Privacy Policy

No sale of personal information

LibraryThing will not sell or give personally-identifiable information to any third party. This would be evil, and we are not evil. We reserve the right to sell or give away anonymous or aggregate information. (See LibraryThing for Libraries for a service we provide libraries.)

Email from LibraryThing

LibraryThing will not send you mass emails without your consent. By default, new members are signed up for our State of the Thing newsletter.

LibraryThing's "find friend" feature starts with no friends selected, and has no "select all" button.

Private libraries

LibraryThing allows "private" libraries—libraries that others can't see. We cannot give an absolute 100% guarantee of privacy. After all, even Amazon had a day when all their "anonymous" reviewers were exposed by mistake. If the public disclosure of your library would really damage you, by all means don't post it online.

The law

We take reader privacy very seriously. LibraryThing will not cooperate with US law enforcement unless compelled to do so by law. If you are using LibraryThing from a foreign country with an oppressive government, LibraryThing urges you not to put yourself at risk.

Apps

LibraryThing allows members to connect to various apps, like Facebook and Twitter that require application authorization. We will not use this for anything other than explicitly agreed to. The data we collect from these apps is used only for authentication purposes, and is not displayed, transferred or shared in any way. LibraryThing will not sell or give personally-identifiable information to any third party. This would be evil, and we are not evil.

Payment details

Most of our payments come through PayPal, so we never receive credit cards numbers. Remaining payment information is stored separately, and not linked to your member name.

Terms of Use

Get off my lawn, you kids!

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) severely restricts what information can be collected from children under 13. For this reason, children under 13 are prohibited from using LibraryThing. Children 13 and over may participate with the permission and guidance of their parent or guardian. Users of all ages are warned not to provide profile information without weighing the risks and benefits, and never to provide their phone number, address or other critical personal data on-line.

Copyright

By posting content to LibraryThing, you grant—and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, represent and warrant—LibraryThing a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, omnipotent, royalty-free, fully-transferable and sublicenseable right to display, use, analyze, aggregate, modify, adapt, publish, translate, transform, create derivative works from and perform in any venue or media, online or offline, as well as

"In Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy, / And arts, though unimagined, yet to be." (Shelley, Prometheus Unbound)

We do NOT assert copyright over the things you post to LibraryThing. The phrase "non-exclusive" above means you can post your content elsewhere. By posting something to LibraryThing you let us use it, but you do not restrict what you can do with it. We love it when people post their reviews on their blog, on Amazon and other sites!

As stated above, LibraryThing will not sell any personally-identifiable information to any third party.

You can control whether your reviews will ever be made available to libraries or others. Click here to edit your profile and change your preference.

Social features

Freedom of discussion and personal attacks

• LibraryThing has no speech code. You can dispute ideas and words without limitation.
• LibraryThing prohibits personal attacks on members. As Wikipedia's policy states, "Comment on content, not on the contributor."

Good advice

• Use common sense. Be polite. Think before you post.
• If you're upset by something or someone, try to calm down before responding.
• Discussions can become heated and passionate. Don't forget that the person on the other side is human.
• Remember that LibraryThing Talk is a public space; don't say anything to others that you wouldn't want a room full of people to overhear.
• Avoid quoting or otherwise exposing private communication. While this does not necessarily violate the Terms of Service, you should consider whether it qualifies as a personal attack or a disclosure of private information.
• Consider the context before posting. A political religious dispute does not belong in a knitting group.

How to deal with abuse

• If you come across an abusive post, click the "flag abuse" link. The flag will be visible only after it has been flagged twice. After four different users have flagged a post, it will be deleted.
• Please do not flag posts as "abuse" simply because you disagree with what is said, or if someone criticizes your favorite book, author, or idea—that's not abuse, it's a difference of opinion. We welcome differences of opinion!
• LibraryThing staff do not review all flags. Severe abuse should be reported to LibraryThing staff.

Other rules

• LibraryThing is not an advertising medium. Egregious commercial solicitation is forbidden. No matter how great your novel, this does apply to authors. (See Tips and Guidelines for Authors.)
• Do not spam member comments or group invitations. Inviting people in your town to a new group is okay; inviting hundreds of members is not.
• Do not repost flagged content in Talk. If you believed you were flagged unfairly, go ahead and discuss the issue (without getting personal). You can discuss it, with short selections. But you may NOT repost it. If people want to read it, they can; Talk allows you to click something to see the flagged content.
• Do not create "pointless," "meaningless" or "random" groups. We give all groups the benefit of the doubt, but the creation of multiple, duplicative and contentless groups is against these terms.
• Do not intentionally disclose sensitive private information about another member.
• One violation of the Terms of Service does not justify another one.

System integrity

• Do not subvert or misuse site features.
• Do not set up "shell" or "sock puppet" accounts for any purpose whatsover.
• Common Knowledge, covers and other core, shared bibliographic data must be edited in good faith.
• LibraryThing is for your books—books you own, have read or want. It would not be appropriate to fill your LibraryThing catalog with all the books in your local library or Project Gutenberg.
• Except by permission or through an authorized API, you may not add to or query your library automatically. See our APIs.

Account types

Individual accounts are designed for personal collections. Couples and families are fine too. Organizations, like churches, companies, schools and museums, can also join, with some restrictions. (See organizational accounts.)

Lifetime memberships

People who pay for lifetime memberships get what they paid for, and probably a lot more. If, however, LibraryThing adds major new features, including but not limited to tracking your borrowed books by satellite and punishing malefactors with a death-ray, using these new features may require an additional payment.

LibraryThing asks for $25 (life) or $10 (year) for over 200 books. If you go to pay, you will discover that you can pay what you want.

Pay-for-review schemes

LibraryThing encourages members to participate in book give-away programs. (LibraryThing has two: Early Reviewers and Member Giveaways.) We forbid reviews from "pay-for-review" schemes.

• Reviewers must be free to write what they think. They may not be required or rewarded to write positive reviews, or punished for writing bad ones.
• Reviewers must own and control their reviews, granting other parties only a non-exclusive license.
• Reviewers must act on their own volition, cross-posting their review when and where they want. Companies that sell services based on how many sites get reviews are explicitly forbidden from using LibraryThing.
• Reviewers must not be paid for their reviews, except in free books and similar non-monetary perks.

What, more?

• You may not post any content that violates copyright or other intellectual property law.
• LibraryThing may not be used for any illegal activity.
• LibraryThing may not be used to injure, threaten, stalk, impersonate or harrass someone.
• Do not plagiarize another member's content.
• Do not upload X-rated pictures.
• Your username may not be an insult, either general or specific. Sheesh!
• We reserve the right to remove accounts with no books after three months. (We have never done so.)

We take it all back

These terms and conditions are subject to the usual change-at-any-time rule that websites put on their terms and conditions and which seem so unfair. ("What, I have to submit a DNA sample?") We have edited them as new situations have come up, but we promise not to change any of the core principles, particularly with regard to sale of information, copyright and death rays. We promise to make all changes openly, with tracking and with the opportunity for users to withdraw their accounts.

BY USING LIBRARYTHING.COM DIRECTLY OR THROUGH A MEDIUM LIKE A COMPUTER WITH A KEYBOARD AND MAYBE A MOUSE ATTACHED YOU AGREE TO TAKE THESE IMPORTANT AND CONSEQUENTIAL TERMS OF USE SERIOUSLY EVEN THOUGH, OR EVEN BECAUSE, WE HAVE ONLY ONE SENTENCE AT THE END IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Credit where it's due

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