Acceptable Use Policy

1. Purpose

This Acceptable Use Policy explains the uses of FetchLayer that are prohibited or restricted. It is part of our Terms of Service.

In this policy, "FetchLayer", "we", "us", and "our" refer to HootCodes LTD and the FetchLayer product, service, website, and API it operates. "You" and "your" refer to the person or entity using the service.

2. You Must Not Use FetchLayer To

• violate any law, regulation, court order, or third-party right;
• collect or process personal data in a way that is unlawful, unfair, deceptive, or disproportionate;
• stalk, harass, threaten, dox, profile, or otherwise target individuals for harmful purposes;
• build or support unlawful surveillance, unlawful monitoring, or harmful intelligence gathering about private individuals;
• make or support decisions about housing, employment, credit, insurance, education, healthcare, public benefits, or similar regulated outcomes without an appropriate legal basis and all required safeguards;
• scrape or analyze data about minors, health, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, political opinions, or other sensitive categories without a lawful basis and appropriate protections;
• bypass authentication, paywalls, robots controls, rate limits, or technical access controls that are not intended for public access;
• republish, syndicate, mirror, or redistribute verbatim copyrighted third-party content (such as full Reddit posts or comments) to end consumers without appropriate rights — note: the EU DSM Directive's text-and-data-mining (TDM) exception permits extraction and analysis of content for internal research purposes, but does not grant a right to publicly redistribute the original creative expression;
• use scraped content to create a competing product that substitutes for the original source platform;
• use the service to distribute malware, spam, credential theft, or phishing content;
• attempt to reverse engineer, break, overload, or interfere with the service or its infrastructure;
• train machine learning or AI models on content obtained through FetchLayer without independently verifying that you have appropriate rights or a valid legal basis to do so;
• resell, sublicense, or operate a competing extraction service on top of FetchLayer unless we have expressly allowed it in writing.

3. Safety and Fair Use Rules

• Respect usage caps, credit limits, and rate limits.
• Use only API keys issued to your own account or organization.
• Protect your keys and rotate them if exposed.
• Do not use automation designed to evade quotas or conceal abusive behavior.
• Do not present third-party content as if it originated from FetchLayer.

4. Compliance Responsibility

You are responsible for evaluating whether your use of FetchLayer is permitted under privacy, consumer protection, employment, copyright, database, competition, platform, or sector-specific rules that apply to you.

If you are unsure whether a particular workflow is lawful, do not use the service for that workflow without obtaining appropriate legal advice.

Platform terms

Third-party platforms (including Reddit) have their own terms of service, developer terms, and data API terms. These may restrict commercial use, redistribution, AI training, or other activities. You are independently responsible for complying with any applicable third-party terms that apply to your downstream use of content obtained through FetchLayer.

Data protection and data broker laws

If your use of FetchLayer involves systematic collection, storage, or redistribution of personal information, you may have obligations under GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, or data broker registration laws. It is your responsibility to determine which obligations apply and to comply with them.

5. Enforcement

We may investigate suspected violations and may suspend requests, disable keys, restrict access, remove accounts, preserve logs, or take other reasonable action to protect the service, third parties, and our legal position.

Serious or repeated violations may lead to immediate suspension or termination without refund, to the extent permitted by law.

6. Reporting Abuse

If you believe FetchLayer is being used unlawfully or abusively, contact legal@hoot.codes or support@hoot.codes with enough detail for us to investigate.