Terms

theprototype cloud — the rules for accounts and for publishing to the community. Version of September 2026.

theprototype is an open-source, peer-to-peer 3D app. The engine itself is free software (MIT) and needs no account; these terms cover the optional cloud tier: signing in, listed rooms, and the community — publishing scenes, playing and remixing them, likes, comments, profiles and contests at theprototype.app and its pages (/community, /s/…, /c/…, /u/…). "We" is the maintainer of theprototype, operating from Latvia. By signing in or publishing you accept these terms together with the Content policy and the Privacy notice.

1. Your account

You sign in with GitHub or Google. You are responsible for what happens under your account. Publishing needs a profile handle; a handle is claimed once and cannot be changed by you afterwards (ask us if you must). We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms or the Content policy. You can ask us to delete your account at any time (see Privacy).

2. Publishing: what you grant

You keep the copyright in what you make. When you publish a scene you choose one of three licenses — CC-BY-4.0 (the default), CC0-1.0 or MIT — and by publishing you grant that license to everyone, worldwide, for as long as copyright lasts. Anyone may then play, download and remix the scene under its terms. That grant cannot be taken back: deleting a scene removes it from the service, but copies people already received stay licensed. There is no "all rights reserved" option, because remixing is the point of the community.

You also allow us to store, copy, display, thumbnail and distribute the scene (including through our content delivery network), to show it on the community pages and inside the app, and to feature it. Featured scenes may be exported to the open-source community gallery on GitHub under the same license. Unlisted scenes are licensed the same way but are not listed anywhere; anyone with the link can open them.

3. What you promise about your content

Everything in a published scene — models, textures, audio, flow graphs, text — is yours or is something you have the right to share under the license you chose. Third-party assets may be included only if their own license allows that, and required credits stay in place. Scenes built together in a session are published with the agreement of the people you built them with. Your content follows the Content policy.

4. Remixes

A remix keeps its "remix of" link to the scene it was made from, and the parent scene's license applies to the material you took from it (for CC-BY that means the credit stays). Publishing a remix under a license the parent's license does not allow is not permitted.

5. Contests

A contest accepts public scenes submitted inside its window; the brief may add rules of its own. Winners and judges' picks are chosen by the maintainer at their discretion; there are no prizes unless the brief says otherwise. Entries that break the Content policy are removed.

6. Reports, notice and action

Anyone signed in can report a scene. Three reports from different people hide a scene automatically pending review; we review reports regularly and either restore the scene or remove it. We may also hide or remove content on our own initiative.

If you believe content on the service infringes your rights or is illegal, send a notice to [email protected] with: the address of the content; what is infringing or illegal and why; your name and contact details; and a statement that the notice is made in good faith (for copyright: that you are the rights holder or act for them). We respond within 7 days — by removing or hiding the content, or by telling you why we did not. The person who published the content is told what was removed and why, and may send a counter-notice to the same address within 14 days; after a counter-notice we may restore the content unless you show us that you have started legal proceedings. Accounts that repeatedly publish infringing or illegal content lose the ability to publish.

7. A very small platform under the Digital Services Act

theprototype is a hosting service run by a single maintainer, far below the thresholds that trigger the Digital Services Act's duties for large platforms. We meet the baseline that applies to every hosting service: a public point of contact (the address above), the notice-and-action process in section 6, a statement of reasons whenever we remove or hide something you published, and these plainly written terms.

8. Availability and liability

The service is provided free of charge and as is. We do not promise uptime and may change, pause or end community features; where practical we say so in advance. Your scenes are yours — they download as ordinary .tpscene files at any time. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect damage or for content published by other users. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited under Latvian or EU law, and consumers keep the rights their own law gives them.

9. Changes and governing law

We may update these terms; the version date at the top changes when we do, and continued use after a change means you accept it. These terms are governed by the law of Latvia; EU consumers may also rely on the mandatory law of the country they live in. Before anything else, write to us.

Notices, counter-notices and questions: [email protected]. See also Privacy · Content policy.