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Terms of Service

Last updated: November 1, 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of indieinkshield.com and the Indie Ink Shield service (the "Service"), operated by Indie Ink Shield LLC, an Illinois limited liability company ("we," "us," or "our"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the Service.

Questions? Contact hello@indieinkshield.com.

1. What Indie Ink Shield does

Indie Ink Shield helps independent authors find and respond to unauthorized use of their published works. We scan public sources, surface potential findings, try to capture supporting evidence, and help you prepare and track takedown requests.

We reserve the right to improve the Service over time. Features may be added, changed or removed, with or without notice.

2. Eligibility and your account

You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. You're responsible for keeping your account credentials secure and for activity that happens under your account. Provide accurate information and keep it current.

3. Detection is best-effort: findings are leads, not verdicts

We scan public sources and surface what looks like potential unauthorized use of your work. We cannot promise that every unauthorized use is found, or that every finding is actually infringing. Some findings may be legitimate, unrelated, or coincidental. For example, a different book with a similar title, or a store listing of your own that you haven't added to your account.

Treat findings as leads to review, not as conclusions. You decide what to act on.

We try to take a dated screenshot of a listing when you send a notice and when the listing comes down. Some sites block screenshots, so we can't guarantee one for every listing.

4. Who sends takedown notices

Free and Pro plans. You send each takedown notice yourself, as the copyright holder. We surface findings and help prepare the notice, but we are not your attorney, legal representative or DMCA agent, and we do not provide legal advice.

Advocate plan. If you sign a separate written authorization for that purpose, we may send takedown notices on your behalf, for the works and within the limits that authorization describes. Without that signed authorization, the self-file arrangement above applies, whatever plan you are on. Even under Advocate, we are not your attorney and do not provide legal advice.

5. Your responsibility for the claims you make

Before acting on a finding, you confirm that you own or control the rights to the work in question. You are responsible for the accuracy of every takedown notice sent for you, including any we send under an Advocate authorization based on the information you gave us.

Takedown notices carry legal weight. Knowingly misrepresenting that material is infringing can carry legal consequences for the person making the claim. If a notice leads to a counter-notice or dispute, that matter is between you and the other party. Indie Ink Shield holds no responsibility for your claims.

6. Acceptable use, and no copying the Service

Using the Service fairly. You agree not to use the Service to:

Who owns the Service. The Service, including its software, design, features, workflows, scanning and matching methods, site-contact research, notice templates, reports and written content, belongs to us. Your account gives you a limited, personal, non-transferable right to use it for your own books. It does not give you any ownership of it or any right to copy it.

Protecting the Service. You may use the Service only to protect books you hold the rights to. You agree not to, and not to help anyone else to:

1. Copy, duplicate, replicate, clone or imitate the Service or any part of it, including its features, design, workflows or the way it works.

2. Create derivative works based on the Service.

3. Use anything you see, learn or experience through the Service (its features, methods, ideas, workflows, results or how it is built) to create, improve or help someone else create a product or service that does the same or a similar job.

4. Reverse engineer, decompile, or try to extract its source code, scanning or matching methods, or data.

5. Scrape, harvest or bulk-download content from the Service, or access it with bots or automated tools we haven't approved.

6. Share, resell, sublicense, or give others access to your account or its results, except to people acting for you on your own books.

7. Publish or distribute our verified site contacts, notice templates or reports, except when sending a notice for your own book.

These promises apply while you have an account and after it closes.

Remedies. If you break the rules in this section, we may suspend or close your account. We may also:

1. Ask a court to order you to stop (injunctive relief), without posting a bond or first proving money damages, where the law allows.

2. Recover the damages and losses your breach caused us.

3. Recover our reasonable legal fees and costs of enforcing these Terms.

These rights add to any others we have under the law, and they continue after your account is closed.

7. Plans, billing and cancellation

Plans. We offer a Free plan, a paid Pro plan in sizes for up to 5, 15 or 20 books, and an Advocate plan set up by inquiry. What each plan includes and costs is shown on our pricing page and in the app, and may change. If you have more than 20 books, contact us at hello@indieinkshield.com to discuss other options, which we may offer on a case-by-case basis.

Billing. Paid plans are billed in advance, monthly or yearly, through our payment provider. Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each period until you cancel. We don't store your full card number.

Cancelling. You can cancel anytime. Your paid features continue until the end of the period you've paid for, then your account moves to Free.

Refunds. If you ask within 7 days of your first payment for a plan, we'll refund that payment in full. After that, we don't refund partial periods, except where the law requires.

Price changes. If we change the price of your plan, we'll tell you at least 30 days before it applies to you. You can cancel before then.

Moving to a smaller plan or to Free. Your books, findings and evidence are kept. Features and monitoring are limited to what the new plan includes. If you have more books than the new plan allows, you choose which books stay monitored, and the rest stay in your account.

Failed payments. If a payment fails and isn't fixed, your account may move to Free. Your data is kept.

8. Your data

Your books, findings and evidence belong to you. You can view them in your account and ask us for a copy at any time. How we handle your information is described in our Privacy Policy. We do not sell your personal data.

9. The Service is provided "as is"

We work hard to be accurate and available, but we can't promise the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for a particular purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, beyond those the law requires.

Availability. We aim to keep the Service running, but it may sometimes be unavailable or limited, for example during maintenance or updates, problems at our service providers, or events outside our control. Scans may be delayed or skipped during those times. Unless the law requires otherwise, these interruptions don't entitle you to a refund, credit or price reduction, and your subscription continues as normal. If an outage is unusually long, we may choose to offer a credit or extension, but we aren't required to. We're not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control, such as outages at our hosting, search, email or payment providers, internet failures, natural disasters or government action.

10. Limitation of liability

You use Indie Ink Shield at your own discretion. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses. Our total liability to you will not exceed the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim.

11. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold Indie Ink Shield harmless from claims, losses or expenses arising from your use of the Service, the takedown notices sent by you or for you, or your violation of these Terms.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Service changes. Each version is dated. When we make a material change, we'll ask you to agree to the new version before you continue using your account, and we'll record the version and the date you agreed. For smaller changes, continued use after the update means you accept the current Terms.

13. Closing or deleting your account

You can stop using the Service at any time. To delete your account and its data, email hello@indieinkshield.com from the address on your account. Within 30 days, we'll email you a download of your data and account activity, then delete your account and that data and confirm when it's done. We may keep limited records where the law requires it or to resolve a dispute, such as payment records, notices sent, and the record of which Terms you agreed to.

We may suspend or close access if you violate these Terms or if we discontinue the Service. If we discontinue the Service, we'll give you a way to get a copy of your data first.

Sections that by their nature should continue after your account closes do so, including responsibility for claims you've made, section 6, disclaimers, liability limits and indemnification.

14. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, except where local consumer-protection law applies to you. Any dispute will be heard in the state or federal courts located in or serving McHenry County, Illinois, and you agree to those courts' jurisdiction.

15. Contact

Indie Ink Shield LLC

hello@indieinkshield.com

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