Legal

Terms of service

Last updated: 2026-05-22. Effective date: 2026-05-22.

These terms (“Terms”) govern your use of Safe to Publish, a software service operated by Zackary Trenholme as an Ontario sole proprietorship (“Safe to Publish,” “we,” “us”). By creating an account or using the service, you agree to these Terms on behalf of the firm you represent.

1. The service

Safe to Publish surfaces clauses in advisory marketing material that an SEC examiner might cite under Rule 206(4)-1 and related staff guidance. The service produces flags, plain-English explanations, and suggested rewrites for review by your firm.

Safe to Publish is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. The service does not approve, endorse, or render any legal opinion on any advertisement. Your firm retains full responsibility for the compliance decisions it makes based on, or independent of, the flags Safe to Publish surfaces. Use of Safe to Publish does not create an attorney-client relationship, an investment-adviser-client relationship, or any other fiduciary relationship between you and Safe to Publish.

Nothing in these Terms relieves you of your own obligationsunder Rule 206(4)-1 or any other regulation or supervisory standard applicable to your firm. The SEC's recordkeeping, supervision, and approval requirements remain yours.

2. Accounts

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. You are responsible for keeping your account credentials confidential and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us promptly at support@safetopublish.com if you suspect unauthorized access.

3. Acceptable use

  • You will not submit content that violates law or that you do not have the right to submit.
  • You will not submit content that infringes a third party's intellectual-property or other proprietary rights.
  • You will not impersonate another person or misrepresent your affiliation with a person or firm.
  • You will not attempt to reverse-engineer the rule corpus or model output for commercial redistribution.
  • You will not use the service to generate content intended to deceive a regulator, an examiner, a client, or any other person.
  • You will not engage in conduct that attempts to bypass usage limits, security mechanisms, or billing controls, or that otherwise materially degrades the service for others.

We have no obligation to monitor content submitted to the service, but we may review or remove content (or suspend access) at our reasonable discretion to enforce these Terms, protect the service or our users, or comply with applicable law or legal process.

4. Subscriptions and billing

Paid plans are billed monthly in advance through Stripe. You authorize Safe to Publish to charge the payment method on file at the start of each billing cycle. Each plan includes a monthly cap on the number of reviews you may run; when you reach the cap, additional reviews are blocked until your next billing cycle begins or until you upgrade your plan. Plan caps and pricing are listed at /pricing.

Plan upgrades during a billing cycle are pro-rated and the differential is charged on your next invoice. Plan downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of the current billing cycle; we do not pro-rate refunds for partial months.

You may cancel at any time from Settings → Billing. After cancellation, you may continue to sign in to the service for the audit-log retention window applicable to your plan (see Privacy Policy §6) to view your existing reviews and export your audit log; you cannot run new reviews while your subscription is cancelled.

5. Your content

You retain all rights to the drafts and other content you submit (“Your Content”). You grant Safe to Publish a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, copy, transmit, display, and process Your Content for the term of your subscription and any applicable retention window under our Privacy Policy, solely to: (a) provide the review service to you; (b) produce and maintain the audit record; (c) comply with our recordkeeping obligations and any other legal obligation; (d) enforce these Terms and investigate suspected abuse; and (e) respond to lawful legal process or governmental request. We do not use Your Content to train any machine-learning model.

6. Feedback and aggregated data

Feedback. If you send us suggestions, ideas, bug reports, or other feedback about the service, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that feedback without restriction, attribution, or compensation.

Aggregated and de-identified data. We may generate aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified statistics from your use of the service (for example, average review latency, distribution of flag severities, model performance metrics), provided that such data cannot reasonably be used to identify you, your firm, or any individual, and provided that we do not include the substance of Your Content. We may use such aggregated data for any lawful purpose, including improving the service, benchmarking, and publishing trend reports.

7. Service availability and beta features

We aim for high availability of the service but do not commit to a specific uptime percentage outside of a separately executed enterprise agreement. We will use reasonable efforts to give advance notice of planned maintenance.

Beta features.From time to time we may make features available that are clearly labeled as “beta,” “preview,” “experimental,” or similar. Beta features are provided AS IS and may be modified, suspended, or discontinued at any time without notice. The warranty disclaimer and limitation of liability below apply with particular force to beta features.

8. Warranty disclaimer

The service is provided “as is.” Safe to Publish disclaims all warranties to the maximum extent permitted by law, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components. Safe to Publish does not warrant that any flag (or absence of a flag) is correct, complete, or sufficient for any compliance purpose.

9. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Safe to Publish's aggregate liability arising out of or related to these Terms or the service will not exceed the greater of (a) one thousand US dollars ($1,000) and (b) the fees you paid to Safe to Publish in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim. Safe to Publish will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages.

10. Indemnification

Your indemnity to us.You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Safe to Publish from and against any third-party claim, demand, action, or proceeding arising out of (a) Your Content, (b) your use of the service in violation of these Terms or applicable law, or (c) compliance decisions made by your firm based on, or independent of, the output of the service, together with all reasonable costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees.

Procedure. As a condition of your indemnification obligations, we will: (i) give you prompt written notice of the claim; (ii) give you sole control over the defense and settlement of the claim, provided that no settlement that imposes any non-monetary obligation on us or admits fault may be entered without our prior written consent; and (iii) cooperate with you, at your expense, as reasonably requested.

11. Term and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially breach these Terms. On termination, your right to use the service ends and we will retain your audit log for the retention window of the plan you were on (subject to your right to export it).

12. Export controls and sanctions

You represent that you and your firm are not (and are not acting on behalf of any party that is) (a) located in, organized under the laws of, or ordinarily resident in any country or region subject to comprehensive U.S. economic sanctions administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) or other applicable sanctions authorities, or (b) on the U.S. Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List or any other applicable sanctions or denied-party list. You will not use the service in violation of any U.S. or other applicable export-control law or sanctions program.

13. Force majeure

Neither party will be liable for any failure or delay in performance under these Terms (other than for the payment of fees) to the extent caused by events outside its reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, pandemics, war, terrorism, civil unrest, government action, labor disputes, internet or telecommunications failures, and failures of third-party services on which the affected party reasonably relies (for example, hosting, model, payment, or authentication providers). The affected party will use reasonable efforts to mitigate the impact and resume performance.

14. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute will be brought exclusively in the courts located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

15. Changes

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be posted to this page and notified by email at least thirty (30) days before they take effect. Continued use after that date constitutes acceptance.

16. General provisions

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, Data Processing Addendum, and Sub-processors page (each incorporated by reference), constitute the entire agreement between you and Safe to Publish regarding your use of the service and supersede any prior or contemporaneous agreements, communications, or proposals on that subject.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held invalid, illegal, or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, that provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms, by operation of law or otherwise, without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms without your consent to an affiliate, successor in interest, or acquirer of all or substantially all of our business or assets. Any attempted assignment in violation of this section is void.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms is not a waiver of our right to enforce that provision (or any other provision) later.

Survival. The following sections survive termination of your subscription or these Terms: §5 (Your content) for the duration of the applicable retention window, §6 (Feedback and aggregated data), §8 (Warranty disclaimer), §9 (Limitation of liability), §10 (Indemnification), §12 (Export controls), §14 (Governing law), §16 (General provisions), together with any other provision that by its nature should survive.

Notices. Any notice you give us under these Terms must be sent to support@safetopublish.com. Any notice we give you under these Terms will be sent to the email address associated with your account, and is deemed given when sent.

17. Contact

Questions: support@safetopublish.com.