EMBR Story Studio™: Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what these Terms cover

EMBR Story Studio ("EMBR", the "Service") is a family memory and storytelling service at embrstorystudio.com, operated by Oak & Ember Creative LLC, a Texas limited liability company ("Oak & Ember", "we", "us"). Contact: support@embrstorystudio.com. Mailing address: 5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731 (registered agent).

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a contract between you and Oak & Ember. By creating an account, accepting an invitation, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Before you can use EMBR you tick a box that reads "I am 18 or older and I agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.", either when you create your account or, if you signed up with Google or joined by invitation, on a page the app shows before anything else. We record which version of the Terms you accepted and when, using our server's clock. When we publish a new version, the app asks you to accept it before you continue.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or accept an invitation. By using the Service you confirm that you are 18 or older and able to form a binding contract.

United States only. EMBR is offered to people in the United States. Paid plans require a U.S. billing address. We check the billing country ourselves after checkout, and a subscription started with a billing address outside the U.S. is cancelled at once and its payments refunded. We may offer EMBR in other countries later.

Children may appear in the Service only as records that adult members create (for example, a child's name, photos, and stories in a family timeline). Children may not hold accounts.

3. Your account

• You are responsible for your login details and for everything done under your account. Tell us promptly at support@embrstorystudio.com if you think someone else has used it.
• You can sign in with an email address and password, or with Google.
• Give us accurate information and keep your email address current, because we use it for invitations, billing, and warnings before data is deleted.
• One person per account. Do not share an account.

Confirming your email. If you sign up with an email address and password, we email you a link to confirm the address, and the app shows a reminder until you do. You can use EMBR before you confirm, but these actions wait until your email is confirmed: inviting someone to a family, starting or changing a paid plan, offering or accepting a family transfer, asking to delete your account, and downloading your data. Accounts that sign in with Google are already confirmed. Cancelling a scheduled account deletion never needs it.

Your account photo. You can add a photo to your account. It is not private: any signed-in EMBR user can view it, for example next to your name in a family you share. It is deleted with your account.

4. Families, roles, and who controls what

EMBR is organized into families. The person who creates a family is its Owner. The Owner can invite other people and give each one a role:

• Owner: manages the family, its members, and its plan. The Owner's plan pays for the family.
• Contributor: can add and edit the family's records and stories.
• Viewer: can read the family and add memories, perspectives, and comments.

What you add to a family is visible to every current member of that family, including notes on a person's record (there are no private notes). The exceptions are your drafts: a draft is visible only to you, even the Owner cannot see it. Photos you add to a draft are filed into the family's Media Library when they upload and are visible to the family at that moment, even before the draft is published.

The family's activity log. Each family keeps a log of what happens in it, with who did it and when: an item added, changed, deleted, restored or removed for good (with the item's title at the time), a comment, a sign-in, a member joining, leaving or changing role, and plan events such as a scheduled deletion or a transfer. Drafts are never logged. The Owner can see the whole log of their family. Every member can see their own entries. The log is kept for as long as the family exists; your own entries are deleted when your account is deleted.

Removal. An Owner can remove a member. When you are removed from a family you immediately lose access to it. What you published in that family stays in that family. Your unpublished drafts in that family are sealed: nobody can read them, including you, unless you are re-added. Sealed drafts are included in your data download, are deleted when you delete your account, and are permanently deleted 12 months after your removal if you have not been re-added by then.

The family depends on the Owner's plan. If the Owner's trial ends or the Owner's paid plan lapses, the whole family becomes read-only for every member and is later deleted (see §7). Members who do not pay are affected by the Owner's plan. Every member, not only the Owner, receives the warning emails before a family is deleted (§7).

4.1 Transferring a family

An Owner may offer to transfer a family to one member they choose; nobody can claim a family on their own. The transfer completes only when that member accepts and starts a paid plan, because only the Owner pays; the family then counts toward the new Owner's own plan limits. From then on the new Owner's plan and its limits apply, billing moves to the new Owner, and the new Owner chooses the former Owner's role (Contributor or Viewer) or removes them from the family, unless the former Owner is deleting their account. An offer expires after 30 days; the Owner can cancel it and the member can decline it before then. Both the Owner and the member must have confirmed their email (§3). Transferring a family does not give the new Owner access to anyone's drafts, which stay private to their authors.

4.2 The Demo Family

EMBR may show one family as the Demo Family, an example of what EMBR can hold. It is a family Oak & Ember owns and fills in. Every signed-in user can open it and look around, but only its own members can change anything: visitors cannot add, edit, comment or react. Its drafts, activity log and member list stay closed to visitors. Only EMBR staff can choose which family is the Demo Family, and there is at most one.

5. Your content

You own your content. "Content" means everything you put into EMBR: stories, memories, life events, perspectives, reflections, comments, photos, audio narrations, records about people, homes, pets, vehicles, places, heirlooms, and recipes, and books you assemble.

The license you give us. You give Oak & Ember a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, process (for example, make thumbnails and web-sized copies of photos, remove location data from photos, and choose the spot a photo is centered on when it is cropped), display, and transmit your content only as needed to run the Service for you and the members of the families you share it with, and to make backups. This license ends when your content is deleted from the Service and from our backups (see Privacy Policy §7), except for content you shared into a family that stays in that family after you leave or delete your account (see §5.1).

We do not sell your content or use it for advertising. We never use your stories, photos or recordings to train AI models, ours or anyone else's. If we add AI features in the future (for example, help writing a story), they may process a family's content only to provide that feature to that family, and we will describe them in the Privacy Policy before they launch.

The license you give other members. When you add content to a family, you let that family's current members view it, and let Owners and Contributors organize it and include it in family books and PDFs they make inside EMBR. You also let the family's Owner download a copy of it (§8): an Owner's data download includes everything anyone added to the families they own, marked with who added it, but never anyone else's drafts.

5.1 What happens to shared content when you leave

When you leave a family, are removed from it, or delete your account:

• What you published stays. Stories, memories, perspectives, photos, comments and other content you published into a family stay in that family, shown with your name as it was when you added it, because they have become part of that family's shared record.
• Your account data is deleted when you delete your account: your account, sign-in, profile, account photo, preferences, your activity log entries, and all your drafts in every family (sealed ones included). (§8)
• You can ask for specific items to be removed. Email support@embrstorystudio.com and tell us which items; we will remove them or work with the family's Owner to do so.
• Families you own: before you can delete your account you must choose, for each family you own, either to transfer it to a member or to delete it for everyone (see §4.1 and §8). If a transfer offer is declined, or is not accepted with a paid plan within 30 days, the family falls back to a scheduled deletion with the same warnings to every member.

5.2 Listening links and book QR codes

A listening link plays one narration to anyone who opens it, with no account. Someone who opens it sees the story's title, the teller's first name or the name the family calls them ("a family member" when neither is known), and the recording, and nothing else from your family: no photos, no story text, no family name and no one's last name. The story's author or the family's Owner can make a listening link for its narration. A family can also turn on narration QR codes in a book, so each narrated story in the book prints with a QR code that opens its listening link.

• Sharing is the family's choice. When you share a listening link, or print a book with narration QR codes, you confirm that you have the permission of the person who recorded the narration, or, if that person has passed away, of their family, and the permission of a parent or guardian for a recording of a child.
• Anyone with the link can listen, and can save the recording. A copy someone has saved, and a book that has been printed, cannot be taken back.
• The family's Owner can turn a link off, turn it back on, or make a new one. The old link and its QR code then show that they were turned off, including a code already printed in a book. Everyone else in the family can see whether a link is on or off.
• One link per story. A story keeps one listening link and QR code for as long as it has them; only the family's Owner replaces a link with a new one.
• A link turns off on its own when its story is deleted (a story in Deleted reads as turned off) and when its family is deleted. It stops playing while its family is read-only, after its narration is removed, and while the person who recorded the narration is no longer a member of the family (unless they chose to keep their links when deleting their account); when someone in the family records the story again, the same link and QR code play the new recording, unless the Owner turned the link off.
• Leaving EMBR. If you recorded stories with shared listening links and delete your account, you choose whether those links keep playing your recordings. The family keeps every recording either way.
• The listen page sets no cookies and does not use analytics (Privacy Policy §2.3).

6. Rules for content and conduct

You are responsible for what you add. You agree that you have the rights to it and that it does not break the law or anyone's rights. In particular:

• Other people. Family stories are about other people, living and dead. Only add information and photos about living people that you have a right to share with the family, and be thoughtful about private matters (health, finances, relationships). Remove content if the person it is about reasonably asks you to.
• Children. Only the child's parent or guardian, or someone with their permission, should add a child's personal information, photos or recordings.
• Recordings. Record a narration only with the speaker's permission, and share it by link or QR code only as described in §5.2.
• Copyright. Do not upload photos, audio, or text you do not have the right to use (for example, professional portraits with a photographer's restrictions, or published books).

You may not: upload anything illegal, including child sexual abuse material (we report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as the law requires); harass, threaten, or impersonate anyone; upload malware; probe, scrape, overload, or bypass the Service's security or limits; resell the Service; or use it to send spam.

We may remove content or suspend accounts that break these rules. Content EMBR staff remove is moved to the family's Deleted list, cannot be restored by members, is shown in the family's activity log as removed by EMBR support, and is removed for good by the regular 30-day purge (§8, §9.1).

7. Plans, trial, billing, and what happens when a plan ends

Plans. EMBR offers a free trial, a free plan ("Keepsake") and paid plans (currently "Family" and "Family Plus") with add-on packs for extra storage, members and families. Plans differ by limits (storage, people per family, families you own, book PDFs per billing year) and, over time, by some premium features. Current plans, prices, and limits are shown on the plans page and at checkout; those terms are part of these Terms.

Free trial. The trial lasts 14 days, needs no payment card, and has lower limits. It does not turn into a paid plan by itself; you must choose a plan. If you start a paid plan during the trial, its limits apply at once and the first charge is on the day the trial would have ended.

Keepsake (free). Keepsake is a free plan you choose when you create your account, with no trial and small limits (currently 1 GB, 3 people, 1 family, no book PDFs). A Keepsake family where no member has signed in for 2 years is deleted, after warning emails to every member about 30, 7 and 1 days before; any member signing in keeps it active. You can move to a paid plan at any time.

Payment. Paid plans are billed monthly or yearly in advance through our payment processor, Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. Only the Owner's plan is billed; invited members pay nothing. Oak & Ember uses the same Stripe account for its other work, so a charge on your card statement shows our company name, Oak & Ember, and EMBR only uses your payment records to run your EMBR plan. Promotion codes can be entered at checkout.

Automatic renewal. Paid plans and add-ons renew automatically at the end of each billing period at the then-current price until you cancel. You can cancel at any time in your account settings (the billing portal); cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.

If a payment fails. You keep full access while Stripe retries the card (about two weeks), and the app asks you to fix your payment. If every retry fails, the plan ends and the rules below apply.

Refunds. You can cancel at any time and keep access until the end of the period you paid for. We do not give refunds or credits for partial periods. Yearly plans are refundable in full if you ask within 14 days of the purchase or of a yearly renewal; email support@embrstorystudio.com or use the billing portal. Monthly plans and add-ons are not refundable. Where the law gives you a greater right to a refund, that right applies.

Price changes. We may change prices. We will tell you at least 30 days before a change affects your plan, by email and in the app, and the new price applies from your next billing period. You can cancel before then.

Taxes. Prices are shown before any tax. If tax applies to your purchase, the checkout page shows it before you pay.

When a trial or plan ends (read this).

• The family becomes read-only: members can read it, but nothing new can be added or edited. Members can still move items to Deleted and remove their own drafts, and the Owner can still remove members, so the family can be trimmed.
• A trial that was never converted: stays read-only for 60 days, with warning emails to every member of the family about 30, 7 and 1 days before deletion. Then the family and everything in it is permanently deleted.
• A paid plan that lapsed (cancelled or unpaid): stays read-only for 12 months, with warning emails to every member 30, 7 and 1 days before deletion. Then the family and everything in it is permanently deleted.
• Choosing or restarting a plan at any time before deletion restores everything. If what the Owner has fits Keepsake's limits, the Owner can also move the family to Keepsake.
• There is no separate family export. Every user can always download their own data from account settings, and an Owner's download includes everything in the families they own (§8, Privacy Policy §8).

8. Deleting things, downloading your data, and deleting your account

• Deleted items. When you delete an item it moves to Deleted (in Settings) and can be restored for 30 days. After 30 days a nightly job removes it for good, with its photos, audio and comments. A story in Deleted has its listening link turned off (§5.2).
• Deleting a family. An Owner can delete a family from Settings, Plan & Billing. This deletes every member's content in it, including every member's drafts. The deletion is scheduled 30 days ahead; the family stays fully usable until then, except that nobody new can join. Every member receives warning emails when it is scheduled and 7 and 1 days before it runs, and only the Owner can cancel it. During that time every member can download their own content from account settings.
• Downloading your data. You can download your data from account settings once a day, after confirming your email (§3). We email you when it is ready; the download link works for 7 days, then the file is deleted. It holds everything you created in every family you belong to (including items in Deleted that are not yet removed), your comments, all your drafts (sealed ones included), the photos you uploaded and the recordings on the stories you created, and your own activity log entries. For a family you own, it holds everything anyone added, marked with who added it, and a list of the family's listening links (whether each is on or off and who made it, never the links themselves), but never other members' drafts.
• Deleting your account. You can ask to delete your account in account settings: you must have signed in within the last few minutes, have confirmed your email, type DELETE, and choose what happens to each family you own (§5.1). Your account is deleted 30 days after you ask. Signing in during those 30 days lets you cancel. Then we cancel any subscription you own (no refund for the unused period, §7), and delete your account, sign-in, account photo, billing record, drafts in every family, data downloads and activity log entries. What you published stays in the families you shared it with unless you ask us to remove specific items (§5.1, Privacy Policy §7). After the 30 days, account deletion cannot be undone.

9. Our service, and keeping your own copies

We work hard to protect your content, and we keep backups (see Privacy Policy §7). But no online service is perfect. Keep your own copies of photos and recordings that matter to you; EMBR is a place to organize and share your family's story, not your only copy of irreplaceable originals.

We may change, add, or remove features. If we remove a feature you pay for, or a change significantly reduces what your plan includes, we will give reasonable notice, the right to cancel, and a pro-rated refund of any unused prepaid period.

We may suspend the Service for maintenance or for security reasons.

9.1 EMBR staff access

A small number of EMBR staff can use an internal support panel. Staff must sign in with a confirmed email address on an approved list. With it, staff can look up an account and its families, plan and storage use; list accounts and families; read a family's or a person's activity log; extend a trial or give or end a free (complimentary) plan; find one person's content in a family and remove it (for example after a removal request, §5.1); choose the Demo Family (§4.2); and check that the nightly jobs ran. Every staff action, including every look-up, is recorded with the staff member's email and the time. Staff do not use this access for anything except supporting you, running the Service, and enforcing these Terms.

10. Copyright complaints

If you believe content on EMBR infringes your copyright, send a notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to our designated agent: Copyright Agent, Oak & Ember Creative LLC, 5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731, support@embrstorystudio.com.

11. Ending these Terms

You may stop using EMBR and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or end your access if you seriously or repeatedly break these Terms, if the law requires it, or if we stop offering the Service. If we stop offering the Service entirely, we will give at least 90 days' notice so you can download your data.

Sections that by their nature should survive (for example 5.1, 12, 13, 14) survive termination.

12. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE". TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, OAK & EMBER DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND DOES NOT PROMISE THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT CONTENT WILL NEVER BE LOST.

13. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS: (a) OAK & EMBER IS NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST DATA, PROFITS, OR GOODWILL; AND (b) OAK & EMBER'S TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ABOUT THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM OR US $100.

14. Indemnity

You agree to defend and hold Oak & Ember harmless from claims by third parties arising from content you upload or your breach of these Terms.

15. Disputes, governing law, and venue

1. Talk to us first. Before filing a claim, you agree to email support@embrstorystudio.com with a description of the dispute and try to resolve it informally for 60 days. We agree to do the same.
2. Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas and applicable U.S. federal law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.
3. Venue. Any dispute that is not resolved informally will be brought only in the state or federal state courts located in Collin County, Texas, or the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, and you and we consent to their jurisdiction.
4. Small claims. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court (Texas justice court) where it qualifies.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. For a material change we will give at least 30 days' notice by email and in the app before it takes effect, and the app will ask you to accept the new version (§1). If you do not agree, you can cancel and delete your account before the change takes effect.

17. General

These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. If a clause is unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Our not enforcing a clause is not a waiver. You may not transfer these Terms; we may transfer them to a successor in a merger, acquisition, or sale of the Service, with notice to you. Notices to you go to your account email; notices to us go to support@embrstorystudio.com.

18. Contact

Oak & Ember Creative LLC · support@embrstorystudio.com · 5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731 (registered agent)