Regenerative Commons Acceptable Use Policy — Version 1.0
Incorporated by reference into the Regenerative Commons License v1.0.
This AUP supplements the Field of Use Restrictions in §8 of the License. It may be updated by the Steward with 30 days' notice (License §8.7). The AUP cannot waive or narrow License §8 — only add to it.
Steward: Regenerative Development Corp, transitioning to VLAS Trust. Canonical URL: https://commons.zoen.earth/aup Version: 1.0 · Effective: TBD upon Wave 1 launch
1. Purpose
The Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) sets out specific uses of RCL-licensed Works that are prohibited, in addition to the categorical Field of Use Restrictions in §8 of the License. The License is structural and stable; the AUP is operational and evolves as new harm patterns emerge.
When in doubt, the License governs.
2. Specifically prohibited uses
You may not use any RCL-licensed Work, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, for any of the following:
2.1. Weapons and military targeting
(a) Design, training, simulation, or operation of any weapons system, including conventional, chemical, biological, nuclear, cyber, or directed-energy weapons; (b) Battlefield decision support, target identification, or lethal-autonomy systems; (c) Military intelligence collection or analysis directed at populations, places, or communities; (d) Training or supply of mercenary or paramilitary forces.
2.2. Surveillance
(a) Surveillance of natural persons without their informed consent, including biometric tracking, location tracking, communications interception, and behavioral profiling; (b) Workplace surveillance that monitors workers without their informed consent, beyond reasonable safety and operational needs; (c) Surveillance of political activists, journalists, dissidents, or members of vulnerable communities; (d) Mass surveillance by government bodies, including any use that contributes to social-credit systems, predictive policing, or political-dissent tracking.
2.3. Extraction industries
(a) Optimization, planning, financing, or operation of fossil fuel extraction (oil, gas, coal), including exploration, drilling, mining, refining, and distribution infrastructure; (b) Industrial monoculture agriculture, including chemical-intensive row-crop operations at scale and feedlot animal operations; (c) Industrial-scale deforestation, peatland conversion, or wetland drainage; (d) Open-pit mining, mountaintop removal, deep-sea mining, or other extractive operations that materially degrade the Five Capitals at the site of operation; (e) Logistics, financial structuring, or other support functions that enable the above when conducted at industrial scale.
Use of Licensed Works to transition away from extraction (just-transition planning, decommissioning, remediation, restoration) is permitted under Track B and Track C.
2.4. Speculation against communities and places
(a) Financial speculation that profits from the degradation, displacement, or impoverishment of the communities or Places that the Licensed Work describes or measures; (b) Short positions in instruments referencing Place outcomes; (c) Trading on non-public RCCS data or non-public Place Pulse data; (d) Insurance products that disclaim coverage based on regenerative measurements without paying claims to the Place Community.
2.5. Discrimination and harassment
(a) Discrimination against persons on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, immigration status, or other protected characteristic; (b) Generation of content intended to harass, demean, or incite violence against any community, group, or individual; (c) Doxxing or non-consensual disclosure of personal identifying information; (d) Use for predatory lending, financial exclusion, or redlining-equivalent practices.
2.6. Deception
(a) Generation of false or misleading content represented as factual, including misrepresentation of measurements, outcomes, or attestations; (b) Misleading investors, lenders, or counterparties about the nature or performance of a regenerative project; (c) Greenwashing or ESG-washing — making any regenerative, sustainable, or stewardship claim not supported by the corresponding Gate certification; (d) Impersonation of the Steward, the Commons Stewardship Office, the VLAS Trust, or any Licensor.
2.7. Commodification of Indigenous Knowledge
(a) Use of Indigenous Knowledge — including traditional ecological knowledge, sacred or ceremonial knowledge, place-based knowledge, and knowledge held under customary law — for commercial purpose without the explicit consent of the Indigenous community of origin under Local Contexts TK or BC Labels; (b) Trademarking, patenting, or other intellectual-property appropriation of Indigenous Knowledge; (c) Translation or distribution of Indigenous Knowledge in violation of Local Contexts Label terms; (d) Training AI systems on Indigenous Knowledge content without community consent.
2.8. AI training restrictions
(a) Training, fine-tuning, distilling, or building any AI model that issues, scores, verifies, prices, or substitutes for Verified Living Assets, RCCS credits, Five Capitals measurements, or NAV/INAV computations outside the VLAS conformance process; (b) Training general-purpose AI foundation models using RCL-licensed Works as training data, without a separate written agreement with the Steward; (c) Training, fine-tuning, or building AI models for fossil fuel extraction optimization, industrial monoculture intensification, deforestation logistics, surveillance of communities or workers, military targeting, or financial speculation against the communities and Places referenced in the Work; (d) Distillation of model weights derived from any of the above into smaller or open-weight models distributed publicly.
The Steward maintains a robots.txt and text-and-data-mining reservation signal on the canonical distribution of all Licensed Works. AI training systems should respect these signals.
Permitted AI uses, as set out in License §8.1, include: Life AI components, RCCS verification models, VLAS adapters, community-controlled tools serving a specific Place Community under FPIC, internal analysis/retrieval/summarization within a Licensee's own operations, and academic research training at small scale under Track A or Track B.
2.9. Financialization without conformance
(a) Issuance of securities, debt instruments, tokens, or derivatives that reference RCL-licensed standards, methodologies, or data, unless the issuer is conformant with VLAS under Gate 3; (b) Listing or trading of such instruments on any platform without VLAS conformance; (c) Use of RCL-licensed measurements as the basis for insurance products without VLAS conformance.
2.10. Brand discipline
(a) Use of the Steward's trademarks, service marks, certification marks, or trade names outside the scope of License §11; (b) Display of any Mark issued by the Steward without a current License at the corresponding Gate; (c) Alteration, recoloring, or stylistic modification of any Mark; (d) Use of the Marks in a manner that suggests endorsement of products, services, or organizations not certified by the Steward.
3. Reporting violations
3.1. Where to report. Suspected violations of this AUP or of the License may be reported to the Commons Stewardship Office at [email protected], or through the public reporting form at https://commons.zoen.earth/report.
3.2. What happens next. The Stewardship Office reviews reports, investigates within reason, and where appropriate (i) provides notice of breach to the alleged violator with a sixty (60) day cure window per License §13.1, (ii) revokes any Mark held by the violator per License §11.3, (iii) terminates the License per License §13, or (iv) initiates dispute resolution per License §14.
3.3. Place Community reporting. Place Communities may report violations independently of the Stewardship Office's intake process, and may proceed directly under the third-party beneficiary rights of License §10.
3.4. Protection of reporters. The Steward shall not retaliate against any Person reporting in good faith a suspected violation of this AUP. The identity of reporters is held in confidence subject to legal compulsion.
4. Updates to this AUP
The Steward may update this AUP with thirty (30) days' notice published at the Canonical URL. Updates may add new prohibitions but may not narrow or waive existing prohibitions in this AUP or in License §8.
Version history is maintained at https://commons.zoen.earth/aup/versions.
5. Severability and survival
If any provision of this AUP is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in force. This AUP survives termination of the License with respect to any continuing use of the Work.
Version 1.0 — Effective TBD upon Wave 1 launch · Canonical URL: https://commons.zoen.earth/aup