Acceptable Use

01Journalism comes first

Reporting on crime, conflict, politics, religion or other sensitive subjects is not against these rules. Neither is publishing criticism of people in power. These rules target content that breaks the law or causes real harm. They don’t target legitimate news reporting or opinion. When a case is unclear, we take the public interest and the context into account.

02Content you may not publish

You may not use PublishMe to publish or share content that:

• is unlawful under Indian law, or that a court or competent authority has ordered removed;
• is defamatory, or invades someone’s privacy, including their bodily privacy;
• is child sexual abuse material, or sexualises or harms children in any way;
• is obscene or pornographic, or shares intimate images of anyone without their consent;
• incites violence or terrorism, or promotes hatred or enmity between groups on grounds such as religion, caste, race, gender or language;
• threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, public order, or friendly relations with other countries;
• infringes copyright, trademarks or other rights, for example by copying another publication’s stories or photos without permission;
• impersonates a person, publication or organisation, or misleads readers about its source;
• is knowingly false or misleading and presented as fact, including fabricated quotes, fake news and manipulated images or video passed off as real;
• promotes illegal gambling or betting, or the sale of illegal goods, drugs, weapons or services; or
• reveals someone’s personal details to harass or endanger them.

03Misuse of the service

You may not:

• send spam or unsolicited bulk messages through PublishMe or your connected channels;
• upload malware, or use your site for phishing, cryptocurrency mining or deceptive redirects;
• click your own ads, buy fake traffic, or commit any other ad fraud, including through ad code you add;
• probe, scan or attack PublishMe or other customers’ sites, or try to get around security, plan limits or usage allowances;
• use PublishMe to scrape other websites, or use AI translation to mass-produce copies of other publishers’ work;
• overload the Service, for example with automated requests far beyond normal use; or
• resell or sublicense PublishMe without a written agreement with us.

04Who is responsible

Publishers are responsible for what appears on their sites, including content from reporters, contributors and readers’ comments, if they allow comments. Where the law applies to you as a publisher of news and current affairs, you must follow it, including the Digital Media Ethics Code.

05What we do about breaches

Depending on how serious the problem is, we may:

• ask you to edit or remove the content;
• disable access to specific content;
• temporarily suspend publishing or the site; or
• close the account, without a refund.

We act on valid court orders and lawful government directions, and we preserve information when the law requires us to. Where we’re allowed to, we’ll tell you what we did and why, and you can ask us to review the decision.

06Reporting a problem

To report content on a site hosted by PublishMe, write to [email protected] with the link to the content and what’s wrong with it. To report a security issue, write to the same address with “Security” in the subject line.