Terms

Entry is a ritual, not a signup. These terms are the floor under that ritual.

The house

Obsidian Pieces is an invite-only sanctuary for dark, introspective work. There is no generic registration. The Gateway is an offering. Admission is discretionary. Silence after an offering is not a promise.

Age

You must be eighteen or older to enter or to offer. By using the site you confirm that age. See the Content notice.

What this house is not

Not a dating market. Not a shock farm. Not a place for consumer pornography. Not a place that instructs or glorifies violence against others, self-harm, or suicide. Dark art may look at the body, at injury, and at death; it may not recruit you into harm.

Illegal content is refused, including any sexual depiction of minors. Report it to contact@obsidianpieces.com. We will remove what the law requires and, where needed, inform the competent authority.

Copyright stays with you

You keep all copyright and related rights in the work you offer or hang. The house does not buy your rights and does not become the author.

By hanging a piece you grant Obsidian Pieces a non-exclusive licence to store it and to show it in the inner rooms — Sanctuary, the chamber, a keep as a pointer — and, if it is chosen for the threshold, to show an opening there, in the house’s manner: attribution, no public likes. A recording is licensed only to be played to admitted members until it is taken down. The same is true of a resonance hung beside another member’s piece: the maker keeps the copyright; the licence is only to show it there until it is taken down. The licence lasts only while the piece is hung. When you take it down, the licence ends for the future. It does not reach back to undo what was already lawfully shown.

Quoting others

You may hang a short quotation from another author — a film line, a verse, a lyric fragment, a sentence from a book — if the law of quotation allows it. In the European Union that means, in outline: the source was already lawfully made public; you take only as much as the purpose needs (illustration, commentary, dialogue with the work); and you name the author and the source, clearly, next to the quote. Citation is the condition. It is not a decoration.

Citation is not a licence to republish. Do not post another person’s whole poem, whole song, whole scene, or whole chapter. Do not paste lyrics as if they were yours. A fragment in conversation with your own piece may belong here; a copy of the work does not.

You warrant that each quotation is lawful and honestly attributed. If a rights holder objects, or if a quote is too long, the house will take it down. Naming the author does not, by itself, make every use legal.

You may take a piece down

The author may remove their own piece from the sanctuary at any time. That erasure deletes our copy. Moderators may also take a piece down if it breaks these terms or the law.

Taking a piece down is not a recall of every mind that has already read it. It does remove the piece from every private gallery: a keep is a pointer, not a spare copy.

Copies we cannot police

We do not authorise anyone to copy, multiply, scrape, train on, or republish your work outside this house. Members are asked not to.

We are not liable for what other people do with a work once they have seen it — screenshots, illicit copies, quotes without credit, or any use we did not make and did not permit. If you find an infringement, write to contact@obsidianpieces.com. We will remove what is on our servers; we cannot control the rest of the internet.

Faces, photographs, and children

No child is shown here. Not in a photograph, not in a video, not in a clear likeness of a living person under eighteen — even if you call it art. Sexual depiction of minors is a crime and is refused without remainder. This house also refuses non-sexual photographs of children. The rooms are for adults.

A photograph that lets a living person be recognised is personal data (GDPR). In Romania that person also has a civil right to their own image (Civil Code Art. 73): they may forbid the reproduction of their appearance, within the limits of Art. 75. Capturing or using someone’s image in a private space without agreement can be an interference with private life (Art. 74).

The law does not give this house a free portrait licence. GDPR Art. 85 asks Member States to reconcile data protection with artistic expression. Romania’s implementing rule (Law 190/2018 Art. 7) is narrow: artistic processing may use those derogations only where the data were made manifestly public by the person, or are closely tied to their being a public figure, or to the public character of facts they were involved in. A private face, hung in this sanctuary without that adult’s informed consent, is not that exemption. We do not claim that “it is art” makes every photograph lawful.

House rule, stricter than that minimum: do not hang a clear photograph of another living person unless that adult has consented to being shown here, knowing the house is eighteen and over and may sit beside work that looks at the unclothed body, injury, or death. Your own adult self-portrait is yours to hang. What is welcome without that extra consent: sketches, drawings, paintings, collage, symbols, crops, backs, and heavy stylization — work in which a private person cannot reasonably be recognised.

You warrant that every image you offer or hang obeys this section. If a depicted adult asks, or if a moderator judges the likeness too clear without a right to show it, the house will take it down. Write to contact@obsidianpieces.com.

Other personal data inside a work

If your piece contains a name, a diary line, or other personal data — your own or someone else’s — you put it there. You warrant that you have the right to show it.

The house processes that content only to hang the work you submitted. It is not our diary. If you want that data off these walls, take the piece down or write to contact@obsidianpieces.com.

Chamber music

The chamber is not a music host, a radio, or a catalogue. Do not upload another person’s commercial track, a ripped album, a playlist dump, or a file you do not have the right to make available. Romanian copyright (Law 8/1996) protects original musical works and, separately, related rights of performers and phonogram producers. Putting a recording on a network so others can listen is making it available. The quotation exception does not cover hanging a whole song. This house has no licence from a collecting society (such as UCMR-ADA) to stream other people’s repertoires, and it does not pretend to.

What belongs here: a piece you composed and/or performed; a piece you have a licence to hang in this sanctuary; or a piece a generative model helped you make, which you disclose. You keep the copyright in what the law treats as yours. You grant the house only the same narrow licence as for any other piece: to store it and to play it to admitted members until you take it down.

A machine is not an author. Under Law 8/1996, copyright needs an original intellectual creation — a human one. Work made entirely by a model, with no creative human choice, may have no copyright at all. If you used a model as a tool and you made the creative decisions, you may be the author; say so honestly. If a model did the making, disclose it. Do not present a generated track as a human composition it is not. You warrant it is not a clone or a thinly disguised copy of a protected commercial recording. Naming a tool is not a licence from the people whose work trained it. The house does not certify that any AI piece is lawful.

Samples, beats, and vocals you did not make need their own licence for this use. A child’s voice is not recorded here. Lyrics follow the same quotation rule as other text: a named fragment may belong; a whole song copied from someone else does not.

If a rights holder objects, the house will take the recording down. Write to contact@obsidianpieces.com.

Your offering

You warrant that the offering and any later piece are yours to give, or that any words or images belonging to someone else are a lawful quotation with the author and source named, that they do not infringe others, that they obey the Content notice, that they obey the house rule on faces, photographs, and children, and that any recording obeys the chamber music rule.

No market yet

There is no shop and no payment. The sanctuary is free while a community is found. Vetting stays free. No customs fee is asked. Listings and checkout are asleep; these terms will be rewritten before any money is taken.

Conduct

Do not scrape, spam, impersonate, or attempt to enter without a key. Do not upload malware. Do not copy, multiply, or republish another member’s work without their permission. A short, attributed quotation of a published work is not the same as taking the work. We may refuse, suspend, or remove an account or a piece when it breaks these terms or the law, without a public trial.

The site as it is

The sanctuary is offered as available. We do not promise uninterrupted access or that every work will remain hung forever.

Nothing here is medical, psychiatric, or crisis care. If you are in immediate danger, contact local emergency services.

Law

These terms are governed by the law of the operator’s country of establishment in the European Union. If that country is Romania, Romanian law applies, without prejudice to mandatory consumer protections that cannot be waived.

For privacy, see the Privacy page. For cookies, see the Cookies page. For age and the nature of the work, see the Content notice. Faces, children, and the chamber music rule are in the sections above.

This is the house’s published notice for how the sanctuary is run. It is not personal legal advice.