Legal · Acceptable Use

Acceptable Use Policy

Pre-incorporation draft. The status note below explains what that means.

This Acceptable Use Policy lists the conduct and content that is not allowed on Talisman. It is part of the Agreement between you and Talisman set out in the Terms of Use. Where the rules here overlap with the AI Policy or the Notice & Takedown Policy, those documents add detail; the rules here are not weakened by anything they do or do not say.

Status. Pre-incorporation draft. Operational from the start. Reissued under Talisman Music CIC (a UK Community Interest Company limited by shares) on incorporation. Talisman Music CIC is not a subsidiary of Talisman Foundation CIC and is not owned or controlled by it; it operates under a conditional technology licence from the Foundation.

1. Content rules

You must not upload, transmit, host, or distribute Content that:

  • Infringes intellectual property rights. Anything for which you do not own the rights or have permission, including masters, compositions, lyrics, artwork, photographs, samples, and any third-party Content.
  • Imitates a real person without permission. Including AI-generated voice cloning, name impersonation, likeness imitation, or use of a distinctive performance style without that person's express permission. See AI Policy section 3.
  • Is wholly or substantially AI-generated and undisclosed. AI-generated Content must be disclosed at upload via the AI-content disclosure flag. See AI Policy section 2.
  • Is unlawful. Including content that is criminal where uploaded or where accessed, content that incites violence, content that promotes terrorism, or content that depicts the abuse or exploitation of children. We report child sexual abuse material to the relevant authorities, including the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK.
  • Is defamatory. Including malicious false statements about identifiable people.
  • Is fraudulent or deceptive. Including false rights claims, fake reviews, fraudulent transactions, fake artist identities operated for commercial advantage, and content designed to manipulate Service metrics.
  • Is hateful or discriminatory. Including content that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or other protected characteristic.
  • Is harassing. Including targeted abuse, threats, persistent unwanted contact, doxing, and revenge-content.
  • Is sexually explicit material involving real persons without consent. Including non-consensual intimate imagery and AI-generated sexualised imagery of real persons.
  • Is malware or actively malicious. Including software, links, or media designed to compromise systems or accounts, or to deliver harmful payloads to other users.

2. Conduct rules

You must not:

  • Impersonate another person, artist, organisation, label, venue, or Talisman itself.
  • Manipulate Service metrics. Including bot-driven streaming, fake follower or fan counts, coordinated review-bombing, or any conduct designed to inflate engagement, listening counts, or fan-action metrics.
  • Run streaming-fraud schemes. Including AI-generated track flooding, listener-side automated playback, and royalty-laundering schemes. Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and other downstream services charge platforms penalties for delivering fraudulent streams; we pass that liability and any further consequences to the responsible account.
  • Scrape, crawl, or extract Service Content for any purpose, including AI training. The AI Policy is binding alongside this rule.
  • Reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Talisman application or Service except to the extent permitted by applicable law (for example, the limited rights under section 50B of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 for interoperability).
  • Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service except under our published responsible-disclosure programme (see Contact until the formal programme is published).
  • Attempt to access parts of the Service you are not authorised to use, or to bypass authentication, authorisation, or rate-limiting controls.
  • Circumvent age gates or content controls.
  • Use the Service to facilitate illegal activity elsewhere, including using messaging or marketplace features to coordinate fraud, harassment, or other unlawful conduct.
  • Operate accounts to replace an account we have previously suspended or terminated under the Terms of Use section 17.
  • Evade enforcement by re-uploading removed Content under a different identity, by creating duplicate accounts to avoid strikes, or by other circumvention.

3. Commercial and marketplace conduct

If you sell on Talisman:

  • Be honest about what you are selling. Accurate titles, accurate descriptions, accurate rights claims, accurate stock and delivery commitments.
  • Honour your delivery promises. Physical goods must be shipped in line with the delivery times stated at the point of sale. Tickets must give entry to the event as described.
  • Pay collaborators. Where a track has co-writers, featured artists, or other rightsholders, you are responsible for ensuring splits are correctly recorded and paid out from your earnings.
  • Don't price-fix or collude. Do not enter into agreements with other Talisman accounts to fix prices, divide markets, or restrict competition.
  • Comply with consumer law. Including the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, and any sector-specific rules that apply to your offering.

4. Mesh and peer-to-peer conduct

The Talisman peer mesh and IPFS-addressed delivery mean parts of your device's connectivity may participate in delivering Content that you have lawfully accessed to other Listeners. You must not:

  • Use the mesh to relay Content you have not lawfully accessed.
  • Operate the mesh in a way that uses other users' connectivity at unreasonable levels or that imposes costs on them they did not consent to (mesh participation is opt-in and the application enforces fair-use limits, but the prohibition stands at the user level).
  • Attempt to identify or deanonymise other mesh participants beyond the public peer-identity layer.

5. Reporting violations

If you see Content or conduct that breaches this Policy, report it. Use the in-app report flow where available, or write to support@talismanproject.org with the subject prefix REPORT:. Reports made in good faith do not count against the reporter. Reports that are manifestly malicious, repeated against the same target without cause, or designed to suppress lawful expression are themselves a breach of this Policy.

For intellectual property issues specifically, the Notice & Takedown Policy gives the structured procedure that applies.

6. Enforcement

Breaches are dealt with under the Terms of Use section 17 (Suspension and termination) and, for IP and AI breaches specifically, under the Notice & Takedown Policy repeat-infringer rules.

The standard enforcement progression is:

  1. Warning for a first, low-severity breach where the account-holder appears to have acted in good faith.
  2. Content removal and feature restriction for a second breach or a more serious first breach.
  3. Suspension for repeated breaches or breaches that cause harm to other users.
  4. Termination for egregious breaches, repeat patterns, or deliberate evasion.

We may skip steps where the breach is severe, where there is a credible safety risk, or where law requires. Where we do, we will explain the reasoning to the affected account at the time we act, except where doing so would compromise an investigation or place others at risk.

Decisions that affect publication or account standing are appealable. Send appeals to support@talismanproject.org with the subject prefix APPEAL:.

7. Updates

We update this Policy when new abuse patterns emerge, when new legal duties apply, or when our enforcement practice has evolved enough to be worth restating. The "updated" date in the document header reflects the date of the most recent change. Material changes are notified in-app or by email at least 14 days before they take effect.

Drafted in pre-incorporation form, 28 April 2026, for review and finalisation by qualified UK counsel.

Last updated 28 April 2026