Substack Terms vs. Genitive Ink

A copyright-focused comparison between Substack's Terms of Service and Genitive Ink's. Substack is a creator-publisher platform. Genitive Ink is an internet-to-print middleman: it takes newsletters you already subscribe to, prints them as a private magazine for you alone, and deletes everything within 30 days. Substack provisions that aren't about copyright or content rights are marked not applicable.

Topic	Substack	Genitive Ink
Incorporated documents	Substack incorporates a Copyright Dispute Policy and Content Guidelines.	Genitive Ink handles copyright concerns within these Terms and the Acceptable Use rules below. We don't operate a separate dispute policy because nothing is hosted or distributed publicly.
Age requirements	Users must be 16+.	Not a copyright concern.
Account creation	Provide accurate registration details; accounts are non-transferable.	Not a copyright concern.
Creator & reader roles	Every Substack user can publish and subscribe.	Not a copyright concern. Genitive Ink has no creators or readers — it's an internet-to-print middleman that prints a private magazine for one subscriber at a time.
Content ownership & license	Your content stays yours, but Substack receives a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide license to display and distribute it.	Genitive Ink takes no license over your content or any newsletter content. We hold newsletter material only long enough to assemble your single private issue, and we delete it within 30 days. Nothing is displayed, shared, or distributed publicly.
Infringement & content removal	Substack may modify or remove posts and may license public posts to other users.	Nothing is posted on Genitive Ink. Each issue is generated for, stored for, and shipped to one specific user — never seen by anyone else, never licensed to another user.
Intellectual property	Substack respects IP rights, removes infringing content, and terminates repeat infringers.	Genitive Ink respects newsletter authors' rights. Treatment depends on the source the user chose: RSS sources: we use fair-use snippets, or full text only when the author has granted permission via our permission system. Email forwarding and Gmail OAuth: we use the full text of newsletters the author has already sent directly to the user by email, for that user's personal reading. If an author asks to be excluded, we remove that newsletter from compilation.
Acceptable use	Substack prohibits scraping, automated processes, copying significant content, and reverse engineering.	Genitive Ink's acceptable use rules are built around copyright protection: Personal, non-commercial use only. No reselling, no redistributing, no commercial exploitation of any issue or its content. Each issue is for the subscriber's own reading. Legitimate access to every source. For email forwarding and Gmail, you add only newsletters already delivered to your own inbox. For RSS, you may add any public feed — but full text is reprinted only with the author's clear permission; otherwise we use fair-use excerpts. No account-to-account sharing. Your compilation is private to your account — never pooled, swapped, or merged with another user's. Auto-deletion within 30 days. Newsletter material isn't archived, indexed, or kept for resale. After 30 days, it's gone. There is no library that could be copied or republished. No bulk extraction. Genitive Ink is not a tool for scraping or republishing newsletters at scale. Output is one print magazine, for one subscriber, per cycle.
User interactions & third-party content	User-to-user disputes are between users; Substack isn't liable for third-party links.	Not a copyright concern. Genitive Ink is single-user. There are no other users to share content with.
Liability limits	Capped at $100 or 12 months of fees.	Not a copyright concern.
Warranties disclaimer	'As-is,' no warranties.	Not a copyright concern.
Paid subscriptions	Creators set their own prices.	Not a copyright concern.
Account termination	Substack terminates repeat IP infringers at its discretion.	Users who attempt to use Genitive Ink for resale or redistribution, or otherwise violate the Acceptable Use rules above, will have their accounts terminated.
Privacy & COPPA	No knowing collection from under-16s.	Not a copyright concern.
SMS messaging	Phone verification by SMS.	Not a copyright concern.
Third-party integrations	Use of third-party services follows those services' terms (e.g., YouTube API).	Genitive Ink's three input sources (RSS, email forwarding, Gmail OAuth) all rely on access the user already has. We don't pull from any service the user hasn't authorised. See Intellectual Property above for source-specific copyright treatment.
Service changes	Substack may modify or discontinue features.	Not a copyright concern.
Terms modifications	Terms may change with notice.	Not a copyright concern.
US federal government	Special amendment for federal agencies.	Not a copyright concern.
Violations & enforcement	Breaches may result in immediate termination.	See Acceptable Use and Account Termination above.
Indemnification	Users indemnify Substack from third-party claims (including IP claims) arising from their posted content.	Genitive Ink doesn't include a separate indemnification clause. Because nothing is posted publicly and all content auto-deletes within 30 days, the surface for third-party copyright claims is minimal by design.
Assignment	Users can't assign rights without consent.	Not a copyright concern.
Governing law	California law.	Not a copyright concern.
Arbitration & class waiver	Arbitration in San Francisco; no class actions.	Not a copyright concern.
No third-party beneficiaries	None intended.	Not a copyright concern.
No joint venture	Users aren't agents or partners.	Not a copyright concern.
Waiver	Non-enforcement isn't a waiver.	Not a copyright concern.
Severability	Unenforceable provisions are limited; rest survive.	Not a copyright concern.
Entire agreement	Terms are the complete understanding.	Not a copyright concern.