or incorrect tagging in these mandatory fields have also been moved to the TOS FAQ. This is not a change to the current tagging policy, the types of tags that are enforced, or the rating or warnings systems themselves.
Discussion of "work types" has been removed. Work types were intended to refer to the medium of work (e.g. fic, art, video, etc), but this interface feature doesn't exist yet. We anticipate that if work types are implemented, then it would be a mandatory tag on the "Post New Work" or "Import Work" forms, and so it would fall under the framework for mandatory tags that is described in this section. This allows work types to be added and enforced without requiring an update to the TOS.
Clarification to the Archive Warning for underage sexual content
The "Underage" warning has always meant, and been intended to mean, that the work may contain descriptions or depictions of underage sexual activities. However, PAC and Support have found that many users find the label "Underage" confusingly ambiguous. Some users interpret it as having a much broader meaning, and believe that it pertains to underage drinking, underage dating activities such as kissing, or other content featuring characters who are not adults. Other users interpret it as indicating that the work is suitable for underage persons to access. To make the meaning of this warning clearer, we will be renaming the "Underage" warning to "Underage Sex". The meaning of the warning will not change. The label adjustment will apply to all current and future uses of this warning, meaning that all works currently tagged with the "Underage" Archive Warning will be automatically recategorized to be tagged "Underage Sex". The current "Underage Sex" Additional tag will gain a suffix to become "Underage Sex - Freeform".
If your work is currently tagged "Underage", there's no action you need to take – the change will be automatic. If you do not want your work to carry the label "Underage Sex", then you can replace the "Underage" label with the "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" label. If you have a work labeled "Underage" that does not feature any descriptions or depictions of underage sexual activities, you may remove the "Underage" or "Underage Sex" label without replacing it with the "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" label. If you don't remove it, don't worry – your work is not in violation of the TOS for carrying an extra warning.
Consolidation of "Spam" and "Threats to Technical Integrity" into the Illegal and Inappropriate Content Policy
The Content Policy's Section II.K ("Illegal and Inappropriate Content") will be devoted to behaviors that represent a significant threat to AO3 or Archive personnel and/or may be implemented by automatic means (e.g. spam), and may therefore result in immediate removal or harsher penalties. This is done in order to make it simpler to refer to such behaviors as a group. Threatening the technical integrity of the Service is one such set of behaviors, so we've combined it into that section instead of keeping it on its own. This consolidation does not change what types of behaviors are disallowed; it is merely a reorganization of the sections to simplify the Content Policy and better reflect internal procedures.
Clarifications to the Illegal and Inappropriate Content Policy
We've made several clarifications to the language of the Illegal and Inappropriate Content Policy, such as updating to explicitly describe the types of content that fall under the umbrella of what is in modern terminology often called "child sexual abuse material", instead of using the older term "child pornography". We've also clarified that providing instructions for accessing illegal content is also a violation of our Content Policy, not just uploading or providing a direct link.
Excluded from addition: AI-generated content
We want to protect content that users post to AO3 from being exploited by commercial entities. To support this goal, we've expanded the prohibition against commercialization in the General Principles to explicitly forbid scraping AO3 for commercial use. This disallows scraping for training generative AI datasets for commercial interests. We have banned and will continue to ban accounts that place an unreasonable burden on the servers by scraping. We also employ all available technological methods to prevent commercial scraping of user content, such as opting out of the Common Crawl, and will continue to do so.
We have not added any specific rules with respect to posting AI-generated works. If AI-assisted or AI-generated works are found to have reproduced other works in part or in whole, for example by directly reproducing entire sentences or paragraphs from another work, then they may be deemed in violation of our plagiarism or copyright infringement policies, just as any non-AI work would be. We are not imposing additional restrictions on the presence of AI-assisted or AI-generated content in fanworks. Please refer to this news post for AO3's stance on AI-assisted or AI-generated content on AO3.
There are many arguments for and against allowing AI-generated content. However, a ban against AI works is not enforceable. Humans, including our all-volunteer PAC team, are not able to reliably detect the use of AI in creative works, and AI-detection programs are extremely unreliable and prone to false positives. AO3 is meant to be a home for all fanworks, regardless of the creator's skill level; as such, removing valid fanworks on the risk that they might be generated by AI is counter to our ethos.
The only ban we could safely enforce would be a ban on the disclosure of AI use or the presence of AI-generated content. This creates a culture that is both counter to the ethical use of AI – which should promote the disclosure of AI use – and also one that makes it more difficult for users to filter out AI works if they want to do so. We prefer instead to encourage users to tag their works that were created with AI assistance, such as by using the Created Using Generative AI, AI-Generated Text, or AI-Generated Images Additional tags. Users who wish to avoid AI-assisted or AI-generated content will then be able to avoid accessing those fanworks. Because we are unable to reliably detect the use of AI tools in creating a fanwork, however, we are not making this an Archive Warning, as PAC would not be able to enforce the Warning's presence.
If a user posted many AI-generated works in quick succession, that may be considered spam. However, in the year and a half since allowing AI-generated content became explicit internal policy, PAC has not seen a flood of AI-generated works. Because AO3 is not commercialized, there is no commercial incentive for widespread AI use in works posted here. What we have instead seen is a sharp uptick in AI use in spambot comments. Such comments will continue to be classified as spam under the updated TOS, and PAC will continue to remove them as they are reported to us.
Excluded from addition: Additional Archive warnings
The TOS and TOS FAQ revisions do not add any new warnings to the list of required Archive Warnings. For information about why we are not doing so, please refer to Appendix A.
Privacy Policy
We've restructured the Privacy Policy, removed redundant information, and reviewed it to ensure completeness. All information about how a user's personal information is collected or used is now contained in the Privacy Policy and not in other parts of the TOS.
In addition, we have made the following changes and clarifications:
- We've defined what we mean by "Personal Information".
- We've clarified and emphasized that no matter where in the world you are, your use of AO3 may result in the transfer of information across international boundaries, and it may result in your personal information being processed in another jurisdiction.
- We no longer allow unsubscribing from emails that we deem necessary for legal purposes or to maintain the safety and integrity of user accounts or OTW services. An example of such an email would be a notification that AO3 user data had been compromised or exposed, in the event that our servers were ever breached.
- We've clarified that our subprocessors (not just the OTW directly) collect, process, and retain various types of user data, and may use cookies for various purposes related to improving the functionality and security of AO3.
- We've moved the descriptions of how specific Archive features (such as posting a work or a draft) collect, process, and retain user data to the TOS FAQ, and expanded that list to be comprehensive.
- We've clarified that we may use aggregated or de-identified information about users for the purposes of managing and maintaining AO3 – such information doesn't count as "Personal Information", since it doesn't identify you.
- We've clarified that the Privacy Policy does not restrict our use of anonymous information.
- Any individual (not just those covered by the GDPR) may now request a copy of the information that we have about them. However, we only guarantee provision of such data within a reasonable period of time to those individuals covered by the GDPR or similar laws. In addition, we've clarified that we will require the requester to provide evidence that they are the user whose data they are requesting.
- We've affirmed that you may have additional data privacy rights regarding your personal information, depending upon your jurisdiction, and we won't discriminate against you for making a request under applicable data privacy laws.
- We've affirmed that we do not use your personal information for any automated decision-making purposes that would affect your legal rights.
- If you are using a third-party tool to access AO3, then that may result in you providing the third party with your personal information. We've clarified that the AO3 Privacy Policy doesn't cover use of such tools.
- In the event that we share a user's private personal information with a third party for legal reasons (e.g. we are cooperating with an investigation), we may now refrain from notifying the user if we believe that notification may hinder an ongoing investigation. For example, if there is a specific, credible threat of real-world harm, authorities investigating it may recommend that we delay notifying the poster. Under the May 2018 and earlier versions of the TOS, we would not be able to follow this recommendation and delay notification, because a recommendation is not a legal order compelling us to refrain from notification. This change allows us to act on such recommendations.
- We've affirmed that we will retain your personal information only for the reasons that we originally gathered it, and we won't retain it longer than necessary.
Removed: V. Assorted Specialized Policies
Section V (Assorted Specialized Policies) has been removed. This is because the majority of this part primarily deals with things that don't need to be in the Terms of Service agreement.
Removed: V.A. Collections, Challenges, and Exchanges
Section V.A. was largely a description of how AO3's Collections and Challenges features work, which is not information that needs to be in the TOS. The FAQs for these topics (a list of which is available here) already provided much better descriptions and details than what was present in V.A.
It is necessary to note in the TOS that Challenge maintainers may have access to participants' email addresses for the purpose of communicating with the challenge participants. This information has been added to the Privacy Policy, as that is the portion of the TOS that describes who has access to a user's information.
Only one rule is changing as a result of removing this section, and that is the rule formerly located in V.A.3. In the new TOS, there is no possibility that PAC may enforce any collection rules that specify that a submission cannot be later removed from a collection. PAC has always had discretion in the enforcement of this rule, and has not enforced it on behalf of any collection in many years, but this change ensures there is no possibility of it happening going forward.
There are two reasons for this change. First, philosophically, we believe in creator primacy. The creator should always have the ability to remove their work from our site or from a specific collection without such action being considered a breach of our TOS. Second, on a practical level, it's not feasible at AO3's current scale for PAC to consider enforcing such a rule on behalf of specific collections.
Users have full control over whether their fanworks are part of any collection, and AO3's software allows them to remove their work(s) from a collection at any time. We would like to reassure users that while collection maintainers can remove a work from a collection, maintainers are not able to delete fanworks from AO3 – only the work creator(s), and AO3 administrators, can do that.
Removed: V.B. Fannish next-of-kin
Appointing a fannish next-of-kin (FNOK) is not something that a user agrees to as part of agreeing to AO3's TOS. Instead, while Section V.B. informed users about what an FNOK is, the actual agreement is administered separately by the Support committee. The reason for this is that each FNOK agreement is unique: User A is specifically agreeing to have User B as their FNOK, not any other user.
Because this agreement is created separately from the TOS, and Section V.B. was merely informative, this section has been removed. The Support committee has created a FAQ page to provide information about the FNOK process instead.
The fact that we store information about who a user's FNOK is, in order to administer that agreement, is included in the updated Privacy Policy.
Removed: V.C. Orphaning Content and Deleting Data
The primary purpose of this section was to explain the orphaning function. This is descriptive information that is better covered in the Orphaning FAQ. Discussion of how users grant us permission to host their content (and that we will remove it if they revoke permission) is already addressed in the General Principles, as this involves how they grant us a license to do so. Deletion of user data (including private information) is covered in the Privacy Policy.
We have removed the rule that we will Orphan works upon request if the original poster cannot be contacted and the source of the request cannot be confirmed. This rule was intended to apply to works imported by Open Doors, and is not appropriate for application to other works. Users who have lost access to their account are instead encouraged to contact the Support committee, who will help get them back on AO3.
An addition has been made to the General Principles to include Orphaning as an explicit example of how users can submit content to a portion of AO3 that they don't control, which may affect the rules around how and when content can be deleted.
Removed: V.D. Open Doors
This section contained the Open Doors TOS. As this is an agreement between individual maintainers of Open Doors archives and the OTW, the majority of it does not need to be in the AO3 TOS, but instead can be hosted on the Open Doors website or contained within the specific agreements that Open Doors has with each imported archive. For AO3's TOS, it is sufficient to state how this impacts creators, and a paragraph doing so has been added to the General Principles.
Removing the Open Doors TOS from the AO3 TOS does mean that Open Doors is no longer granted an exemption to import non-fanworks as works by including them in "mixed "collections. This is because the Policy & Abuse committee considers the works that Open Doors imports to be fanworks, including the original fiction and meta works. The accompanying updates to the TOS FAQ state that works of this type are considered fanworks. As such, this exemption is not required.
To provide both archivists and users with protection against accidents, an addition has been made to the Abuse Policy to describe that users generally will not be penalized if their content is imported through Open Doors and later removed due to not adhering to our TOS (for more information, please refer to the Abuse Policy section of this guide).