End User Licence Agreement

This licence governs your use of Voice Fortress.

1. Parties and acceptance

This Agreement is between Voice Fortress Software LTD., of PO Box 2051, Garibaldi Highlands, BC V0N 1T0, Canada ("we", "us"), and the person or organisation that installs or uses Voice Fortress ("you").

You accept this Agreement by installing or using the software. If you do not accept it, do not install it, and tell us at support@voicefortress.com so we can handle any refund under our Terms of Sale (https://voicefortress.com/terms).

2. What you may do

We grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use Voice Fortress on Windows computers you own or control, for your own work, for as long as this Agreement is in force.

The licence is per person, not per machine. You may install it on any Windows computer you own or control and sign in on each with your Voice Fortress account. Voice Fortress normally uses your account rather than licence keys or activation codes. Offline access issued by support or your organisation may use an Offline access ID. You may not share your licence with another person.

3. What you may not do

You may not redistribute, resell, rent, lease, sublicense or publish the software or any part of it; remove or alter the notices it carries; or reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble it, except to the extent that law expressly permits despite this clause.

Except for uses expressly permitted by applicable law, including qualifying interoperability and security research, you may not use the software, its output, or information obtained by examining it to develop, train or improve a competing product or any machine-learning model.

You may not represent the software as your own, or use our name or the product name to suggest that we endorse you.

These restrictions do not limit any right that a third-party licence described in clause 4 gives you in that third party's component.

4. Third-party components

Voice Fortress includes third-party software and third-party models. Each is provided under its own licence, which continues to govern that component and is not overridden by this Agreement, and this Agreement adds no restriction to those components beyond what their own licences allow. The full notices are distributed with the product in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt, beside this file, together with the licence and notice files it lists. They include:

• the NVIDIA Parakeet speech model, under the NVIDIA Open Model License. A copy of that Agreement and its Notice file are distributed with the product;
• the sherpa-onnx library (Apache-2.0) and Microsoft ONNX Runtime (MIT).

MICROSOFT RUNTIME CODE. Voice Fortress programs include statically linked Microsoft runtime code. An optional component, where included, may include unmodified Microsoft Visual C++ runtime files. The package needs no separate installation of a Microsoft runtime.

4a. Microsoft code

The Microsoft runtime code described in clause 4 is licensed to us by Microsoft Corporation and is provided to you only as part of Voice Fortress. As to that code:

• you may use it only as part of Voice Fortress, and you may not separate it from Voice Fortress, copy it for any other use, or distribute it;
• you may not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble it, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits despite this limitation;
• you may not remove, alter or obscure any copyright, trademark or patent notice in it;
• Microsoft Corporation and its suppliers provide it "as is", give you no warranty or condition of any kind for it, and have no liability to you for any damages arising from it, to the fullest extent the law allows; and
• you must comply with all domestic and international export laws and regulations that apply to it, including restrictions on destinations, end users and end use.

5. Your data

Voice Fortress recognises speech and processes text ON YOUR COMPUTER. We do not receive your dictation audio, your transcribed text, your dictionary, your history or your corrections. There is no analytics and no automatic upload of your work.

Voice Fortress does confirm your subscription with us - see clause 6a - in a separate program that never handles your speech.

What we hold, and how we handle it, is described in our Privacy notice at https://voicefortress.com/privacy.

YOUR DATA IS YOURS AND IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. Because everything stays on your computer, we cannot recover it for you. We hold no copy. If you lose the machine, reset Windows, or delete your profile, the data is gone. Back up what matters to you.

6. Updates

Voice Fortress keeps itself up to date automatically. It checks for updates, downloads verified releases in the background and can install them when you next open the app. You can turn automatic updates off in About and still check for updates yourself. An update with new licence terms requires your acceptance before it can be installed. After a successful update, Setup keeps the previous installed version so you can return to it when compatible. Recovery of an interrupted installation remains available offline. If your organisation manages your computer, it can turn off Voice Fortress's network use with a policy setting. We are not obliged to issue updates. Support for released versions is described in our Terms of Sale.

6a. Confirming your subscription

Voice Fortress is sold as a subscription, and the software confirms that yours is current. It does this with a small signed token stored on your computer. Each token is valid for up to 30 days from when it was issued.

WHEN IT CHECKS. Each time Voice Fortress starts, a separate program - one that never handles your speech - looks at the token. While Voice Fortress is running, it also checks about once a minute, without contacting us, whether a renewal is due, and when one is, it runs that separate program again. A renewal is due when the token is one day old or more, or has run out, or you are signed in without current access, and also, when Voice Fortress starts, if this computer's clock is earlier than a time it has already recorded. Unless Voice Fortress's network use has been turned off by policy, that program then makes one request to us to renew the token. While Voice Fortress is running it starts a renewal on its own at most once a day, except that a renewal that does not leave you with current access is tried again sooner: after an hour, then after intervals that double, up to a day. After you open your account page from Voice Fortress, the first time you return to Voice Fortress's window within 30 minutes it also runs that separate program at once, and, if you are signed in and network use has not been turned off by policy, that program makes the same request even if no renewal is due. This happens at most once a minute and no more than 10 times an hour. You will not normally see this happen and there is nothing to do.

WHAT IT SENDS. Your account identifier, an identifier for this installation of Voice Fortress, and the version you are running, together with the renewal credential stored on your computer. The installation identifier is random; it is not made from your hardware, your computer's name or your Windows account. Signing out sends the same. Manage billing and Delete account in Settings, which open your account page, send the same to ask for a single-use pass that opens that page already signed in; if no pass is available, the page opens without one. Signing in sends the installation identifier and the version, with single-use values for that sign-in only. None of these requests contains your dictation, dictionary, history or settings. Like any internet connection, each also reveals your computer's network address to our service; see the Privacy notice.

IF YOU ARE OFFLINE. Voice Fortress keeps working for 30 DAYS from the last successful check, or, during a free trial, until the trial ends if that is sooner. After that, dictation and commands are paused until a check succeeds. You stay signed in and do not need to sign in again: once your computer is back online and your subscription is current, the next check renews the token.

WHAT A LICENCE CHECK NEVER DOES. It never deletes anything, never re-encrypts anything, and never removes your history, dictionary or settings. If you are asked to sign in, all of your data is exactly where you left it.

YOUR SUBSCRIPTION OR SEAT IS FOR ONE PERSON. An individual subscription is for one person. A seat on a company account is for the one named person the company's admin assigns it to, who signs in with the email address the company gives that seat; a seat cannot be shared. Either way, you may sign in on each Windows computer you own or control; your access is not locked to one machine.

IF YOUR COMPUTER CANNOT REACH US at all, by policy or by circumstance, there is a route that contacts nothing: your organisation can disable the check and place a signed offline authorisation. Ask us. That route, and the Advanced / Offline tools in Voice Fortress (which can also obtain such an authorisation from us online, and renew it), are separate from ordinary use with your account: they do not use your account or the random installation identifier. On that route only, Voice Fortress identifies this computer by a one-way value (a SHA-256 hash) made from its Windows machine identifier and the security identifier of your Windows account, together with the Offline access ID that support or your organisation gives you for that authorisation, the version you are running, and any access code or renewal credential that route uses. Ordinary use with your account, described above, never sends that value. An offline request is a file that you send yourself.

IF YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ENDS, we stop renewing the token. When the token you have runs out, Voice Fortress still opens, but dictation and commands are paused until your subscription is current again. Signing in, subscribing, your account and billing, Settings, and the management of your local data, including Delete profile, remain available. Nothing on your computer is deleted or made unreadable by that, and your dictation history and dictionary remain yours.

The free trial, renewal, price changes, cancellation and refunds are governed by our Terms of Sale, which this Agreement does not restate.

7. What we do not promise

We do not promise that the software works with every Windows application. Text is delivered into the application you have focused, and applications differ; the software checks the destination before it submits and refuses rather than guessing, but a refusal is a real outcome you will sometimes see.

We do not promise any particular recognition accuracy or speed, and we publish no accuracy or speed figure.

We do not promise the software is free of defects, that it is suitable for any regulated, clinical, legal or safety-critical purpose, or that it meets any compliance standard, certification or accessibility conformance standard. It is general-purpose dictation software.

We do not control what happens to text after it is delivered. Once the text is in another application, that application's storage, synchronisation and cloud behaviour apply, and they are outside our reach.

8. Warranty

To the fullest extent the law allows, the software is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

Nothing in this Agreement excludes or limits any right you have under consumer-protection law that cannot lawfully be excluded. Where such law applies, these exclusions apply only so far as that law permits.

9. Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data or business interruption, however caused.

Our total liability under or in connection with this Agreement is limited to the amount you paid us for the software in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

10. Term and termination

This Agreement runs until terminated. You may terminate at any time by uninstalling the software. We may terminate it if you materially breach it and do not fix the breach within 30 days of us telling you about it.

On termination you must stop using the software and remove it. REMOVING THE PROGRAM FILES DOES NOT DELETE YOUR DATA: use "Delete profile" inside the application first.

11. Changes to this agreement

We may change this Agreement for future versions of the software. The version of this Agreement you accepted continues to govern the version you installed. We will not change the terms of a version you already hold.

12. Your rights where you live

Nothing in this Agreement limits mandatory consumer rights that apply where you live. Mandatory protections under the law where you live continue to apply.

13. Contact

Voice Fortress Software LTD., PO Box 2051, Garibaldi Highlands, BC V0N 1T0, Canada
Support: support@voicefortress.com
Privacy: privacy@voicefortress.com
Security: security@voicefortress.com

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