Terms of Service

Version: 3.0
Effective date: November 1, 2026

Welcome to Engage Wisdom. We help people preserve and share recordings of spoken wisdom, as audio, video, text and photos. These Terms describe what you can expect from us and what we ask of you. Engage Wisdom is a service of Sonic Zen, Inc., a California corporation doing business as Engage Wisdom; in these Terms, "Engage Wisdom," "we," "us," and "our" refer to Sonic Zen, Inc.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of the Engage Wisdom online platform, websites, apps, and all related services (together, the "Service"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you open or manage a Client account or sign an Order Form on behalf of an organization, you confirm you have authority to bind that organization, and "you" means that organization. Wherever these Terms speak of a collection and its decisions, "you" means the Client that holds this agreement for it (Section 2), whoever is acting for it. An authorized user invited into a Collection agrees to these Terms for their own account and conduct (Section 2).

Our Privacy Policy, Community Guidelines, and Copyright Policy are part of these Terms by reference. Where these Terms differ from a signed Order Form or from our Data Processing Addendum, which applies automatically (Section 3), Section 18 says which document controls.

1. Our Service and Our Role

The Service hosts and plays back collections of recordings and provides related tools: search, permission-based access, editing, AI transcripts and other materials (Section 7), publishing and distribution to podcast directories and video platforms. We also provide digitization and preservation services under our Digitization Addendum, which applies when your signed estimate or proposal includes them.

We are a technical platform provider, not the publisher or creator of user content. The recordings and other content in a collection come from the Client who owns that collection (Section 2), and that Client is responsible for them. These Terms do not make Engage Wisdom the owner, editor, or publisher of that content. Where we run a collection of our own, we act as that collection's Client. We do not pre-screen, approve, or editorially control what users upload and publish, and we have no obligation to monitor it. If you believe content on the Service violates these Terms or the law, please report it to us and we will review it under the applicable policy.

Some features may be offered as beta or research preview versions: experimental and subject to change. Section 15 describes how we handle changes to the Service.

We provide hosting and tools to bring archives to life and improve access, not a guarantee of permanent storage. Please keep your own backup copies of your recordings and important materials.

2. Accounts, Access, Eligibility, and Roles

You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. You may not use the Service if US sanctions or export-control laws prohibit us from serving you. By creating an account you confirm you meet these requirements and can lawfully agree to these Terms.

When you register, please provide accurate information and keep it current. You are responsible for your login credentials and for activity under your account. Each account is for one person. Do not share your login credentials with anyone, including others in your organization. Please tell us promptly at help@engagewisdom.com if you believe someone else has used your account.

How the Service is organized. A Talk is a page that holds the record of a single event: an audio or video recording with its transcript, photos, and descriptive details. A Collection is a group of Talks, established and cared for by one Client: the organization or individual who holds this agreement with us and makes the collection's decisions (in everyday use, the collection's owner). A Client gives authorized users access to work in its Collections, under whatever roles or permission levels the Service offers from time to time, and each authorized user holds their own account and is responsible for their own conduct under these Terms. The people a Client lets manage its collections, and every other authorized user, are not the Client. If the Client is an organization, the person who holds its account is not the Client either. They all act for the Client, within the access it gives them, and what they do in its collections counts as the Client's doing. You remain responsible for your collection, including what the people you authorize do in it (Section 5). Everyone else is a visitor, reaching whatever a Collection makes public. You are responsible for inviting the right people and granting the right permissions. Our help pages describe the roles and permission levels the Service offers, with tips for using them well in your collection.

3. Collections: Controller and Processor

When an organization or an individual hosts a collection on the Service, that collection's decisions are made by the Client and carried out by us. That is why the roles under data-protection law are assigned this way for its content:

The Client is the data controller for the personal data in its collection, and decides what is uploaded, what is processed, what is published, and what is removed.
Engage Wisdom is the data processor for that content. We act on your documented instructions as controller, under a Data Processing Addendum that applies automatically as part of these Terms.
For the data we handle for our own purposes, Engage Wisdom is the controller. Those purposes are accounts, billing, support, securing the platform, keeping the Service working reliably, preventing abuse, understanding how the Service is used, meeting our own legal obligations, and the platform learning Section 6 describes. The Privacy Policy covers both of our roles.

Two permissions, two steps. For every recording in your collection, you are responsible for two permissions: the permission to host it on the Service, and the permission to publish it. The first comes with the upload. The second is given before publishing each Talk, through Permissions Clearance. The people you authorize act for you when they upload a recording, mark a Talk Cleared, or withdraw that mark (Section 2). Authorized users who only listen, read, or edit Talks in a collection are not responsible for these permissions; the two parts that follow are for the people who manage the collection.

Your warranty for hosted Talks

Uploading gives this permission. Uploading or importing a recording is your instruction to host it and to make the Generated Materials Section 7 describes, and it carries your warranty in Section 5 that you hold the rights, permissions, and consents needed for that. No separate step is required.
Recordings we digitize or import for you. We import them at your direction. They arrive in your collection unpublished and visible only to your authorized users. The exception is any recording you certified Cleared in advance, on your Order Form or by written instruction to us: it arrives Cleared, and is published or unpublished as your Order Form or written instruction directs. The Digitization Addendum describes the details. If you are not yet sure you hold what is needed to host some of these recordings, please tell us to leave them out of the import; you can bring them onto the Service later.
Unpublished until Cleared. You may bring a recording onto the Service before you have confirmed permission to publish it. Until you mark it Cleared, it stays unpublished, on the Service and anywhere else, and visible only to your authorized users. Hosting it needs no authority to publish or distribute it; that authority is needed only when you instruct publication.
If you find you lack the rights. If you find that you do not hold the rights, permissions, or consents needed to host a recording on the Service, please delete it.

Your certification for published Talks

Cleared means cleared for publishing. Before a Talk can be published or distributed anywhere, you must mark it Cleared through Permissions Clearance, certifying that the permissions needed to publish it have been confirmed. Marking a Talk Cleared also confirms that you hold the rights, permissions, and consents Section 5 describes for that Talk.
Certifications are instructions. A Cleared mark, or its withdrawal, is your documented instruction to us, operating under our Data Processing Addendum. You may also give a certification by written instruction to us, which we record for you. We may rely on the most recent certification made for each Talk in your collection; a change tells us what to do next—it does not undo what was already done under the certification in force at the time.
What a Cleared mark makes possible. Talks marked Cleared become eligible for whatever visibility or publishing you separately choose (Section 8). Podcasts and other publishing channels are available for Cleared Talks only (Section 9).
Withdrawing a Cleared mark. You can withdraw a Cleared mark. Withdrawing it unpublishes the Talk on the Service, in every collection it is shared into, as soon as you withdraw it, and stops our distribution of it; copies already distributed are as Section 9 describes. The Talk then stays unpublished until it is marked Cleared again.
Removals under our Copyright Policy. Content removed under our Copyright Policy is restored only as that policy's counter-notice process describes, or when the person who sent the notice withdraws it, and marking such a Talk Cleared again is not in itself an instruction to republish it. Restoring a Talk does not republish it if its Cleared mark has been withdrawn in the meantime.

We rely on your certifications and instructions. We do not verify rights or consents behind them, and we do not make legal determinations about your content. Those belong to you as controller. If an instruction would clearly require us to break the law, we may pause that action while we work with you to resolve it.

You are responsible for giving appropriate privacy notices to the people whose personal data you bring to the Service, such as speakers, contributors, and the members of your community.

If you are an authorized user or visitor with a privacy question about content in a collection, please direct it to the collection's owner, whose contact details are on the collection's About page: they control that content, and we assist them in responding.

4. Payments and Subscriptions

Some parts of the Service require payment. Plans, prices, and limits live on our Pricing and details pages at engagewisdom.com, not in these Terms.

AUTO-RENEWAL NOTICE: PAID SUBSCRIPTIONS RENEW AUTOMATICALLY AT THE END OF EACH BILLING PERIOD, AND YOUR PAYMENT METHOD WILL BE CHARGED AT THE THEN-CURRENT RATE UNTIL YOU CANCEL. YOU MAY CANCEL AT ANY TIME FROM YOUR ACCOUNT SETTINGS OR, IF YOU SIGNED AN ORDER FORM, BY WRITING TO office@engagewisdom.com, EFFECTIVE AT THE END OF THE CURRENT BILLING PERIOD.

Billing. You authorize us to charge your payment method for recurring fees and any usage charges disclosed in advance.
Payment processing. Payments are handled by secure third-party payment processors. Your card details go to them, not to our servers.
Cancellation. If you signed up online, you can cancel online, from your account settings, any time. If your account was established through a signed Order Form, write to office@engagewisdom.com to cancel; your Order Form states the term and renewal dates that apply. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period and does not erase amounts already owed.
Refunds. Fees are generally non-refundable once paid, except where the law requires otherwise or we state otherwise in writing, as the Digitization Addendum does for deposits.
Price changes. We give notice 30 days before a price change takes effect. If you do not agree, please cancel before the new price applies; continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.
Consumer renewals. Consumer subscriptions renew only as automatic-renewal law allows: we show the renewal terms before you subscribe, confirm them when you enroll, remind you before each annual renewal, and let you cancel as easily as you signed up.
Failed payments. Please keep your payment information current. If a charge fails, we will notify you. If failed charges remain unpaid for 14 days after we notify you, we may suspend or downgrade the account. Suspension limits access to the Service rather than deleting anything.
Taxes. We collect taxes where the law requires, and these are in addition to the listed prices, unless otherwise stated.

5. Your Content and Your Responsibilities

"Your content" means the recordings, uploaded transcripts and files, edits, corrections, titles, descriptions, images, notes, and other material you or your authorized users contribute to a collection. Generated Materials (Section 7) are not your content. Where your authorized users make edits, what your authorized users write is your content. When their edits pass our alignment checks, they are stored, designed to be preserved through regeneration, and returned to you when you export; deletions from a transcript are the exception (Section 7). Any rights they keep against you are between you and them, and it is up to you to have whatever permissions you need from them. The Service's continuing regenerations of the underlying Generated Materials remain Transient Renditions (Section 7).

You own your content. Uploading content to the Service transfers nothing to us beyond the license in Section 6. You are responsible for the rights and permissions to add and use all content you add to the Service, whether you upload, import, or enter it.

The warranty. You represent and warrant that you have the rights, permissions, and consents needed for each way you instruct us to use your content, whether uploading, hosting, processing, publishing, distributing, or any platform-learning use you elect. That includes permissions from speakers, performers, and other people who appear in your recordings (or, where rights survive death, from their estates or successors), and for material such as music that carries its own rights.
All visibility choices. The warranty applies whatever visibility you choose: private sharing may reduce practical exposure, but it does not remove copyright, privacy, publicity, or consent obligations. We rely on you for this.
Your determination. What is lawful to publish from your collection is your determination to make, not ours.
Hosting and publishing. Section 3 says how this warranty applies: to hosting a recording on the Service and processing it, from the moment you upload or import it, and to publishing it, from the moment you mark it Cleared.

Do not upload content that is unlawful, infringing, or exploitative. The Community Guidelines describe the full standard.

Moderation. We do not routinely review content, but we reserve the right to remove or disable access to any content, at our sole discretion, where we believe it violates these Terms or the law or creates risk for the Service or its users. We aim to tell you when we do, unless the law prevents it or telling you would put someone at risk. Accounts that repeatedly violate these Terms may be suspended or terminated.

Feedback. If you send us ideas or suggestions about the Service, we may use this feedback without obligation.

6. The License You Give Us

To run the Service, you grant Engage Wisdom a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, back up, process, transmit, transcode, caption, transcribe, translate, index, summarize, display, and distribute your content, solely to provide, maintain, secure, support, and improve the Service for you, your authorized users, and your visitors, and to carry out the distribution and sharing you direct. Where your platform-learning participation permits, the license also covers using eligible Published Content and de-identified corrections to improve the Service generally, as described below.

Engage Wisdom creates living archives. This section is the home of our learning commitments; our Privacy Policy describes the same learning for the people in your recordings, and our Data Processing Addendum (Section 12) states how it operates where we process personal data for you.
We learn from what you choose to publish. The Service improves by learning from eligible Published Content, anonymized usage signals, and de-identified corrections derived from participating Published Content. De-identified corrections are the fixes, edits and feedback that authorized users, visitors, our own staff, and our tools contribute to transcripts or metadata, stripped of anything identifying. That is one way search, transcripts, summaries, and related features get better for everyone. Published Content means content your collection makes available to the general public on the Service or distributes through the public feeds you select; it excludes private and invite-only material, Talks not marked Cleared, and compliance-review work. Content is eligible for learning only where it is both available to the general public and included in the Service's public search and listings. We never train on unpublished content, we never use learning to build profiles tied to individual people, and our providers may not train their own models on your content.
Why collections participate in platform learning. The Service improves by learning from the teachings that collections choose to share publicly. Collections that participate help the whole platform get better at the things that are most important for unlocking this material: spelling names, places, and the titles of published works correctly, recognizing obscure references and technical terms from foreign languages, and following a talk's structure and meaning so it can be summarized skillfully.
Learning is de-identified by default. Standard learning, the kind every participating collection gets, may include the names of public figures and historical persons as they appear in published works and public listings, and those names are generally kept as published; it is designed to exclude the names of private individuals, and we remove any we find. Apart from those names, where Published Content contains personal data, including special categories of personal data, it teaches the system only after effective de-identification. De-identification is effective when the result can no longer reasonably be linked to an individual, and we document our method against that standard.
Enhanced learning is a separate, affirmative election that we may offer to some collections established in the United States. It permits learning from identifiable Published Content so the system learns names, places, and technical or specialized vocabulary with better accuracy. Where we offer it, enhanced learning can be elected in the same places as platform learning (next bullet), never by default, and you may end it prospectively at any time. We do not currently offer enhanced learning to collections established in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom.
Participation is your collection's choice, made when you set up or configure your collection settings. Platform learning is an election you can make on your Order Form or in your Service settings, and is opt-in, not automatically selected. You can change it at any time for free, and it does not impact the cost of your subscription either way.
Ending participation. You can end participation at any time, in your Service settings or by writing to us, and the change takes effect within 30 days. Ending participation, or this license, does not unwind learning already lawfully completed, or require retraining of models already built, except where the law requires otherwise. This license also naturally ends when your content is deleted from the Service, except for backup copies on their normal rotation and the copies Section 13 lets us keep.
We do not sell your content. The service providers who help us run the platform act under written agreements that limit what they can do with it (Privacy Policy, Section 6). Apart from the distribution and sharing you direct, we do not license it to third parties, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

What other users may do. If your collection makes content public, users of the Service may stream, read, and listen to it through the platform, download it where the Service offers a download, share links to it, and quote brief portions using platform tools, for personal, non-commercial use. They gain no ownership and no right to redistribute your content outside the platform. Content you keep private naturally stays limited to the users you authorize.

Downloads. Publishing a Talk makes it available to stream and listen to on the platform; it does not include or imply a download. We do not promise downloads of published Talks, or of unpublished ones, except where these Terms say so, such as for podcast episodes. Any other download the Service offers is a feature we may add, change, or remove.

7. Generated Materials

The Service generates transcripts, captions, translations, summaries, chapter markers, keywords, and similar materials from your recordings ("Generated Materials").

They are AI-generated, and labelled as such. The platform shows a visible notice on them.
They can contain errors. They are working aids, not authoritative records. Please review Generated Materials before you rely on them or publish them; where accuracy matters, human review is your responsibility.
On the platform, Generated Materials are a frequently refreshed, living function of the Service, not a committed record. What the platform displays are Transient Renditions: enhanced versions made from your original recordings, generated to support the viewing and listening experience, and refreshed and updated as our processing improves, at any time, on no fixed schedule. Every refresh is designed to preserve your original recordings, as well as your authorized users' saved edits that pass our alignment checks, other than deletions from a transcript. It is the Generated Materials that change and evolve over time. An edit that fails our alignment checks, for example because it cannot be matched to the words spoken in the audio, may not be kept. Redaction works only by editing the audio, either before you upload it or with the tools on the Service. Meaningful words deleted from a transcript will usually return at the next automatic transcription, because a transcript is always meant to be a direct representation of the words spoken in the audio.
Publishing a Talk with your Publishing Credits is how you keep a fixed version. Publishing a Talk with your credits requires the Talk's permissions to be marked Cleared (Section 3). Publishing Credits are included in most subscription plans and may also be available for purchase separately as add-ons to your subscription; Section 13 says how included credits are allotted and when they lapse. Spending credits to publish a Talk creates Publishing Products: finished, portable files, such as publishing audio downloads and publishing video downloads, produced for you when you publish, distinct from the Transient Renditions the platform displays. Publishing Products are the files produced for you, and are downloadable by you, not by the public. Spending credits does not by itself make a Talk public: whether it is Published Content (Section 6) depends on where you make it available to the public. Once you have published a Talk with your credits, you can publish it again to the same kinds of channels at any time at no additional cost. New kinds of publishing, such as video where you had published audio, or higher-resolution formats, may be included or may take additional Publishing Credits, as our Pricing and details pages at engagewisdom.com describe. Your Publishing Products are yours to keep and use: to the extent we hold any rights in them, we license those rights to you perpetually, royalty-free, and non-exclusively, to use, edit, copy, publish, sell, and sublicense, and that license survives termination. We claim no rights in your underlying content, which we never take ownership of and which needs no license from us (Section 5).
Your responsibilities reach them. Generated Materials are made automatically from every recording you upload or import, and uploading or importing is your instruction to make them; your responsibilities and warranties in Section 5, and the applicable indemnity in Section 16, extend to them, but only for the content you provide and the uses you instruct, not for errors our own processing introduces. Where our own processing introduces an error, that is ours to investigate, correct, and remove, not yours: please tell us if you find any such errors. The disclaimers in Section 14 and the liability limits in Section 16 apply to what follows from it.
Your legal rights come first. Nothing in how Generated Materials or Publishing Credits work limits anyone's rights under data-protection law (access, correction, deletion, and portability, including personal data inside Generated Materials), or a collection owner's ability to meet them, and we do not charge for helping fulfil those rights. Publishing Credits price a finished product, never anyone's rights. Where the EU Data Act's switching rules apply, the Data Processing Addendum's switching schedule states what is exportable and on what terms.
Third-party AI providers assist this processing as sub-processors, under the commitments in our Data Processing Addendum and Privacy Policy.
Our systems are built not to identify people by their voices. The full non-biometric design commitments live in our Privacy Policy and Data Processing Addendum (Annex B).

8. Published and Unpublished Content; Cross-Collection Sharing

Your collection's settings determine what the general public can reach and what stays limited to the people you authorize. You choose, per Talk and per collection, and you can change your choices as the Service's settings provide.

Published Content (Section 6) can be viewed, streamed, indexed by search engines, and shared by anyone—including our staff, like any other member of the public.
Everything else reaches only the people you authorize. Our staff access unpublished content only to the extent needed to operate and support the Service, or as Section 12 describes, and that access does not make us a reviewer, editor, or publisher of your content (Section 1).
An honest limit: no online system can prevent every download, re-share, or capture of content a viewer can view or play. The settings provided by our platform are designed to apply your instructions faithfully; please choose these permissions settings with judgment for sensitive material.
Distributed content, published to podcast directories, video platforms or other channels (Section 9), leaves the platform's boundary and becomes subject to the world outside it.

You are responsible for choosing the visibility that fits your material.

Cross-collection sharing. Collections may share recordings into other collections' archives under arrangements between the Clients responsible for each collection, recorded on an Order Form or by written instruction. A share lets the receiving collection host the recording and publish it as part of its own collection, including as podcast episodes and Publishing Products, under the owning Client's certifications and elections. Ending a share removes the shared recording from the receiving collection and stops further publishing; it does not recall episodes or Publishing Products already delivered. Either Client may end a share at any time, and only we can restore it, at both Clients' direction.

This doesn't transfer ownership. A shared recording stays owned by its source collection's Client, and it will appear in the receiving collection with attribution and a link back to its home collection.
The owner's decisions govern. The owning Client's certifications, elections (platform learning included), and Section 5 warranties govern a shared recording wherever it appears, and responsibility for it under Section 16 runs to its owner, not to the collection hosting the share.
Deletion follows ownership. Deleting or closing a collection removes the recordings its Client owns, from its own archive and from every collection they were shared into, and never reaches recordings another Client owns.

Service-wide discovery. The Service may include discovery and search surfaces that show Published Content from across collections, with attribution and links back to each home collection. Inclusion is at our discretion. Content that is not published never appears on them, and unpublishing a Talk removes it from them.

9. External Distribution: Podcasts and Video

Where your plan includes it, you can distribute content beyond the platform: podcast feeds submitted to directories (such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify) and video published to video platforms (such as YouTube). If you connect a YouTube channel to the Service, you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service whenever you use the Service's YouTube features.

For everything you distribute:

You are responsible for titles, artwork, thumbnails, descriptions, content ratings, and metadata, and for the rights they require, including music licenses and permission from people who appear on camera.
Captions, transcripts, and other descriptive data distributed with your content may contain AI-generated content (Section 7) unless you edit them or supply your own. Please review and approve all AI-generated content you choose to distribute.
Third-party platforms apply their own terms. Directory approval, removal, content policies, and propagation timing belong to those platforms, not to us. We do not guarantee that any directory or platform will accept, keep, or correctly display your content. Content that has been distributed or indexed off-platform may persist in third-party copies after it is removed here.
Published podcast episodes are downloadable by their nature. That is just one example of a download that publishing to a channel includes. Delivering downloadable audio files to listeners' apps is how podcasting works.
Migrating a podcast feed. When you move an existing podcast feed onto the Service, we endeavor to keep the show's relevant metadata and each migrated episode's unique identifier (its GUID) unchanged. When you move a podcast feed off the Service, so that each active podcast directory service can pick up your new address automatically, we support a 301 redirect from its Engage Wisdom feed address to its new home for at least 90 days, or until your collection's export window ends if that is sooner. After that, we continue to serve the redirect on a best-effort basis for as long as is practical.

10. Acceptable Use

Do not use the Service to break the law, infringe rights, harass or threaten people, expose someone's private information, impersonate others, spread malware, scrape or bulk-download content (other than as the Community Guidelines allow), bypass access controls, manipulate analytics, or interfere with the Service's operation.

Collections here often hold material that communities consider sacred or deeply meaningful. Treat the material, and each other, with care.

The Community Guidelines are the full statement of these standards and are part of these Terms.

11. Copyright

Repeat infringers. We may terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. Multiple valid infringement notices against your uploads can make you a repeat infringer. We keep records of notices and the actions we take.

12. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy describes what we collect, why, how long we keep it, and your rights, including the controller/processor split in Section 3. Please send any privacy requests about your own account data to office@engagewisdom.com. Privacy questions about a collection's content go to the collection's owner.

Requests from courts and governments. If we receive a subpoena, court order, or other legal demand for content or data, we disclose only what valid legal process requires. Where the law allows, our practice is to tell the affected collection owner before we produce anything, so they can seek protection; we treat preservation demands the same way.

13. Export, Termination, and Archival Stewardship

Export. While your subscription is active, you can ask us for a copy of your content (Section 5) at any time, at no charge. We prepare it as a download and send you the link, ordinarily within 7 days of your request, and the link stays live for at least 14 days. We may limit full copies to one every 30 days. Digitization deliverables (Digitization Addendum, Section 5) are delivered under that Addendum, and any re-delivery after its delivery window is new paid work; this does not reach the recordings we imported into your collection, which you can retrieve and export like any upload. You can also publish Talks with your Publishing Credits, which creates Publishing Products (Section 7). On account closure, we make an export window available to retrieve your content before deletion, 30 days unless a different period is required by law. If you ask for your export before the window ends, we keep your content until its download link has been live for at least 14 days. During that export window, you can retrieve your content at no charge: your uploads and the recordings we imported into your collection for you, your authorized users' saved edits, any Publishing Products we created for you, and the titles, descriptions, notes, and other material you entered, together with your certification records and your collection settings. Apart from your saved edits, Generated Materials such as AI transcripts and summaries are not part of this export, except where the law gives you a right to them (Section 7); your Publishing Credits remain available during this time, so you can publish Talks to generate their publishing audio downloads and publishing video downloads (Publishing Products, Section 7).
Publishing Credits. Publishing Credits included with a plan are allotted for each billing period and do not roll over; your plan pages state the allowance and the period. Any included or promotional credits remaining at closure have no cash value and lapse at the end of the export window. Publishing Credits you purchased as an "add-on" or "boost pack" do not expire; we refund the remaining balance, at the price you paid, on request.
Ending your use. You may stop using the Service or close your account at any time. When the Client closes its collection, that closure starts the export window; an authorized user who closes their own login closes only that login. If you cancel your plan instead of closing your collection, paid access continues to the end of the period you paid for (Section 4), after which the collection follows the normal closure path, starting with the export window.
If a collection's owner goes away. If an owner organization dissolves or an account lapses, the collection follows the normal closure path, and a successor who demonstrates authority may take it over during the export window. Access for the collection's users ends when the collection closes.
Our termination rights. We may suspend or terminate access where you materially or repeatedly violate these Terms, where the law requires it, where security demands it, or for sustained nonpayment. We endeavor to give notice and an opportunity to respond when practical; in severe cases we may act first and explain what happened as soon as we can.
After termination. Sections of these Terms that by their nature continue survive: ownership, licenses already exercised, disclaimers, liability limits, indemnity, and dispute terms. We may delete remaining content after the export window; backup copies clear on their normal rotation. We may keep copies we must retain under applicable law or need to establish or defend a legal claim, including certification records and instructions; we use them only for that purpose and delete them when it ends. Where the Data Processing Addendum narrows this for your collection (its Section 10), the Addendum controls.
If we ever shut down the Service entirely, we will give reasonable advance notice and an export window, refund the unused part of any prepaid fees, and keep your Publishing Credits usable during that window. Your content and your original media are your property, never assets of ours. In a sale, a wind-down, or an insolvency, we will use reasonable efforts to provide this export window and to return originals under the Digitization Addendum before hosting ends.

14. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available." We do not guarantee that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and to the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Where the law does not allow part of this disclaimer, that part applies only to the extent the law permits.

Our tools assist you; they do not decide for you. We do not guarantee that using the Service satisfies any law, regulation, or standard that applies to you or your content. That determination is yours.
AI-generated materials can contain errors, omissions, and misattributions (Section 7). Review them where accuracy matters.
Third-party services we integrate with are provided under their own terms, as-is.
Content on the Service reflects the views, opinions, and statements of its speakers and contributors, not those of Engage Wisdom. Nothing on the Service is medical, mental-health, legal, or other professional advice.

15. Changes: to the Service, to Prices, to These Terms

The Service. We may change, add, or retire features without prior notice. If a change materially reduces what a paid plan includes, we will notify you, and you may cancel at once and receive a prorated refund of any fees you prepaid for the rest of your paid period.
Prices. Price changes come with the advance notice Section 4 describes.
These Terms. For minor clarifications we update the document, its changelog, and the date. For material changes to pricing terms, data use, liability, dispute terms, or license scope, we tell you by email and by notice on the Service before the change takes effect, with reasonable time to review it, and we may ask you to accept the change when you next sign in. A change applies going forward and does not apply to a dispute already raised with us. Changes required by law take effect as the law requires. A change to these Terms does not alter the commercial terms of an Order Form you have already signed, for its current term. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, following that notice, you accept the change.

16. Limitation of Liability and Indemnity

Engage Wisdom and its officers, employees, contractors, and service providers are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including lost profits or loss of goodwill, arising from your use of, or inability to use, the Service, except as this section preserves. We are not responsible for failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

The cap. Our total liability for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the greater of $100 and the amount you paid us in the 12 months immediately before the first event giving rise to the claim. For loss of or physical damage to original media in digitization custody, the Digitization Addendum's Section 6 limit is the limit that applies under this section.
What the limits never touch. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for intent or gross negligence, for injury to life, body, or health, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.
Where mandatory law protects an essential-obligation claim. An essential obligation is a duty these Terms stand on, without which this agreement could not properly be performed, and that you rightly rely on us to perform. Where the law that mandatorily applies to you so requires, we remain liable for simple negligence that breaches such an obligation. That liability is limited to the typical, foreseeable loss, and the cap above does not apply to it.
Consumers. If you are a consumer, nothing in this section limits protections the law of your home jurisdiction makes mandatory (Section 17).
Shared recordings. For a recording shared through cross-collection sharing (Section 8), the responsibilities and indemnity in this section run to the recording's owning Client, not to the Client of a collection that hosts the share.

Indemnity. If you are an organization, or you use the Service for business purposes, and a third party brings a claim against us arising from your breach of these Terms (including the Section 5 warranty for your content and the Generated Materials created from it at your instruction), or from your violation of the law or of someone's rights, you agree to defend and indemnify Engage Wisdom, covering losses, damages, and reasonable legal fees, except to the extent a claim arises from an error our own processing introduced, as Section 7 describes. This obligation does not apply to consumers where the law does not permit it. We will notify you of any such claim and cooperate in the defense. You may not settle a claim that admits fault for us or imposes obligations on us without our written consent.

17. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Nothing in these Terms takes away rights that applicable law does not allow you to waive. If you are a consumer, our choice of California law does not deprive you of mandatory protections under the law that would apply without that choice, including applicable protections where you habitually live. Nothing in these Terms limits any right you have under mandatory law to bring proceedings in your local courts.

Talk to us first. Before filing any claim, please email office@engagewisdom.com. We aim to respond within 21 days, and both sides agree to try in good faith to resolve the matter informally before litigating. Either of us may proceed to court once 30 days have passed since the notice, whether or not the other has replied. Either side may ask a court for urgent relief during that period, for example to stop a deletion. Nothing in this step delays a claim the law lets you bring at once.

Where disputes go. Disputes that cannot be resolved informally are brought in the state courts of Alameda County, California, or the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, to the extent the law allows the parties to choose those courts, and both parties consent to jurisdiction there, unless the law gives you a mandatory right to a different forum, such as the right to bring qualifying claims in the small-claims court of your residence. To the extent the law permits, claims must be brought within one year of the events giving rise to them. For a problem you could not reasonably have discovered earlier, this period runs from discovery. If you are a consumer, this one-year period does not apply to you, and the time limits the law sets apply instead. The one-year period is paused during the informal-resolution process described above, from the day notice is sent until 30 days after, so following that process never shortens your time to file.

18. Miscellaneous

Entire agreement, and what controls. These Terms, the documents they incorporate, the Data Processing Addendum, any service-specific addendum, and any signed Order Form are the entire agreement between us about the Service. An "Order Form" includes any signed proposal, estimate, or quote that references these Terms and is accepted by both parties. Where documents conflict, the order of precedence is: (1) a signed Order Form, (2) the Data Processing Addendum, (3) any service-specific addendum, (4) these Terms, (5) the incorporated policies, except that on data-protection questions, the Data Processing Addendum controls over all of them.
Our platform stays ours. The Service itself, including its software, models, designs, and trademarks, remains the property of Engage Wisdom, and these Terms give you no rights in it beyond using the Service. This reservation does not reach your content or your Publishing Products.
Severability. If part of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest stands, and the unenforceable part is read to come as close to its intent as the law allows.
No waiver. Not enforcing a provision today does not waive it tomorrow. Waivers must be in writing.
Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, and will notify you if we do.
No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms create rights only between you and us, except for the people Section 16 protects and the rights the Standard Contractual Clauses give data subjects.
Notices. Formal notices to us go to office@engagewisdom.com or our address in Section 19. Notices to you go to your account's email address, or to the notice address on your Order Form; email counts as written notice.
The English version of these Terms governs.

19. Contact

We are a small team, and real people answer our mail. Please write to us about anything in these Terms or anything on the platform. Questions, corrections, and ideas are all welcome.

Support and everyday questions: help@engagewisdom.com
Legal, copyright, and privacy matters: office@engagewisdom.com

Sonic Zen, Inc. (doing business as Engage Wisdom) 2916 Chapman Street Oakland, CA 94601, USA

Thank you for entrusting Engage Wisdom with your recordings and your communities. Bringing these archives to life is the reason the platform exists.

Version 3.0, 2026-11-01.