Terms of use

These terms are between you and ARCVAULT AI PTY LTD, an Australian proprietary company registered in New South Wales, ACN 696 486 987, ABN 11 696 486 987. "We", "us" and "our" mean that company. "You" means the person reading this website, and where you are acting for an organisation, that organisation as well.

They cover your use of this website at arcvaultai.co.im and any correspondence that follows from it. They do not cover a retention service, because there is not one. If a service is ever offered it will come with its own written agreement, which will deal with the things a website cannot, and that agreement will prevail over these terms to the extent of any inconsistency.

Arcvault is a trading name of ARCVAULT AI PTY LTD. Where this website says "Arcvault", the legal person concerned is that company.

By using this website you agree to these terms. If you do not agree to them, the remedy is not to use the site. That is a real option here, since there is nothing behind a login and nothing to lose by leaving.

This is the section most terms of use put last, in smaller type, or leave out. It goes first because writing the rest of the document before saying this would be worth less.

Nothing is currently supplied. As at the effective date at the top of this page:

• There is no product available to buy, download, subscribe to or sign in to.
• No retention, archival, migration or storage service is being provided to anybody.
• No record belonging to any person or organisation other than us is held by us.
• There are no customers, no pilots, no trials and no letters of intent.
• The company has no revenue and no outside investment.

Everything on this website that describes how a service would work is a statement of intent about work in progress. It is not an offer, it is not a representation that any of it will be built, and nothing on this site is capable of being accepted so as to form a contract for a service.

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any right you have under the Australian Consumer Law, which is Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), or under any other law that cannot lawfully be excluded. Where anything in this document conflicts with such a right, that right wins and the conflicting part does not apply.

Where the Australian Consumer Law applies, goods and services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded. For services that includes a guarantee that they are supplied with due care and skill, that they are reasonably fit for any purpose made known, and that they are supplied within a reasonable time. For a major failure you are entitled to cancel and to a refund of the unused portion, or to compensation for the reduction in value, and to compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage.

Where a supply is not of a consumer kind, our liability for a failure to comply with a guarantee is limited, to the extent the Australian Consumer Law permits, to resupplying the services or paying the cost of having them resupplied.

Nothing is being supplied today, so nothing has yet engaged those guarantees. The section is here because it will apply the moment anything is, and because a terms page that buries consumer guarantees under a limitation clause is doing so on purpose.

You may read this website, print it, quote it with attribution, and link to it. No permission is needed for any of that and none should have to be asked for.

What you agree not to do

• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to any system behind this site, or to any account, server or network connected to it.
• Interfere with the availability of the site for other people, including by automated request volume that a reasonable person would call an attack.
• Present the content of this site as your own, or reproduce it in a way that suggests we endorse you or your organisation.
• Use anything here to imply a relationship with us that does not exist. There are no partners, resellers or accredited advisers, so any claim to be one is false.

Availability

The site is static files on a content delivery network and it will usually be up. We do not promise that it will be, we do not offer a service level for it, and we may change or withdraw any part of it without notice. If a page you relied on has gone, write to us and ask for it. We keep the previous versions, which is the least an archival company could do.

Accuracy

Everything here is written carefully and some of it will still be wrong. Where a statement about the law is made, it is a general description and not advice about your situation. Where a statement about future work is made, it describes an intention that may change. If you find an error, write to us with "Correction" in the subject line and we will fix it or explain why we think it is right.

If a retention service is ever offered, these are the terms on which we intend to offer it. They are published now so that they can be read before anybody is negotiating, and so that a later departure from them is visible.

None of that is currently on offer and none of it binds anybody. It is a statement of intent that we expect to be held to if we ever try to depart from it quietly.

A retention supplier that lets a customer believe it has bought a backup has created a risk rather than removed one. Because the confusion is common, the boundary is a term rather than a marketing line.

• An archive is not a backup. It does not restore a running system, it has no recovery time objective, and it is not a defence against ransomware encrypting a live environment.
• An archive is not disaster recovery. It does not keep a service available and it will not help anybody trade tomorrow morning.
• An archive is not a records management decision. We do not advise on how long anything must be kept, we do not classify records, and we do not accept responsibility for a retention period being wrong. That determination belongs to the customer and its advisers.
• An archive is not a guarantee of legal admissibility. Fixity records and a custody log are evidence that goes to authenticity. Whether a court accepts a particular record in a particular proceeding is a matter for that court.
• Migration involves loss. Converting a format preserves what the target format can express. Where a property cannot be carried across, the honest options are to record the loss or to keep the original as well, and both would be stated rather than absorbed.

Anybody whose actual requirement is one of the first two items should buy one of the first two things. We will say so rather than take the work.

The text, layout, stylesheet, script and images on this website belong to ARCVAULT AI PTY LTD or are used with permission. The company name, the word Arcvault and the mark in the header belong to us. We hold no registered trade mark and do not claim one.

You may quote from this site with attribution and a link. You may reproduce a whole page for internal use inside an organisation. You may not republish the site or a substantial part of it as your own, and you may not use our name or mark in a way that suggests endorsement or affiliation.

The technical approach described here is not novel and we do not pretend it is. Fixity checking, format migration, finding aids and the reference model for an open archival information system are the shared vocabulary of a field that is older than the company and mostly the work of national libraries and archives. Where we have taken something from that body of work, it is theirs, and this site is not a claim over any of it.

If you believe something on this site infringes your rights, write to us with the detail and we will deal with it promptly rather than through a process.

How personal information is handled is set out in the privacy policy, which forms part of these terms. It is written to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, and it splits the company's obligations into what it does as a controller of its own information and what it would do as a processor holding a customer's records.

The parts most relevant to a reader of this website are that no analytics run here, no cookie is set by this site, no marketing list exists, and the only route into the company is one email address. The cookie notice covers browser storage in full.

Where the privacy policy and these terms appear to conflict about how personal information is handled, the privacy policy governs.

Subject always to the Australian Consumer Law section above, which prevails over everything in this section:

• This website is provided as it is. We do not warrant that it will be available, error free, or fit for a particular purpose.
• We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of revenue, loss of anticipated savings, loss of opportunity or loss of goodwill arising out of your use of this website.
• We are not liable for loss arising from a decision made in reliance on general information published here. Nothing on this site is legal, accounting, records management or technical advice about your circumstances.
• Where liability cannot be excluded and can be limited, our aggregate liability arising out of this website is limited to one hundred Australian dollars, which reflects that nothing is being sold and nothing has been paid.
• We are not liable for the content, availability or practices of any external site we link to. Links are references, not endorsements.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, for fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales and the Commonwealth of Australia. You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales and of any court that may hear appeals from them.

Before either of us starts a proceeding, we will each try to resolve the matter by writing to the other and giving 21 days to respond. That obligation does not prevent an application for urgent interlocutory relief, and it does not apply to a privacy complaint, which has its own route.

A privacy complaint should go to ops@arcvaultai.co.im with "Privacy complaint" in the subject line, and if you are not satisfied with the answer or we do not answer within 30 days, to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001, telephone 1300 363 992, oaic.gov.au. You do not need our agreement to do that, there is no fee, and we will not treat making a complaint as a breach of these terms.

A consumer dispute may also go to the fair trading body in your state or territory. If you are outside Australia, the mandatory consumer protection law of the place you habitually reside in may give you rights that these terms cannot take away, and it does.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. The effective date and version at the top of this page change with them. A material change is dated and flagged at the top of the page for 30 days. Changes are not retrospective, and a change to a website's terms cannot alter a signed agreement.

Severability

If a provision of these terms is unenforceable, it is read down to the extent necessary or severed, and the rest continues to apply.

No waiver

If we do not enforce a provision on one occasion, that is not a waiver of it. A waiver has to be in writing.

Assignment

You may not assign your rights under these terms without our written consent. We may assign ours to a purchaser of the business, subject to the business transfer and insolvency parts of the privacy policy.

Entire agreement

These terms, the privacy policy and the cookie notice are the whole of the agreement about your use of this website. They replace anything said beforehand about that subject. They do not replace, and are not intended to affect, a separately signed agreement about a service.

Contact

Questions about these terms go to ops@arcvaultai.co.im. Formal notices are dealt with on the contact page, which explains why the register rather than this website is the address with legal effect for service.