Terms of Service

1. Agreement

These Terms govern your access to and use of Bite, an Australian reading startup based in Brisbane. Bite presents books, poems, courses, essays, and other material as short, consumable sections called “bites”. By creating an account, accessing Bite, or providing content through Bite, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

2. Accounts

You must provide accurate account information and keep access to your email account and federated sign-in providers secure. You are responsible for activity performed through your account. Tell the Bite operator promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without permission.

3. The service

Bite streams complete works as sequences of bites, such as individual book paragraphs or poems. Its initial library is intended to focus on verified public-domain works and works offered under Creative Commons licences that permit Bite's intended use. Bite may later include content supplied directly by publishers, creators, rights holders, and other content providers.

Bite may add, change, suspend, or remove features and content. Reading positions, subscriptions, and preferences are provided for convenience; uninterrupted availability or permanent retention is not guaranteed.

A Stream subscription means that you have chosen a Stream for your authenticated feed. It is not, by itself, a paid purchase or recurring billing subscription. You may subscribe only to the number of Streams shown by the service and may unsubscribe through the library.

4. Public samples and feed access

Bite may explicitly select individual bites as public samples. A public sample has its own shareable URL and may be viewed without an account, indexed by search engines, cached, linked to, and accompanied by public preview or social-sharing metadata. Public samples may also be listed on the Discovery page. The sample may contain the same authoritative content that appears in the authenticated feed.

A public sample does not make the rest of its Stream public, create a Stream subscription, save reading progress, or grant access to any other feed-only bite. Bites not selected as public samples have no public Bite page and are available only through authorised service features such as the signed-in feed. Sample URLs are intended to remain stable, but Bite may restrict or remove a sample where required by law, rights status, security, or these Terms.

5. Content rights, licences, and permissions

Bite takes reasonable steps to identify the legal basis on which it makes a work available. Bite publishes the editions, source texts, and supporting evidence used in its review on the Content Rights & Sources page.

Creative Commons content remains subject to its identified licence. Required credit, licence notices, links, restrictions on commercial use, restrictions on adaptations, and share-alike requirements continue to apply. Bite's display of a work does not replace or override those conditions.

Some works remain protected by copyright and are made available under a direct permission or another agreement with the rights holder. Those permissions authorise Bite's use only within their recorded scope; they do not transfer ownership to Bite or grant readers permission to reproduce or redistribute the work. Bite identifies these records on the Content Rights & Sources page and on the relevant Stream page.

6. Reader access and permitted use

Bite gives readers access to content through the service; it does not transfer ownership of that content. You may read content and share links to Bite, including public sample links, for personal use. The existence of a public sample link does not grant a licence to copy or republish the sample. Any copying, adaptation, republication, redistribution, or commercial use outside Bite must be permitted by the work's public-domain status, Creative Commons licence, another applicable licence, or the relevant rights holder.

Bite's name, branding, software, interface, compilation, original descriptions, and other platform material remain protected and are not made public domain merely because an underlying work is public domain.

7. Content providers retain ownership

A publisher, creator, rights holder, or other provider that supplies content to Bite retains ownership of that content and all rights not expressly granted to Bite. Paying a provider subscription or other platform fee does not transfer ownership to Bite.

A provider must own the content or have all permissions needed to make it available through Bite. The provider is responsible for the accuracy of its rights, credits, licence information, and any notices or restrictions supplied with the content.

By publishing content through Bite, the provider grants Bite a non-exclusive licence, for as long as the content is made available, to host, store, reproduce, format into bites, display, communicate, and distribute that content through Bite's reader-facing service. This is a permission to operate the service, not an assignment or sale of the provider's content rights.

8. Business distribution

Bite may offer providers opportunities to make content available to organisations, platforms, or other bulk content buyers. A basic provider subscription and the reader-facing licence above do not, by themselves, authorise Bite to supply provider content through a separate business-to-business distribution arrangement.

Business distribution requires the provider's explicit agreement. Any applicable scope, territory, term, buyer access, sublicensing, payment, reporting, and withdrawal conditions must be recorded in the relevant opt-in terms or a separate written agreement. If that agreement conflicts with these Terms, it governs that business distribution.

9. Content review and removal

Bite may review, reject, restrict, correct attribution for, or remove content where reasonably necessary to address rights concerns, licence conditions, legal obligations, quality or security issues, or these Terms. A provider may request withdrawal of its content, subject to any separate distribution agreement, reasonable processing time, technical backup retention, and obligations that survive withdrawal.

10. Reader memberships and provider subscriptions

Every reader account starts at the Free level. Free currently includes access to Streams made available to that account, Stream subscriptions up to the displayed limit, saved reading progress, and reading preferences. Advertising may appear on eligible public Discovery and sample pages. The Free feed may show persistent membership banners within bites.

Bite currently describes two paid membership levels. Enthusiast is presented as a monthly or annual membership, and Fanatic as a one-time lifetime membership. The membership level currently controls whether membership banners appear in the feed. The paid offering is also intended to include titles identified as included with membership; titles offered as separate purchases would not be included. “Lifetime” means for the operating lifetime of the Bite service and the relevant account; it does not transfer ownership of Bite or its content and does not guarantee that every title or Stream will remain available.

Enthusiast costs USD $5 monthly or USD $48 annually and renews for the selected period until cancelled. Fanatic costs USD $99 as a one-time payment. Stripe securely processes checkout and payment details. Bite does not apply Stripe's automatic tax calculation; any amount charged is shown by Stripe before confirmation.

You may update a payment method or cancel Enthusiast through Stripe's customer billing portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the already-paid billing period, and access continues until then. Buying Fanatic automatically cancels an existing Enthusiast renewal and grants lifetime membership after Stripe confirms payment. Refunds are handled consistently with applicable consumer law and any policy displayed at checkout. A provider subscription is separate from a reader membership. Nothing in these Terms limits rights or remedies that cannot lawfully be excluded.

11. Acceptable use

You must not misuse Bite. In particular, you must not:

• break the law or infringe another person's rights;
• submit content without the rights or permissions required;
• remove or obscure attribution, rights, or licence notices;
• attempt to bypass security or access another person's account;
• interfere with the service or introduce malicious code;
• scrape or reproduce the service at scale without permission; or
• use Bite in a way that places unreasonable load on its systems.

12. External services and advertising

Bite may link to third-party sites and sharing services. Those services have their own terms and privacy practices. Bite does not control and is not responsible for third-party services or content.

Eligible Discovery and public sample pages may contain advertising supplied by Google AdSense and its advertising partners. Advertising does not imply that Bite endorses an advertiser, product, or linked destination. Advertising and related data practices are described further in the Privacy Policy.

13. Disclaimers and liability

Bite is provided on an “as available” basis. To the extent permitted by law, no warranty is made that all content is complete, accurate, or continuously available. Nothing in these Terms excludes rights or remedies that cannot lawfully be excluded, including applicable rights under the Australian Consumer Law. To the extent permitted by law, Bite is not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from use of the service.

14. Suspension and termination

Access may be restricted or terminated where reasonably necessary to protect Bite, its users, or others; respond to unlawful conduct; or enforce these Terms. You may stop using Bite at any time.

15. Changes and governing law

These Terms may be updated as Bite develops. Material changes will be communicated through the service where practical, and the effective date above will be updated. These Terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia, subject to any mandatory law that applies to you.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms can be sent to the Bite operator through the contact form.