API terms
Draft for legal review
This draft describes what The Collector does today in plain language. It hasn’t been reviewed by a lawyer yet, and the wording may change before it takes effect. Open questions for review:
- Commercial use of the API by third parties, and whether it needs an agreement.
- Liability, warranty and indemnity wording.
- Notice periods for changing these terms and for retiring routes.
- Rules for storing collectors’ data an integration reads.
Credentials
- Keep API keys and tokens secret, and use each one only for the integration it was made for.
- Don’t share a key between people or put one in software others can read.
- Tell us at once if a key may have leaked, and revoke it.
Collectors’ data
A collection belongs to its collector. An integration that reads one does so for that collector, with their permission, and only for what they asked it to do. Don’t sell it, publish it, or combine it with other people’s data without their clear consent.
Catalog data and covers
The catalog is built from open data:
- the Grand Comics Database and Metron, under CC BY-SA 4.0;
- Wikidata, in the public domain (CC0);
- Open Library, in the public domain (CC0), for collected editions (its import is rolling out).
Catalog data you get from the API is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0: credit the sources and The Collector, and share what you build from it alike. The details, and every source, are on Data sources and credits.
Cover images belong to their publishers. They’re shown to identify each issue; don’t republish them, and don’t store the signed cover URLs, which expire.
Fair use
- Respect rate limits and
Retry-After; don’t try to get around them. - Don’t scrape the site or the API to copy the catalog wholesale; the open sources offer their data directly.
- Don’t use the API to spam, harass, or mislead collectors or stores.
Changes and availability
We keep /api/v1 stable as the versioning guide describes, and announce changes in the changelog. We may limit, suspend or revoke access that breaks these terms or puts the service or its users at risk. Questions: contact us.