Licence and privacy
Two things are published here and they are licensed differently, because they need opposite things. A standard has to be free to copy or nobody adopts it. A mark has to mean one thing or it stops being a mark.
The words: take them
The text of this standard and of this website may be copied, quoted, translated, mirrored, printed and built upon by anyone, for anything, at no cost. Attribution is asked for and nothing more.
Translate it. Teach it. Quote it in a contract. Fork it if you think you can do better — a standard that forbids being improved on is not confident, it is frightened. If authorshipindex.org ever goes dark, the standard should outlive it.
The mark: use it, permanently
Any person or organisation may use the Authorship Index and the mark [AI n] to declare their own work, at no cost, without registration, without notification, and without seeking permission.
This permission is permanent and cannot be withdrawn, from anyone, for any reason. There is no approved-user list, and therefore no list anyone can be removed from.
It is non-discriminatory. No platform, publisher, retailer, author or competitor may be excluded. A standard that could exclude anyone would not be a standard.
The two things that are not granted
Do not use the mark to mean something this standard does not define. A rescaled or renumbered index wearing the same brackets is not use of the mark but imitation of it, and it devalues every honest declaration already printed. This is the one condition, and it is the same one that has always applied: declare honestly, and do not alter what the numbers mean.
Do not present the mark as a badge of approval. The device may not be adopted as anyone else’s emblem, nor used in a way suggesting this index examined, approved or certified a work. It certifies nothing, so nothing may imply that it did.
The letters AI belong to nobody. They are a description, and no one may claim them — including whoever runs this. What is reserved is narrower and more specific: the bracketed device, the way the mark is set, and the name of the index itself.
Nothing here is enforced by machinery. This standard has no compliance mechanism and wants none. The reservation exists so that misuse can be answered, not so that use can be policed.
Privacy
These pages set no cookies, store nothing in your browser, and contact no other server. No analytics, no scripts from elsewhere, no fonts, no images, no tracking pixels, no embedded anything. Each page is a single file that arrives complete. There is nothing to accept and nothing to refuse, which is why you are not asked.
Nothing is counted. If that ever changes, this page will say so before it does.
What no page can promise: a request has to come from somewhere, so whoever hosts these pages receives the address it came from, as every web server does. That is how the internet works and no page can opt out of it on your behalf. The standard keeps none of it and has no register to attach it to.
The honest statement is this page collects nothing, not nobody sees anything. A standard about accurate declarations should not overstate its own. A reader looking up what a number means should not pay for the answer with their identity — that is the intent, and the above is the limit of what can be guaranteed.
No warranty, and no legal effect
This standard is published as it is. It confers no certification, verifies nothing, and guarantees nothing about any work that carries the mark. A number is a claim its declarer made, and the responsibility for its truth rests with them.
It has no official status in any jurisdiction. Where a law requires a disclosure about artificial intelligence, this index does not discharge that obligation and is no substitute for it. Anyone subject to such a requirement should take their own advice on it.