1. Acceptance of Terms

By creating an account, signing in, saving articles to your library, or otherwise accessing or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, you may not use the Service.

2. The Service

The Sunset Ink is an independent long-form publication. Readers can browse and read published articles and columns, save items to a private personal library, and organise saved items into reading groups. Authors join the Service by invitation and may submit drafts of articles and columns for editorial review; published content is made publicly available. The Service is built on a Sling-CMS publishing layer, an Express API, and MongoDB for storage. We may add, change, or remove features over time as the Service evolves.

3. User accounts

• Eligibility. You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If you live in a country where the age of digital consent is higher than 13 (16 in most EU countries) and you are below that age, you may use the Service only with the consent of a parent or legal guardian. Age is self-declared at registration.
• Reader accounts may be created by anyone via email (passwordless - we mail you a six-digit one-time code at each cold sign-in rather than asking for a password) or via Google OAuth, subject to availability of that provider.
• Author accounts are issued by invitation only. Invited authors complete activation via a one-time code mailed to the invited address; subsequent sign-in is also passwordless (one-time code at each cold sign-in). Authors may then submit content under the terms of the Contributor Agreement.
• Admin accounts are seeded manually and are not available for self-registration. Administrators sign in with a password and mandatory multi-factor authentication.
• One account per user. Each individual may maintain only one active account per surface (reader, author, admin). We may suspend or merge duplicate accounts at our discretion.
• Account security. You are responsible for safeguarding any one-time codes we send to your email and, if you are an administrator, your password and second factor. Do not share your credentials with anyone.
• Activity under your account. You are responsible for all activity under your account, whether or not authorised by you. Notify us promptly at [email protected] if you suspect unauthorised access.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to do any of the following while using the Service:

• Use bots, scripts, or other automated means to access the Service except where explicitly permitted by our robots.txt for publicly indexable content.
• Harass, threaten, defame, or otherwise harm other users, authors, or staff.
• Scrape, crawl, or extract data from the Service in bulk beyond what is permitted by robots.txt.
• Attempt to bypass, disable, or circumvent any rate limits, authentication, or other security or access-control mechanisms.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to derive source code from the Service except as permitted by applicable law.
• Use the Service to violate any law, regulation, or third-party right.
• Save into your library URLs or content that violate the rights of any third party.

5. Your library and reading groups

• Your saved-items library and reading groups are private to your account. No other user can see what you have saved or how you have organised it.
• We do not use the contents of your library for advertising or to build a profile of you.
• When you save an article published on the Service, you are saving a pointer to the published article. If the underlying article is later removed (for example, after an author deletion), the pointer in your library may become inaccessible.

6. Author-submitted content

Articles and columns published on the Service are written by authors who have accepted the Contributor Agreement. Each author warrants that their work is original (subject to the editorial AI / plagiarism policy in our Author Handbook) and that they have the right to grant us the licence to publish it. Despite our editorial process, we cannot guarantee that every claim in every article is accurate; readers should treat published content as the opinions and reporting of the named author.

If you believe an article infringes your copyright, please follow the procedure described in our DMCA Policy.

Reporting content. If you believe a published article violates these Terms - for example, it is misleading, spam, harmful, plagiarised, or otherwise low-quality - you may report it from the article page using the report icon. Reports are reviewed by our editors and are private (the author of the reported piece does not see who reported them or the contents of the report; see our Privacy Policy, section 6). We may, but are not obliged to, take action on any individual report.

Editorial discretion to take down. We may, at our sole editorial discretion, remove a published article from public view ("take down") at any time - including in response to a reader report, a legal or compliance request, or our own editorial judgment. Taken-down articles are no longer reachable from any public surface of the Service. The author of a taken-down article retains a read-only view of it in the author portal and may be invited to revise; restoration is at our discretion and is not guaranteed.

7. Intellectual property

The Service - including the source code, design, layout, branding, the "The Sunset Ink" name and logo, and all other materials we provide - is owned by The Sunset Ink and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual-property laws. Except for the limited licence to use the Service granted to you by these Terms, no rights are granted to you in or to the Service. Author-submitted content remains the property of the author who submitted it, subject to the licence described in the Contributor Agreement.

8. Termination

• By us. We may suspend or terminate your account, or restrict your access to the Service, at any time and without notice if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms or applicable law, or if your use of the Service poses a risk to other users, the Service, or us.
• By you. You may delete your account at any time from your profile page. Account deletion follows the two-phase process described in section 7 of our Privacy Policy: a 30-day grace period, during the final two days of which cancellation is locked, after which the account and personal data are permanently removed.
• Effect of termination. Sections that by their nature should survive termination - including Intellectual Property (section 7), Disclaimers (section 9), Limitation of Liability (section 10), Indemnification (section 11), and Governing Law (section 13) - will survive.

9. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTIES ARISING OUT OF COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of harmful components, or that any content published by authors is accurate, complete, or reliable. You use the Service at your own risk.

10. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL THE SUNSET INK BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THESE TERMS OR YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE LESSER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU HAVE PAID TO US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THE CLAIM, OR (B) FIFTY US DOLLARS (US $50). Some jurisdictions do not allow these exclusions; in those jurisdictions our liability is limited to the smallest extent permitted by law.

11. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless The Sunset Ink from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or in any way connected with (a) your use of the Service, (b) your violation of these Terms, or (c) your violation of any third-party right, including any intellectual-property or privacy right.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. For material changes, we will provide a more prominent notice - via email or an in-app announcement - at least 14 days before they take effect. Your continued use of the Service after the updated Terms take effect constitutes acceptance.

13. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the operator of the Service is registered (to be confirmed in section 1 of the Privacy Policy), without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Disputes arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be brought exclusively in the courts of that jurisdiction. Nothing here limits any non-waivable rights you may have under the laws of your place of residence.

14. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email [email protected], or use the contact form.

1. Designated copyright agent

For copyright-infringement notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") and equivalent laws, our designated agent is:

The Sunset Ink - Designated Copyright Agent
Email: [email protected]
Mailing address to be confirmed.

Notices sent to any other address may not be processed.

2. Filing a copyright-infringement notice

To notify us that content on the Service infringes a copyright you own or are authorised to enforce, please send a written notice to the designated agent above containing all of the following:

• A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorised to act on their behalf.
• Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed (or a representative list of works, if multiple).
• Identification of the allegedly infringing material on the Service, with enough detail (full URLs, paragraph references, screenshots) to allow us to locate it.
• Your contact information - name, address, telephone number, and email address.
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use of the material is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or are authorised to act on the owner's behalf.

3. Our response

Upon receipt of a complete and good-faith notice, we will:

• Remove or disable access to the allegedly infringing material;
• Notify the author who submitted the material and provide them with a copy of the notice; and
• Inform the author of their right to file a counter-notice.

Incomplete notices may delay or prevent action. Notices submitted in bad faith may be referred for further investigation.

4. Filing a counter-notice

If you are an author whose content has been removed and you believe the removal was the result of a mistake or misidentification, you may file a counter-notice with our designated agent containing all of the following:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Identification of the material that was removed and the location at which it appeared before removal.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification.
• Your name, address, telephone number, and email address, together with a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court in your district (or, if outside the United States, of any judicial district in which the Service may be found), and that you will accept service of process from the party who submitted the original notice or their agent.

If we receive a valid counter-notice, we will forward it to the party who submitted the original notice and may restore the removed material between 10 and 14 business days later unless we receive notice that a lawsuit has been filed seeking to restrain the material's reposting.

5. Misrepresentation

Under U.S. law (17 U.S.C. § 512(f)), any person who knowingly materially misrepresents either (a) that material on the Service is infringing, or (b) that material was removed by mistake or misidentification, may be liable for damages - including costs and attorneys' fees - incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner's authorised licensee, or by the Service. Do not file notices or counter-notices in bad faith.

6. Repeat infringers

In accordance with the DMCA and other applicable law, we will, in appropriate circumstances, terminate the accounts of authors or other users who are determined to be repeat infringers of copyright.

7. Other intellectual-property complaints

For trademark, right-of-publicity, or other intellectual-property concerns that are not covered by the DMCA process above, please contact our designated agent at [email protected] and we will review your concern.

1. Conformance target

Our target standard is WCAG 2.1 Level AA - the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines published by the W3C. This statement reflects the most recent self-assessment of the Service against that target as of the date above. The Service is partially conformant: we have addressed most criteria but a small number remain in progress (see section 3).

2. Measures we have taken

• Keyboard navigation. Every interactive control on the Service can be operated by keyboard alone. A visible keyboard-focus indicator is present on every focusable element, restored as a site-wide default after several components had stripped the browser's default ring.
• Skip-to-content link. A "Skip to main content" link is the first focusable element on every page, allowing keyboard and screen-reader users to bypass the header navigation.
• Heading order. Pages use a single h1 for the page heading and progressively deeper headings (h2, h3) for sub-sections, without skipping levels.
• Colour contrast. Body-text colour against the page background meets or exceeds the 4.5:1 ratio required by AA for body text.
• Semantic landmarks. Each page uses standard HTML landmarks (header, nav, main, footer) so screen-reader users can move between regions efficiently.
• Images. Decorative images use empty alt attributes; meaningful images carry descriptive alt text.
• Forms. Form controls have associated labels, and error messages are announced to assistive technology where applicable.

3. Known limitations

We are aware of the following areas where the Service does not yet fully meet the target standard. We are actively working on each:

• Author editor. The article submission editor is still being audited for full keyboard and screen-reader parity with the mouse-driven authoring experience.
• Third-party embeds. Where authors embed third-party content (videos, images from external hosts), the accessibility of those embeds is governed by the provider and may not match our standard.
• Reduced-motion support. Some decorative transitions do not yet honour the prefers-reduced-motion media query.

If you encounter a barrier we have not listed here, please let us know - see section 5.

4. Compatibility

The Service is designed to work with current versions of mainstream browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) and to be compatible with the screen-reader / browser combinations recommended by WebAIM as widely used today. Older browsers may render the Service with reduced styling or interactivity.

5. Reporting an accessibility issue

If you encounter a page, control, or piece of content on the Service that is not accessible to you, please contact us at [email protected] with:

• The page URL where the issue occurs;
• A description of the problem; and
• The assistive technology, browser, and operating system you are using, if relevant.

We aim to acknowledge accessibility reports within five business days and to provide an estimated remediation timeline within ten business days.

6. Review and updates

This statement is reviewed at least once a year and after any significant change to the Service. The most recent review date is shown at the top of this page.