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Intelligent Community Dialogue Agent

Terms of Service — ICDA (Intelligent Community Dialogue Agent)

Effective date: 2026-05-08 Version: 1.0

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of the Intelligent Community Dialogue Agent (ICDA) — the mobile app, web portal, and AI chat — operated by Wits Mining Institute, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, on behalf of the MASTERMINE Project.

By creating an account or using ICDA, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the platform.

1. Who can use ICDA

You must be 16 years or older to use ICDA. By using it you confirm that you meet this age requirement and that the information you give us is accurate.

ICDA is intended for residents of communities near participating mining sites, mining-company staff, civil-society representatives, regulators, and researchers associated with the MASTERMINE Project.

2. Your account

  • Keep your sign-in credentials confidential. You are responsible for activity under your account.
  • Tell us immediately if you suspect unauthorised access (support@icda.app).
  • We may suspend or close accounts that violate these Terms or applicable law.

3. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • Submit content that is unlawful, defamatory, threatening, harassing, hateful, or that incites violence.
  • Submit knowingly false reports, spam, or manipulated media intended to deceive.
  • Upload material that infringes another person's privacy, intellectual-property, or other rights.
  • Attempt to access data, accounts, or systems you are not authorised to access.
  • Probe, scan, or attempt to compromise the security of ICDA.
  • Use ICDA to send commercial marketing or unrelated solicitations.
  • Reverse-engineer, scrape, or automate access to ICDA except as expressly permitted.
  • Use ICDA to violate applicable export-control or sanctions laws.

We may remove content and suspend accounts that breach this section, with or without notice.

4. Content you submit

  • You retain ownership of issues, photos, videos, comments, and other content you submit.
  • You grant Wits Mining Institute, the MASTERMINE Project, and the relevant mining-company partner a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, display, route, translate, and act on your submission for the purpose of operating the platform and addressing the matter you raised, including for related research and reporting in aggregated or anonymised form.
  • You confirm you have the right to submit the content and that publishing it on ICDA will not violate any third-party rights or law.
  • We may moderate, redact, or remove content that violates §3 or applicable law.

5. AI assistant

ICDA includes an AI assistant powered by a third-party large-language-model (LLM) provider. The assistant generates responses using language models and a curated knowledge base. AI responses can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Do not rely on the AI for legal, medical, safety-critical, or emergency decisions. In an emergency, contact local emergency services.

You agree not to use the AI assistant to generate unlawful, harmful, or deceptive content.

6. Reporting issues — what ICDA is and is not

ICDA is a dialogue and engagement platform. Submitting an issue does not:

  • Constitute a formal legal complaint, regulatory filing, or court proceeding.
  • Toll, suspend, or substitute any statutory deadline you may have under local law.
  • Guarantee a particular outcome or remedy.

If your matter is urgent, life-threatening, or requires legal recourse, contact the appropriate emergency, regulatory, or legal authority directly.

7. Intellectual property

The ICDA software, branding, designs, and content (excluding user-submitted content and third-party material) are owned by the MASTERMINE Project and Wits Mining Institute and protected by intellectual-property laws. You receive a limited, personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to use ICDA for its intended purpose. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

8. Privacy

Use of ICDA is also governed by our Privacy Policy at https://icda.app/legal/privacy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

9. Service availability

We aim to keep ICDA available, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free service. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue features at any time, with reasonable notice where practical.

10. Third-party services

ICDA integrates with third-party services (identity provider, AI provider, push-notification provider, hosting). Their availability and policies are outside our control. Use of those services through ICDA remains subject to these Terms and our Privacy Policy.

11. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, ICDA is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind — express, implied, or statutory — including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that any issue you submit will be resolved to your satisfaction or that AI responses will be accurate.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any right that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable mandatory law (including consumer-protection rights under EU and South African law).

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the MASTERMINE Project, Wits Mining Institute, the University of the Witwatersrand, and participating mining-company partners shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenues, data, or goodwill, arising out of or in connection with your use of ICDA — even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

Where liability cannot be excluded, our aggregate liability to you for all claims arising from ICDA is limited to EUR 100 or the equivalent in your local currency.

This clause does not limit liability for fraud, willful misconduct, gross negligence, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that cannot be limited under applicable law.

13. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the MASTERMINE Project, Wits Mining Institute, the University of the Witwatersrand, and participating mining-company partners from any claim, liability, damage, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from:

  • your breach of these Terms,
  • your violation of any law, or
  • your infringement of any third-party right through content you submit or activities you carry out on ICDA.

14. Termination

You can stop using ICDA at any time and delete your account from Profile → Privacy → Delete account. We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms, if required by law, or if we discontinue the service. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (IP, disclaimers, liability, indemnity, governing law) survive.

15. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes shall be submitted to the courts of South Africa, with venue in Johannesburg.

If you reside in the European Union, you retain the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence (including under GDPR), and you may also bring proceedings in the courts of your country of residence where required by EU consumer-protection law.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. We will post the updated version in the app and at https://icda.app/legal/terms, and where the change is material we will notify you and, where required, ask you to re-accept. Continued use after the effective date of the new version means you accept it.

17. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email support@icda.app with the subject line "ICDA Terms".