Omnipedia – Term of Service

Omnipedia™ is a mobile application (the “App”) made available to you by Recursive Ink Ltd (“Recursive Ink”, “We”), subject to these Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Terms”). By downloading or using the Omnipedia App or content distributed through the Omnipedia service, you agree to follow and be bound by these Terms, which may be updated from time to time. You can review the current version of the Terms at https://recursive.ink/omnipedia/terms.html where a summary of changes is also maintained. By using our service or App, you are indicating your agreement to these Terms and all revisions thereof.

In addition, if you download the Omnipedia App through the Apple App Store, your use of the App is also governed by Apple’s standard End User License Agreement (EULA), available at: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/. In the event of any conflict between these Terms and the Apple EULA, the terms of the Apple EULA shall prevail solely to the extent required under applicable App Store policies.

About Omnipedia

Omnipedia gives you offline access to Wikipedia content. To do this, we prepare compressed archives of reprocessed Wikipedia articles (referred to as “libraries”), which you can download to your device for offline reading. We also prepare regular “library updates”, which allow you to transform a previously downloaded version of a library into an updated state. This service is offered on a subscription basis via the Omnipedia App, which operates in three modes:

Demo Mode: This mode provides access to a small set of built-in sample articles for the purpose of product evaluation; the App cannot access complete libraries, nor does it permit library downloads or updates.
Full-Access Mode: This mode enables downloading of Omnipedia libraries and updates and is only available to current subscribers.
Read-Only Mode: This mode permits access to libraries downloaded during an active subscription, but the App cannot download or access new libraries or updates.

Regardless of your subscription status or the current mode, any article content delivered to your device is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0), which is described in more detail below.

Subscriptions, renewals, and cancellation

Omnipedia subscriptions are managed by the Apple App Store and are governed by App Store terms and policies. Your subscription will automatically renew unless you cancel it at least 24 hours before it is due to expire.

Cancellation must be performed through the Omnipedia App, through the App Store, through iOS Settings, or by signing into your account at https://account.apple.com/. If you cancel your subscription or allow it to lapse, the App will enter Read-Only Mode (as described above) at the end of the subscription period.

To request a refund you must contact the App Store, and your request will be granted at Apple’s discretion. If a refund is granted, your access to the Omnipedia service will be terminated at that time and the App will revert to Demo Mode. This does not affect your rights to any article content previously delivered to your device under CC BY-SA 4.0 (described below), which remain governed by that license. However, the App will cease to provide access to such content and you must exercise your rights by other means (e.g., by exporting individual articles in advance or by extracting the content yourself by methods described in our FAQ).

We reserve the right to change the price and feature set of the Omnipedia App and subscription at any time in accordance with App Store rules.

Article Content and CC BY-SA Licensing

By downloading, viewing, or otherwise accessing article content prepared by us as part of the Omnipedia service, you acknowledge that such content is licensed to you subject to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (herein, “CC BY-SA 4.0”), which can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. You agree to abide by the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0, and you acknowledge the following:

The material that we license to you (under the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0) consists of reprocessed Wikipedia articles formatted in Markdown (or any other transparent format that we choose to use in the future, such as HTML or XML).
The container archives used to distribute and store the content described in (1) (i.e., archives in Codex format or any other format that we choose to use in the future) do not themselves form part of the licensed material, are not licensed to you under CC BY-SA 4.0, and remain the copyrighted property of Recursive Ink.
It follows from (1) and (2) that you are permitted to share, adapt, and redistribute article content (subject to the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0) but you are not permitted to redistribute Omnipedia libraries (i.e., container archives) in their original form.
Since the CC BY-SA 4.0 precludes us from adopting “effective technological measures” that would prevent you (a “downstream recipient”) from exercising your rights to reuse the licensed material, we explicitly grant you permission to copy or extract the content described in (1) from the archives described in (2).
In compliance with our obligations set out in (4), the Codex archive format that we presently use for distribution is an openly documented format that does not represent a technological measure against freedoms granted to you by CC BY-SA 4.0, such as what could be achieved through, for example, encryption or digital rights management software. In further support of these obligations, the Omnipedia App allows you to export individual articles in Markdown and HTML, and we provide an open-source Python implementation of the Codex decoder, which can be found at https://github.com/RecursiveInk/codexpydec, to facilitate extraction.
If redistributing the article content described in (1), you must provide proper attribution as required by CC BY-SA 4.0. This should include a reference to Wikipedia as the original source (including a URL to the original article or a list of contributing authors), an acknowledgement of any changes made by Omnipedia and yourself, and a clear reference to the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. You are also required to distribute your own derivative versions under the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nothing in these Terms is intended to override or conflict with your rights and obligations under the CC BY-SA 4.0. If any provision is found to be in conflict, the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0 shall prevail.

App License and Acceptable Use

The Omnipedia App is for your personal, non-commercial use. You agree not to modify, distribute, or sell any part of the App without our permission. You also agree not to reverse-engineer the App or attempt to discover its source code.

The Omnipedia App is owned by Recursive Ink, and we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the App, subject to these Terms. All other rights are reserved.

The downloading of Omnipedia libraries and library updates from servers managed by Recursive Ink is restricted to current Omnipedia subscribers. Bypassing, or attempting to bypass, access controls violates these Terms and may result in suspension of access.

Disclaimers and Limitations on Liability

Omnipedia is not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikipedia name and globe logo are registered trademarks of the Wikimedia Foundation. Our use of these trademarks does not imply endorsement.

We make no guarantees that the information contained within Omnipedia libraries and articles is correct, nor that the App will always function correctly. The Omnipedia App and service are provided “as is” without any warranties, and you use them at your own risk. Recursive Ink, its employees, and its partners are not liable for any damages resulting from your use or misuse of the App or of information contained in articles. This includes any direct, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages. If the laws in your jurisdiction do not allow certain liability limitations, those limitations may not apply to you.

We reserve the right to modify or discontinue the Omnipedia App and/or service, in whole or in part, at any time, with or without notice. In the event of service discontinuation, you may be eligible for a refund in accordance with the refund policies of the App Store.

We also reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access to Omnipedia if you materially violate these Terms, misuse the service, or engage in behavior that could harm our users or infrastructure. In other circumstances, we may terminate access with reasonable notice.

Governing Law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any disputes shall be resolved in the courts of England and Wales.

Update Summary

01/07/2025: First publication of these terms.