Each ArchiveBay license names two parties (the licensor— the creator or publisher who owns the work, and the licensee — the AI company or research entity). It binds them to one of the four license types defined in the glossary, for one specific archive identified by its manifest hash, for a specific duration and exclusivity profile, at a specific price.
Variables fixed at issue time
- License ID and creation timestamp
- Licensor (display name, email, account type)
- Licensee (company name, email)
- Archive (title, source, manifest SHA-256, item count, word count)
- License type (training / RAG / research / perpetual)
- Duration (in months) and expiry date
- Exclusivity (exclusive vs non-exclusive)
- Total price (USDC), 1% platform fee, 99% creator payout
- Solana receipt: transaction signature and license PDA (when on-chain deploy is live)
What the licensee may do
Use the licensed archive under the rules of the license type. Training licenses permit use as input data to model training and fine-tuning. RAG licenses permit retrieval-augmented inference at query time. Research licenses permit non-commercial analysis only. Perpetual licenses do not expire but are otherwise the same shape.
What the licensee may not do
- Redistribute the raw archive in identifiable form to third parties.
- Sub-license to another buyer.
- Use the archive for purposes outside the license type (e.g. RAG license used for full training).
Editorial firewall
Every license carries the firewall clause: payment flows from the licensee to the licensor for use of existing content; it does not authorize, fund, or imply any future editorial activity by the licensor on behalf of the licensee.
Verifying a license
Each license can be downloaded as a plain-text certificate from the buyer’s library or the creator’s earnings page. The certificate includes the manifest hash and (when on-chain) the Solana signature, both of which can be independently verified.
The full counsel-reviewed Master License Agreement (MLA) will be published here once finalised. Until then, individual licenses issued through the platform follow the structure above and are considered the binding agreement.