Terms of Service

Eligibility and accounts

You must be 18 years of age or older and legally able to agree to these Terms. People under 18 may not create an account or use Birds Heard. If you use Birds Heard for an organization, you represent that you may bind it. Provide accurate information, protect your credentials and two-factor codes, and tell us promptly about suspected unauthorized access. You are responsible for activity under your account except to the extent caused by our failure to use reasonable care.

Birds Heard box, audio, and location

You are responsible for lawfully placing, powering, networking, and using a box or handheld microphone, including obtaining permission from property owners and complying with recording, surveillance, wildlife, radio, and privacy laws that apply where you use it. Do not position a microphone to target private conversations. You control whether owner-enabled detection clips are saved. Blind research audio is a planned feature that is currently disabled. If introduced, it will require a separate, explicit consent and will not be enabled merely by accepting these Terms, enabling detection clips, or receiving Plus.

You are responsible for the accuracy of a station location and for choosing whether and how a public yard shows location or activity. Public location is coarsened according to your setting, but sharing any place or live activity can carry privacy risks.

Your content and permissions

You keep ownership of audio, corrections, profile material, public-yard text, and other content you provide. You give K3 Technologies, LLC a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, copy, process, transmit, display, and adapt non-audio content only as reasonably necessary to operate, secure, support, and improve the services and to honor your settings. For an ordinary saved or detection clip, the license is narrower: we may screen, store, transmit, play, and delete it only to provide the audio feature you requested and keep that feature secure.

When a workspace owner enables detection clips, an authorized workspace member with correction access may play those clips in the correction workflow. K3 Technologies, LLC personnel may not listen to ordinary saved or correction clips under this service license. An external labeler may not listen to them either. Model training or research audio is currently disabled and, if introduced, will require a separate, explicit opt-in consent, such as a specifically described blind-research consent. These Terms do not silently grant that consent.

This service license ends when content is deleted, except for the backup, legal, security, and de-identified limits described in our Privacy Policy. You represent that you have the rights needed for content you provide and that it does not unlawfully expose another person’s voice, location, or personal information.

Public yards and corrections

If you publish a yard, its handle, bird activity, chosen approximate location, and other marked-public content can be viewed and shared by anyone. Corrections submitted to a shared correction workflow may be reviewed by authorized users and administrators and may contribute to product quality. Do not submit private or misleading information in public fields. You can unpublish a yard or change its location and live-activity settings.

Acceptable use

Do not misuse the services. In particular, do not break the law; violate privacy or intellectual-property rights; upload malware; probe or bypass security, rate limits, permissions, or model safeguards; scrape at unreasonable volume; interfere with another user or box; impersonate anyone; use the service to monitor people; reverse engineer except where law expressly permits it; or use outputs to train a competing model without written permission. We may investigate suspected abuse and protect the service and its users.

Identification and model limitations

Bird identifications, confidence scores, generated descriptions or art, maps, weather context, and alerts are probabilistic and can be wrong, incomplete, delayed, or unavailable. They are informational, not expert scientific, safety, conservation, legal, or veterinary advice. Confirm important observations independently. Audio screens reduce the chance that non-bird sound is uploaded but cannot guarantee perfect classification.

Beta service and availability

Some or all of Birds Heard may be offered as an early-access or beta service. Features can change, and a box, network, model, mobile operating system, or third-party service may fail. We may maintain, update, limit, suspend, or discontinue features. We do not guarantee uninterrupted service, a particular species catalog, detection rate, storage duration beyond an active setting, or continued compatibility with every device.

Plus and future paid features

Plus is currently complimentary for eligible beta accounts, in-app purchases are not currently available, and accepting these Terms does not charge you. Marketing may describe planned pricing or features, but it is not a purchase offer. If we introduce paid plans, we will show the price, billing period, included features, renewal and cancellation terms before purchase and provide any additional terms required by the payment platform. We will not convert complimentary access into a charge without your affirmative purchase.

Third-party services

Birds Heard relies on third-party services and data described in our Privacy Policy, including Cloudflare, Apple, Expo and push networks, Google, GBIF, and Open-Meteo. Their services may have separate terms and availability. Use of Google Maps features is subject to the Google Maps/Google Earth Additional Terms and Google Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for third-party services beyond what applicable law requires.

Our intellectual property

K3 Technologies, LLC and its licensors own Birds Heard software, branding, site design, and other service materials, excluding your content and third-party materials. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to use the service for its intended purpose. Open-source components remain governed by their licenses, available in the mobile app’s open-source licenses screen where applicable.

Suspension, termination, and account deletion

You may stop using the service and delete your account using the in-app control or begin a verified deletion request by emailing [email protected]. A member's deletion removes that member's account and personal handheld finds while preserving the shared workspace. An owner's deletion removes the entire workspace, including its members, boxes, and shared bird data. We may suspend or terminate access when reasonably necessary for security, legal compliance, nonpayment of a future paid service, material or repeated breach, or protection of users and infrastructure. When practical, we will give notice and a chance to fix a curable problem. Provisions that by nature should survive—such as ownership, disclaimers, liability limits, and accrued obligations—continue after termination.

Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Birds Heard is provided “as is” and “as available.” K3 Technologies, LLC disclaims implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. We do not disclaim warranties or consumer rights that cannot legally be excluded.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, K3 Technologies, LLC and its suppliers will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, goodwill, or business interruption arising from the services. Our aggregate liability for claims relating to the services will not exceed the greater of amounts you paid us for the service during the 12 months before the claim or $100. These limits do not apply where prohibited or to liability that cannot legally be limited.

Changes and contact

We may update these Terms as the service changes. We will update the date above and provide additional notice when required. Material changes apply prospectively unless law permits otherwise. If you do not agree to updated Terms, stop using the service and delete your account. Questions can be sent to [email protected].

General terms

These Terms and the documents they expressly incorporate are the entire agreement about the Birds Heard service. If a provision is unenforceable, severability means the remaining provisions continue. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. Assignment: you may not assign these Terms without our written consent; we may assign them as part of a merger, financing, reorganization, or transfer of the service, subject to applicable law.