Terms of Use

1. Parties and definitions

These Terms of Use (the "Terms") are an agreement between Code2B ("the Company", "we"), which operates the Story Circle mobile app and website ("Story Circle" or the "Service"), and the person using the Service ("user", "you").

• Guest: a user browsing the Service without an account.
• Member: a user with an account.
• Content: anything a user uploads, writes or shares on the Service — including book chapters, book descriptions, character and world descriptions, comments, community and chat messages, profile texts, images, drafts and suggestions.
• Shared book: a book whose chapters are written by several members in turn or in branches.
• Writing slot: the right to write the continuation of a chapter within a set time.
• Story Coin (SC): a unit used within the Service with no monetary value.
• Documents: these Terms, the Community Guidelines and the Copyright and Content Reporting Policy. The three are accepted together and form an integral part of the agreement.

2. Formation and acceptance

Before you start using the Service as a guest or open an account, you accept the Documents by reading them and ticking the consent box. The Service cannot be used without this acceptance.

On the acceptance screen we separately summarise the important provisions that may be to your disadvantage ("key terms"). The full text of the Documents is available before acceptance and at any time in the app under Settings → Legal and on our website.

We keep a record of which version you accepted, when, and from which device or connection. Information about the processing of your personal data is in the KVKK Privacy Notice; that notice is not something you are asked to consent to.

3. Eligibility and account security

• You must be at least 15 years old to open an account. You must give your correct date of birth at sign-up; it cannot be changed later. Accounts found to be below the age limit are closed.
• If you are under 18, you should use the Service with the knowledge of your parent or guardian. Some content is hidden according to its age rating.
• You are responsible for the information you give at sign-up being accurate and up to date. You may not open an account by impersonating someone else.
• You are responsible for protecting your password and access to your account. Actions taken in your account are deemed yours unless proven otherwise. If you notice unauthorised use, you must tell us immediately.
• You may not transfer, sell or rent your account to anyone else.

4. Description of the Service

Story Circle is a platform where members write books together. The member who opens a book sets the first chapter, the characters and the writing rules; the member who claims the writing slot first writes the next chapter.

• Writing slots are time-limited and one at a time. A member can hold a writing slot for only one chapter at a time. A slot not submitted within its time lapses automatically, and the penalty set by the book owner may apply.
• Automatic content review. Every submitted chapter goes through an AI-assisted automatic review before publication. No chapter is published without a positive review. You can appeal the result; your appeal is reviewed by a human.
• Branches. In some books several branches can be written as the continuation of the same chapter; readers choose their own path.
• Book owner powers. The member who opens a book sets its rules, participation and, as far as the Service allows, settings such as review before publication.
• The features of the Service may change over time (Section 11).

5. Rules of use

You may use the Service only in accordance with the law, these Terms and the Community Guidelines. In particular, you may not:

• Share content that is unlawful, infringes the rights of others or is prohibited by the Community Guidelines.
• Copy someone else's work without permission or present it as your own.
• Use the Service with automated tools (bots, scrapers, scripts), extract content in bulk or use the API without permission.
• Attempt to bypass security measures, gain unauthorised access to systems or disrupt the Service.
• Circumvent the rules with multiple accounts, hold writing slots to block others, or inflate SC or rankings by cheating.
• Share other people's personal data without permission.
• Use the Service for commercial advertising or promotion without the Company's written permission.

6. Ownership of content and your undertakings

Under Turkish Law No. 5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works (FSEK), the intellectual property right in original content you write arises in you the moment you write it. You grant the Company the license in Section 7 over that right.

For every piece of content you share, you undertake that:

• The content is your original work, or you hold all permissions needed to share it and grant the license in Section 7.
• The content does not infringe third parties' intellectual property, personality, privacy or personal data rights and is not unlawful.
• For content based on another work, such as fan fiction, respecting the rights of the source work's owners and the limits the source work allows is your responsibility.
• If you share text produced with an AI tool, you are entitled to share and license that text.

Section 13 applies to claims brought against the Company because of a breach of these undertakings.

7. Content license

7.1 Grant. When you submit or share content on the Service, you grant the Company the license in this section for that content. The license is granted separately for each piece of content at the time it is submitted; no disposition is made in advance over content you have not yet written (FSEK art. 48/3, art. 50).

7.2 Scope. The license covers each of the economic rights listed in FSEK separately:

• Right of adaptation (art. 21): editing, abridging, combining and converting the content into other forms; translating it; adapting it into screenplays, audiobooks, games, films, series, comics and similar works; creating works derived from it.
• Right of reproduction (art. 22): reproducing the original or adapted content by any method and in any medium (print, digital, audio recording, database, server, cache, backup), permanently or temporarily.
• Right of distribution (art. 23): selling, distributing, renting and lending copies for a fee or free of charge; offering the content for sale as a book, e-book and audiobook.
• Right of performance (art. 24): presenting the content to the public by reading, playing, staging and similar means.
• Right of communication to the public by means of devices for the transmission of signs, sounds and images (art. 25): communicating the content to the public and making it available by any means, including the internet, mobile apps, broadcasters and digital platforms.

7.3 Characteristics. The license is perpetual (valid for the entire legal term of protection of the content), worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and may be used for any services, products and business models the Company chooses. The license includes commercial use.

7.4 Transfer and sublicensing. The Company may transfer this license and the rights arising from it, in whole or in part, or grant sublicenses, to third parties such as publishers, production companies, distribution platforms, AI service providers and business partners. In a merger or demerger of the Company or a transfer of the Service, the license passes to the transferee. By accepting these Terms you give your prior written consent to such transfers and sublicenses within the meaning of FSEK art. 49.

7.5 Artificial intelligence. The license expressly covers reproducing and adapting the content to train, fine-tune, evaluate and develop artificial intelligence models (including story and text generation models), to generate synthetic data, and for purposes such as content moderation. For this use the content is separated from the author's identity and contact details. Content from members under 18 is not used to train AI models. You may not claim any right or payment over outputs generated by AI models on the ground that your content was used in training.

7.6 Shared books. In shared books each chapter is a separate work of its author (FSEK art. 9). By submitting a chapter to a shared book you consent in advance to your chapter being published together with the other authors' chapters as one book, to the book as a whole being used in the ways listed in Section 7.2, and to the book being edited. A published chapter cannot be withdrawn from the book unilaterally, because it is part of a work that other authors have continued; the license survives deletion of your account.

7.7 Moral rights. By submitting content you consent to its being made public. You consent to the content being published under your username, the name you display on the Service or, if your account has been deleted, an expression such as "Deleted user"; to technical changes required by format, spelling, typesetting and medium (FSEK art. 16/2); to abridgements and editorial changes; and to edits needed for the integrity of the shared book. Your statutory rights against uses that damage the honour of the work or distort its nature are reserved (FSEK art. 14/3, art. 16/3).

7.8 Your rights. Because the license is non-exclusive, you may continue to use the content you wrote outside the Service. However, you may not use other authors' chapters in a shared book without their permission.

7.9 Consideration. You are not paid a fee for the license; free use of the Service and publication of your content are the consideration for it. The Company may offer authors a separate written agreement for projects such as print publication, adaptation or revenue sharing. Such an agreement does not limit this license; it adds to it.

8. Story Coin (SC)

• SC is a unit used only within the Service. It has no monetary value; it cannot be cashed out, refunded, transferred to another account or sold.
• SC is earned through sign-up, written chapters, events and similar means and spent on actions such as opening a book. Earning and spending amounts are shown in the Service and may be changed for the future. Your earned balance is not deleted without a justified reason.
• SC obtained through cheating, errors or abuse is taken back.
• When the account is deleted, the SC balance is deleted too.
• If SC or other digital products are ever offered for a fee, separate pre-contractual information will be provided and a distance sales contract concluded before purchase; purchased SC will not expire.

9. Moderation and removal of content

Under Turkish Law No. 5651 the Company is a hosting provider: it has no obligation to check users' content in advance or investigate whether it is unlawful. We may nevertheless review content through automatic and human moderation.

• We may remove, limit the visibility of, or change the age rating of content we find, or that is reported to us, to be contrary to the law, these Terms or the Community Guidelines.
• You are notified of removed content and the reason within the Service. You can appeal the decision within the Service; your appeal is reviewed by a human.
• Removed content is not deleted; it is kept as the basis of the decision and for legal obligations, accessible only to the authorised team.
• The procedure for reporting unlawful content and copyright infringement is in the Copyright and Content Reporting Policy.
• Requests from competent authorities are handled within the framework of the law.

10. Suspension, closure and deletion of the account

You can delete your account at any time via Settings → Delete account. Before deleting, you can download your data free of charge.

In the following cases the Company may, in proportion to the severity of the violation, issue a warning, restrict certain features, suspend the account for a period or indefinitely, or close the account:

• Serious or repeated violation of these Terms or the Community Guidelines.
• Sharing unlawful content or behaviour that may constitute a crime.
• It becoming apparent that the user is below the age limit or gave false identity information.
• Behaviour that threatens the security of the Service or other users.
• A decision of a competent authority.

You are notified of the decision and the reason; if you think the decision is wrong you can appeal within the Service. In serious violations the account may be suspended immediately, before notification.

When the account is deleted or closed, your personal data is deleted or anonymised as described in the KVKK Privacy Notice. Your published content remains on the Service because the license in Section 7 continues, and "Deleted user" is shown instead of your author name.

11. Provision and changes of the Service

• The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". We do not guarantee that it will work without interruption or error; interruptions may occur due to maintenance, updates, security and technical faults. We announce planned maintenance in advance whenever possible.
• We may add, change or remove features of the Service for security, changes in legislation, technical necessity or to improve the product. We announce in advance changes that materially affect your use.
• Some parts of the Service may be offered as a trial or test version (beta).
• If we discontinue the Service entirely, we will announce it a reasonable time in advance and give you the opportunity to download your data.

12. Limitation of liability

Our liability for intent and gross negligence, for harm to life and bodily integrity, and in other cases where liability cannot be limited by law is reserved; this section does not apply to those cases. Outside those cases and to the extent permitted by law:

• We are not responsible for other users' content and behaviour beyond our obligations as a hosting provider in Section 9.
• We are not liable for indirect damages (such as loss of profit, reputation or data) arising from our slight negligence. We recommend that you also keep a copy of your important content.
• We are not responsible for problems arising from the device and internet connection you use to access the Service or from third-party services (app stores, email providers).
• Where the Service is provided for a fee, our liability for slight negligence is limited to the total amount you paid the Company in the 12 months before the damage.

Your rights under consumer legislation are reserved.

13. Third-party claims

If third parties or public authorities bring a claim against the Company because the content you shared or the way you used the Service is contrary to these Terms or the law, you agree to cover the damages arising from that claim that result from your fault (including reasonable attorney fees). We will notify you of such a claim and give you the opportunity to defend yourself.

14. Changes to the Terms

We may change the Documents only for the following justified reasons: changes in legislation or decisions of competent authorities, security requirements, adding new features to the Service or changing existing ones, and removing ambiguities in the text.

• Each change updates the version number and update date of the text; we summarise what changed within the Service.
• For a material change to your disadvantage, we ask for your consent again before the change applies to you. If you do not consent, you cannot continue to use the Service; in that case you can delete your account and download your data.
• Changes that are not to your disadvantage or are purely formal take effect on the date they are published and are announced within the Service.
• A change does not narrow or widen the license you granted for content submitted before it took effect; each piece of content is subject to the version in force when it was submitted.

15. Personal data

While you use the Service your account, content, usage and interaction, device and security data are processed. This data is used for purposes such as providing the Service, ensuring security, improving the product, analytics and developing artificial intelligence models. Which data is processed for which purpose and on which legal basis, to whom it is transferred, how long it is kept and your rights are described in detail in the KVKK Privacy Notice and the Privacy Policy.

16. Records and evidence

Electronic records of acceptances, transactions and correspondence are documents within the meaning of art. 199 of Turkish Code of Civil Procedure No. 6100 and may be used as evidence in disputes. Your right to prove otherwise is reserved.

17. Governing law and disputes

This agreement is governed by the laws of the Republic of Türkiye. The courts and enforcement offices of the Republic of Türkiye have jurisdiction over disputes. As a consumer, your rights to apply to consumer arbitration committees within the monetary limits and to the consumer court of your place of residence are reserved.

18. Notices and contact

We send notices to you through in-app notifications, in-app messages or the email address registered to your account. You can reach us in the app via Profile → Settings → Send feedback.

19. Entry into force

This version (2.0) of the Documents enters into force when you accept it. If a provision of the Documents is held invalid, the validity of the other provisions is not affected. If there is any difference between the Turkish text and a translation, the Turkish text prevails.