If you believe someone has used your copyrighted works on Topicly in a way you can legally stop, you have different options, depending on where you want to make your claim. Regardless of the legal methods available to you, it's often advised to first communicate directly with the person/party you believe is infringing your rights, in order to come to a much less burdensome agreement. Any legal proceedings in the UK and US will first require you to exhaust reasonable options outside of the legal system anyway. For more information on general strategy in the USA, please see the non-profit Copyright Alliance website.

For claims made in the USA, you can use the DMCA mechanism. For claims made in the UK, in order to get Topicly to remove content you must present sufficient and clear evidence of infringement.

The DMCA mechanism allows a counter notice from the alleged infringer which can reinstate works by default within 14 days unless you can prove you have initiated legal proceedings. False claims of infringement can expose you to liability. Frivolous claims are illegal.

To unambiguously identify infringing content, you can use the Chrome web browser and right click on the content on Topicly, then select "Inspect". The HTML tag containing the content will show an "infohash" or "infohashes" attribute, which contain unambiguous identifiers. 3D images can have multiple infohashes: one for each image. Topicly will accept multiple infohashes for 3D images as long as you further clarify in plain English which of these images are infringing.

If you are using the DMCA mechanism, you will need to provide a specific set of information, as described on this page of the Copyright Alliance website.

If you are claiming in the UK, you should consult legal advice about how to make an effective notice that unambiguously shows infringement. You can be sued for unjustified allegations. See this Gov.uk web page for more information.

All notices directed to Topicly should be sent to {{"legal"+""+"@topicly.app"}}

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Advertising legal notice
since 8 January 2023

Ads for Topicly can only be bought by businesses, not individuals. Any purchase of adverts for Topicly is a commercial contract, with choice of law of English Law of England, UK. Purchases are without any guarantees, and how long any ad is actually displayed is at the full discretion of Topicly's owner(s). Business owners will monitor Topicly's actual performance and decide whether spending is a risk worth taking.

If any legal dispute arises between you and the owner(s) of Topicly, you agree you will work to try to find and enact a reasonable low cost (and whenever possible, free and/or "no cost") resolution, and in any case avoid unnecessary communication with the owner(s) of Topicly.

You agree that you will direct any and all dispute-related communications outside of a courtroom or alternative channel agreed by email to {{"legal"+""+"@topicly.app"}}

On Topicly, ads are simply images that you upload through this website. You give additional information to try to show your advert is legitimate. You pay £50 to submit an advert image for a chance the image will be accepted. The chance it will be accepted is primarily determined by whether it would be safe for all 16 year olds to see; but it will also be determined on taste, such as whether it has appropriate style for this website.

If an advert is accepted your payment applies to the day after acceptance and determines the chance that on that day your advert will be displayed compared with any other ads that day. For example, if you spend £50 and another person pays £50, you would each get a 50% chance of being shown when a user looks at the advert space. If you spend £50 and others spend £100 in total for the day, you will be shown with a one third chance. Users can hide certain ads, and there is no guarantee things will work like this, as stated above.

And if your advert image is accepted you will also be able to come back here and continue paying for that advert to be shown for another day. Each time you pay an additional amount you can pay at most 50% more than the last time you paid for that ad image, and spend at minimum £50. This allows you to compete for the advert space. This ability to continue paying can be terminated by Topicly without notice.

You agree all data related to advertising can be kept indefinitely by the owner(s) of Topicly. Payments and payment details are processed by Stripe, and are managed under their Terms of Service. There will be no address or other contact details for Topicly provided, other than the email above. You agree the owner(s) of Topicly will remain confidential, and you will do what is necessary on your part to ensure this continues to be the case.

Codes per advert you submit are stored on your computer to allow you to pay for another day, if you choose to.

You agree that you will pay Topicly's owner(s) for any costs incurred due to your ads for reasons other than to provide regular advertising service; for example you will pay any costs related to if you post a fraudulent advert.

Terms of Service

To use this website you must be over 18 years old and be able to make legal agreements, or be over 16 and have permission from your parents to agree to this agreement. The choice of law of this agreement is English Law, of England, UK.

You must be resident and citizen of either the UK, the USA, or South Korea.

This website is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind to the maximum extent possible by law. You use this website at your own risk to the maximum extent possible by law. Topicly may shut down or be unavailable at any time. The owner(s) of Topicly may terminate any part or all of this agreement at any time, to the maximum extent possible by law.

If during the process of any legal case any part of this agreement is found to be unenforceable by a judge, such parts will be severed or reworded minimally by the owner(s) of Topicly within 48 hours of this issue becoming known to them in order to produce a lawful agreement that you will by default agree to in place of the original agreement and that maintains the spirit and intentions of the original agreement.

Because this website is provided for free, the owner(s) of Topicly will remain confidential, and no physical address will be provided. An email address for correspondence is below.

The content shown on Topicly is unedited and from its users. You can view user profiles without an account.

If you create an account with Topicly, you must choose a user identifier that is not misleading, and as close to a name as possible that people would expect you to be referred to. Accounts are created by invitation only by someone who knows you.

You agree that you will establish before posting content on Topicly that you have the right to post the content, and you agree that you will be legally liable for it to the maximum extent possible by law and will fully compensate the owner(s) of Topicly for any loss caused to them because of consequences related to your content. You post content on Topicly with the intention of it being fully public and shared freely with users of Topicly on the Topicly platform, and to be available by public WebTorrents as described below.

You will only post honest or obviously sarcastic content. You must not post any images of sex acts or genitalia, or link to such content without explicit warning. You must not post violent or gruesome content directly on Topicly, and you must not link to such content without explicit warning. You must not post adverts (except for events, organizations, or web stores you are directly involved with, and that are suitable in content for all ages) on Topicly.

If you remove your content, it might take a while for Topicly to stop sharing your content because of the decentralized nature of Topicly. There are no guarantees of when the content will be fully removed from Topicly.

If any of your content you have posted on Topicly is illegal, you have the responsibility to remove it via this website immediately. You agree to make all effort required to ensure your content is not illegal.

Topicly uses WebTorrents and WebRTC to share content and service data between users. This will use Internet bandwidth of your computer. Topicly will choose and tell other users' systems what Topicly data you are ready to share. Potentially anyone with knowledge of what Topicly data you are sharing from your computer would be able to connect to your computer to access Topicly data. This method of sharing will connect your computer (often directly, unless you use a VPN) to another person's computer. If you have any questions or concerns about WebTorrents, please go to the WebTorrent website.

WebRTC uses a technology called STUN to initiate connections directly between users, which is necessary to find a route between computers even though they may be connected through many layers of internet hardware and software. Topicly uses Google's public STUN servers. The STUN procedure doesn't tell these servers why you want to initiate a connection, and this same procedure is used to initiate connections for internet phone/video calls. You agree Topicly can choose and use these STUN servers to help you initiate connections with other Topicly users.

Once you agree to this agreement, Topicly will connect you to other users, and start using your computer to share content, including from other users, and to share any Topicly service data.

Topicly uses many different pieces of software and hardware to provide this service. You agree that whenever a problem is caused by a piece that is not made by a developer directly working for Topicly, you will raise any disputes about that piece with the creator of or entity responsible for that piece. Use the correspondence address to find out who is responsible for each piece.

You agree not to share content you experience on Topicly on other platforms (beyond automatically done by Topicly) unless you are expressly permitted to by someone with the right to give permission to do so.

Profiles are either accessible in full without editing by anyone working for Topicly (although for statutory reasons, such as DMCA, some content might be blocked), or not at all. But exactly how content is presented to you on Topicly is fully under the discretion of the owner(s) of Topicly. Any access or account can be terminated by Topicly at any time and for any reason.

Privacy

Most data related to Topicly is shared between users, and not stored on Topicly servers. Because Topicly uses WebTorrents, any data transferred by Topicly using WebTorrents can be shared without limit to anyone with a connection to the Internet, even people not using Topicly. You agree that this can happen with content you post on Topicly. Note that you retain any copyrights you have to the content you post; so even though anyone connected to the Internet has access to your content, you may prevent them from copying it if they are not using Topicly to access it, to the extent permitted by law. (This ability for anyone to copy content is similar to most other major Internet services that don't use WebTorrents.)

Other data about how you prefer to use your account, such as who you follow, is only stored on your computer, and is never sent to anyone else unless you add it to your profile.

The data related to you stored indefinitely on Topicly's servers until you close your account is:

• a hashed (Argon2id) copy of your current password;
• which WebTorrent "info hash" you claim as your current profile;
• who you have been invited by and anyone you have invited.

Even if you close your account, information about invitations will be retained permanently and may be disclosed as public domain information; this is to ensure it is always known how the social network has been constructed. Topicly also stores temporary data (for at most a month) related to enforcing usage limits.

You agree only to follow people on Topicly that you know or know of. Any concerns you have about content must be directed to the person you know of who posted it, or someone with jurisdiction over that person.

This agreement may be changed by the owner(s) of Topicly at any time. You will be shown the current agreement each time you open the Topicly website. This agreement is between you and the owner(s) of Topicly, who may change.

If any legal dispute arises between you and the owner(s) of Topicly, you agree you will work to try to find and enact a reasonable low cost (and whenever possible, free and/or "no cost") resolution, and in any case avoid unnecessary communication with the owner(s) of Topicly.

You agree that you will direct any and all dispute-related communications outside of a courtroom or alternative channel agreed by email to {{"legal"+""+"@topicly.app"}}

Warning: VR/XR (headset) experiences on Topicly use exaggerated/accelerated movement effects to enable faster interactions, but this also means you must be quite careful when using it to make sure you avoid unnecessary injury; also remember that content you view in VR/XR will be made by the people you follow, and could cause you to move in shock, and other unexpected ways etc; finally, 3D graphics can display in ways that can flicker, which can be dangerous for some people.