Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of Footnote. Please read them before you use the service. By creating an account, subscribing, or using Footnote in any way, you agree to them.

1. Who we are, and who these terms are for

1.1 Footnote is owned and operated by MUSE INNOVATION LAB LLC (“Footnote”, “we”, “us”, “our”). Our website is www.tryfootnote.com.

1.2 Footnote is used by two different kinds of people, and these terms treat them differently:

• An “Institution” is an organization that subscribes to Footnote — a museum, historic site, zoo, garden, hospital, campus, chamber of commerce or similar — and publishes content about the objects in its space. Sections 2 to 12 are addressed to Institutions.
• A “Visitor” is a member of the public who opens content an Institution has published, usually by scanning a code beside an object, or who uses the free Footnote app. Section 13 is addressed to Visitors.
• “Content” means anything an Institution uploads or publishes through Footnote: text, photographs, audio, video, translations, surveys and related material.

2. Accounts

2.1 To publish with Footnote you need an account. You are responsible for the accuracy of your account details, for keeping your credentials secure, and for everything done under your account.

2.2 You must not share a login between people who should have separate accounts, use someone else's account, or let anyone use yours.

2.3 Tell us promptly at hello@tryfootnote.com if you believe an account has been used without authorization.

3. Plans, fees, and the free trial

3.1 Footnote is sold as a monthly subscription. The plan you choose sets how many objects you may publish. Every plan includes every feature; plans differ only by that limit.

3.2 Free trial. New Institutions get a 30-day free trial of the plan they select, with no feature restrictions. Unless you cancel before the trial ends, your subscription begins automatically and the first monthly fee is charged to the payment method on file.

3.3 Renewal and cancellation. Subscriptions renew automatically each month until canceled. You may cancel at any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the month you have already paid for, and there is no long-term commitment or termination fee.

3.4 Refunds. Fees already charged are not refundable, except where the law requires otherwise or where we have made an error.

3.5 Changes to fees. We may change our fees on at least 30 days' notice to the email address on your account. A change applies from your next renewal, so you can always cancel before paying a new price.

3.6 Taxes. Our fees do not include sales, use or similar taxes. Those are your responsibility unless you give us a valid exemption certificate.

3.7 Failed payment. If a payment fails we will tell you and may suspend publishing until it is resolved. Section 12 explains what happens to your published exhibits.

4. Your content

4.1 You keep it. Content you upload remains yours. Nothing in these terms transfers ownership of it to us.

4.2 The permission we need. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, reformat, transcode, translate and publicly display your Content, solely in order to run Footnote for you and deliver your Content to your Visitors. This permission ends when you delete the Content, apart from backup copies that are cleared in the ordinary course.

4.3 What you promise us. You confirm that you hold, or have been granted, all rights necessary to publish the Content through Footnote — including rights in photographs, recordings, film, music and any third-party works shown — and that publishing it will not infringe anyone's copyright, trademark, moral rights, privacy or rights of publicity.

4.4 Sensitive and culturally restricted material. Collections often hold objects where the legal owner is not the party entitled to decide how they are shown. You are responsible for determining whether an object, image, recording or ancestral remains in your care is subject to restrictions on display or reproduction — including obligations to descendant and source communities — and for obtaining any consent needed before publishing it through Footnote.

4.5 Accuracy. You are responsible for what your Content says. We do not review or verify it.

5. Acceptable use

5.1 Footnote is a commercial product sold to organizations, and using it to run your organization — including charging admission, taking donations, or promoting your site — is exactly what it is for. The restrictions below are about misuse, not about commerce.

5.2 You must not:

• resell, sublicense, or offer Footnote to third parties as your own service;
• publish content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, or that infringes anyone's rights;
• upload malware, or try to gain unauthorized access to any part of the service or another Institution's data;
• probe, scan, or interfere with the security or integrity of the service, or circumvent any technical limit including plan limits;
• use automated means to scrape or harvest data from the service, other than a search engine indexing your own public pages;
• use the service to collect Social Security numbers, payment card numbers, financial account details, health information, precise geolocation, or biometric identifiers from Visitors;
• misrepresent your identity or your authority to publish an organization's content.

5.3 You may link to your published Footnote pages freely, from your own site or anywhere else.

6. Translations

6.1 Footnote can translate your Content automatically. Translation is performed by DeepL, a third-party machine translation service. We can add languages on request.

6.2 Machine translation is not the same as a translator. It can be wrong, and it can lose nuance, tone, or terminology that matters in your field — which in an interpretive setting can mean misstating history, provenance, or a community's own account of itself.

6.3 You are responsible for reviewing translated Content before you publish it. The original-language version prevails. We do not warrant that any translation is accurate, complete, or appropriate for its subject.

7. Surveys

7.1 You can ask your Visitors questions through Footnote. You choose the questions and you control the responses; we process them on your behalf.

7.2 Survey responses are collected anonymously. Footnote stores the answers, which survey they belong to, and whether they came from the web or the app. We do not attach a name, an email address, or an IP address to a response.

7.3 Because responses are anonymous, you must not write questions that ask a Visitor to identify themselves or to provide any of the categories of information listed in clause 5.2. Museums are visited by children, often in school groups, and a question that invites a child to type their name would put you and us on the wrong side of children's privacy law.

8. Visitor donations

8.1 If you enable donations, a Visitor can make a voluntary payment from one of your exhibit pages. Payments are processed by Stripe as charges on your own Stripe account.

8.2 The money is yours, not ours. You are the merchant of record for every donation. Footnote does not receive, hold, or control your donation funds, and we are not a charity, a professional fundraiser, a fundraising counsel, or a commercial co-venturer.

8.3 Setting up. To accept donations you must complete Stripe's onboarding and accept the Stripe Connected Account Agreement. Stripe's terms govern the payment itself, including authorization, disputes and chargebacks.

8.4 Fees. Stripe's processing fees apply to each donation. Footnote also takes a platform fee, shown to you before you enable donations and visible on your dashboard; unless we have agreed otherwise in writing it is 3% of the donation amount.

8.5 What is yours to handle. You are solely responsible for:

• your eligibility to solicit donations, and for registering under any state charitable solicitation law that applies to you;
• anything you say about whether a donation is tax-deductible;
• issuing receipts and acknowledgments to donors;
• deciding on and making refunds, and handling donor complaints.

8.6 What we do. We provide the donation prompt, the page it appears on, and the connection to Stripe. We do not verify your charitable status, advise on deductibility, or promise any donor that a gift is deductible.

9. Analytics

9.1 Footnote reports how your exhibits are used — which objects were opened, how long Visitors stayed, how much of an audio guide was played. This is measured anonymously and is not designed to identify individual Visitors. Our Privacy Policy explains exactly what is collected.

9.2 We may use aggregated, de-identified usage data to operate and improve Footnote. We will not publish anything that identifies your Institution without your permission.

10. Our intellectual property

10.1 Footnote — the software, the dashboard, the app, our name and logo, and everything we have written that is not your Content — belongs to us. Your subscription is permission to use it, not a transfer of it.

10.2 You may tell people you use Footnote. We will not use your name or logo as a customer reference without asking you first.

11. Availability and support

11.1 We work to keep Footnote available and to publish changes without interrupting it, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. Maintenance, third-party outages and faults happen.

11.2 Support is by email at hello@tryfootnote.com. We aim to answer within one business day.

11.3 We may change how Footnote works. If we remove something you depend on, we will give you reasonable notice by email.

12. Ending your subscription, and what happens to your codes

12.1 You can cancel at any time, as described in clause 3.3.

12.2 We may suspend or end your access if you materially breach these terms, if payment fails and is not resolved after notice, or if we are required to by law. Except where the breach is serious or unlawful, we will tell you first and give you a chance to put it right.

12.3 Printed codes. This is worth reading before you print anything. Footnote codes are mounted in physical spaces and will outlive your subscription. When your subscription ends, your exhibits stop being served, and codes printed for them will no longer open content. Removing or covering those codes in your space is your responsibility.

12.4 Your content after cancellation. We keep your Content for 30 days after your subscription ends so that you can ask us for an export. After that period we delete it. Ask us at hello@tryfootnote.com and we will help you get your material out.

13. For Visitors

13.1 You do not need an account, an app, or a subscription to open a Footnote exhibit. Scan the code and it opens in your browser.

13.2 The content you see belongs to the Institution that published it, not to us. If something in it is wrong or troubling, that Institution is the right first place to raise it; you can also write to us at hello@tryfootnote.com.

13.3 If you use the free Footnote app, you may create an account so the app can remember the places you have been. You can delete that account at any time at tryfootnote.com/account-deletion.

13.4 Please do not misuse the service — no attempting to break it, no automated harvesting, and nothing unlawful.

14. Copyright complaints

14.1 Footnote hosts material uploaded by Institutions. If you believe something on the service infringes your copyright, write to hello@tryfootnote.com with the subject line “DMCA”, and include: what you own, where it appears on the service, your contact details, a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorized, a statement that your notice is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorized to act for them, and your signature.

14.2 We will respond to complete notices in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which may include removing the material and ending the account of anyone who repeatedly infringes.

15. Disclaimers

15.1 Footnote is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

15.2 We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free, that translations will be accurate, or that analytics figures are exact measurements rather than good-faith estimates.

15.3 Where Footnote links to or embeds something from another service, we are not responsible for that service.

16. Liability

16.1 Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

16.2 Subject to clause 16.1, neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost goodwill or lost data.

16.3 Subject to clause 16.1, our total liability arising out of or in connection with these terms is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

16.4 Donations are between you and your donors. We are not liable for a donation that fails, is disputed, is refunded, or is misdirected because of information you provided.

17. Indemnity

17.1 You will defend and indemnify us against claims brought by a third party arising from your Content, from your use of Footnote in breach of these terms, or from donations you solicited — including claims that your Content infringes someone's rights.

18. Changes to these terms

18.1 We may update these terms. If a change materially affects you, we will give notice by email or in the dashboard before it takes effect. Continuing to use Footnote after that means you accept the updated terms.

18.2 The date at the top of this page always shows when it last changed.

19. General

19.1 Governing law. These terms, their subject matter and their formation are governed by the law of the State of Texas, and the courts of Texas have exclusive jurisdiction.

19.2 Transfer. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organization, and will tell you in writing if we do. You may not transfer yours without our written consent.

19.3 If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest continues in force. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up.

19.4 These terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any order form we have both signed, are the whole agreement between us.

20. Contact

Questions or complaints about the service or about these terms: hello@tryfootnote.com. Postal notices should be addressed to MUSE INNOVATION LAB LLC.