Terms of Service.

1. Who we are

OpenComment is a civic tool that helps people in the United States find federal proposed rules affecting their lives and submit substantive public comments to the federal docket at regulations.gov. By using the service you agree to these terms.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use OpenComment, and 18 or older to receive email and submit comments referencing your household. The service is built for U.S. residents commenting on U.S. federal rulemaking.

3. Your account

You sign in with a magic link sent to your email. Keep your email secure. You’re responsible for activity on your account. If you suspect unauthorized access, contact us at security@opencomment.org.

4. Acceptable use

OpenComment exists to give individual citizens a voice. You agree not to:

• Use the service to generate comments under identities that aren’t yours, or to coordinate astroturf comment volume.
• Submit comments containing knowingly false statements about yourself, the rule, or the agency.
• Operate multiple accounts to amplify your own comments.
• Scrape, redistribute, or commercially exploit OpenComment’s output without permission.
• Reverse-engineer or attempt to bypass our rate limits, abuse detection, or AI safety guardrails.

We may suspend accounts that violate these limits. We aim to be transparent when we do so.

5. Comments are yours

We help draft. You decide what gets sent. When you submit a comment on regulations.gov, you do so under your own name and that comment becomes part of the federal public record. We don’t claim authorship, ownership, or licensing rights over your submitted comments.

6. Our role with the federal docket

OpenComment is independent of regulations.gov, the General Services Administration, and any federal agency. We surface federal data via the public regulations.gov API; we are not a federal service.

7. No warranty on outputs

Our AI-drafted summaries and comments are starting points. They may contain errors. You are responsible for reviewing what you submit. We make no representation that any draft accurately represents the rule, your situation, or any factual matter.

8. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, OpenComment is provided as is. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the service.

9. Termination

You can delete your account at any time from your privacy settings. We can suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms. On termination, your data is removed per our Privacy Policy.

10. Changes to these terms

We’ll update this page and notify you by email if we change these terms in a way that materially affects your rights.

11. Contact

Questions about these terms? Reach us at hello@opencomment.org.