Open Terms Archive

Open Terms Archive publicly records every version of the terms of digital services to enable democratic oversight.

Active

Since 2020

France

Open source: Yes (EUPL)

Open Terms Archive addresses a critical gap in the ability of activists, journalists, researchers, lawmakers and regulators to analyse and influence the rules of online services Open Terms Archive publicly records terms of services in different languages and countries several times a day, increasing their readability and highlighting their changes. Beyond immediate practical usage as a repository of historical terms of service, Open Terms Archive is designed as a tool to steer platform governance towards increased accountability, improved legislation and stronger regulatory compliance. It makes it clear to every service provider that their actions are seen and recorded. It draws the attention of the public on the conditions it gets offered. It shows which actions were effective in changing these conditions. It gathers an ecosystem of potent counter-powers around shared datasets. Open Terms Archive is a decentralised and federated ecosystem, meaning that anyone can start tracking documents on their own and make them available to others, no matter the target domain. All public collections and tracked documents that match federation quality criteria are counted in the ecosystem.