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TUNES — Transit User Noise Experience Survey

Terms of use and contributor rules

Status: Draft — counsel review required
Version: 0.1.0-draft
Last-updated: 2026-07-20

These terms govern use of TUNES websites, apps, and contribution features operated by Hao-Tsun Kuo (“we”, “us”). By using TUNES you agree to these terms. Privacy is described in the privacy notice.

1. What TUNES is (and is not)

TUNES is an independent passenger survey of noise experience on ordinary rail journeys, starting with London. It publishes a quieter-journey / noise map and an open methodology with versioned datasets.

TUNES is not:

  • Operated, approved, or endorsed by Transport for London or any other operator
  • A substitute for Class 1 / engineering-grade acoustic surveys
  • A source of health, safety, or regulatory compliance claims

Crowd measurements are survey-grade at best. Maps must show uncertainty and sample limits. See claim language (ADR-011).

2. Accounts

You may need an account (including via OAuth) to upload contributions, vote, or comment. Keep your login secure. Provide accurate information. We may suspend accounts that breach these rules.

You must be 13 or older to create an account.

3. Contributor rules (recording and uploads)

  1. Record only as a passenger in the ordinary course of travel. Do not obstruct doors, block aisles, or take unsafe positions for a “better” recording.
  2. Do not fabricate, manipulate, or deliberately mislabel journeys or metrics.
  3. Review suggested journey sections before upload. Wrong sections harm privacy and science.
  4. Default upload is derived features only. Raw audio stays on your device unless a separate research path (if ever offered) is clearly labelled and consented.
  5. Understand that carriage audio may include other people’s voices; prefer the derived path.
  6. Do not upload free text that identifies other people (names, photos descriptions, medical details about others).
  7. Optional perception answers are your opinions — not medical diagnoses. Do not present them as clinical findings.

4. Licence of your contributions

When you upload a contribution, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to store, process, aggregate, and publish it in accordance with the privacy notice and the open-data licence stated on each release (planning assumption: CC BY 4.0 for public datasets — provisional until legal review).

You retain ownership of your local raw recordings. You are responsible for having the right to grant this licence for what you upload.

5. User-generated content (votes, comments)

If enabled:

  • Be respectful; no harassment, hate, or illegal content
  • No doxxing, threats, or impersonation of TfL / operators / officials
  • No unsupported medical or “acoustic risk” claims presented as fact
  • We may moderate, refuse, or remove content under the moderation policy
  • Report problems via takedown-and-reporting.md

Early betas may pre-moderate or disable public comments.

6. Acceptable use

Do not attempt to disrupt services, scrape personal data, reverse-engineer identifiers to re-identify contributors, or use TUNES for surveillance of individuals.

7. Disclaimers

TUNES is provided “as is” for information and research purposes. We do not warrant completeness, accuracy, or fitness for routing, health, employment, or legal decisions. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude liability for indirect or consequential loss arising from use of the map or datasets. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or other liability that cannot be limited under English law.

8. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except that consumers may also bring claims in their local courts where mandatory law allows.

9. Contact

manglekuo@gmail.com

Draft only — not lawyer-approved.