Acceptable Use Policy

1. Overview

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") governs your use of the Lighthouse Intelligence platform, including the web interface, API, data exports, and any related services (collectively, the "Platform"), operated by Louder Online Pty Ltd (Australia).

By accessing or using the Platform, you agree to comply with this AUP. This policy exists to protect the integrity and availability of the Platform for all users, to protect our proprietary data assets, and to ensure compliance with applicable law.

This AUP is incorporated into and forms part of the Lighthouse Intelligence Terms of Service.

2. Permitted Uses

The following uses of the Platform are expressly permitted:

• Accessing the Platform through your own registered account using your own credentials.
• Viewing, querying, and exporting benchmark data for your own internal business intelligence and marketing analysis purposes.
• Using the API within the rate limits specified in your subscription plan to retrieve data for internal tooling or dashboards.
• Building internal tools, scripts, or integrations that access the API for your organisation's own operational use, provided such tools are not made available to third parties as a data product or service.
• Downloading reports and using data in internal presentations, strategy documents, and business reviews.
• Referencing benchmark statistics in published content with attribution to Lighthouse Intelligence as the source.
• Sharing individual report screenshots or data points with colleagues within your own organisation.

3. Prohibited Uses

The following uses are strictly prohibited and may result in immediate suspension or termination of your account:

Data Extraction and Redistribution

• Automated mass extraction: You may not use automated tools, bots, scrapers, crawlers, or scripts to systematically extract, mirror, or replicate the Lighthouse Intelligence dataset or any substantial portion thereof.
• Derivative datasets: You may not create, compile, or distribute derivative datasets sourced from the Platform for redistribution, resale, or commercial licensing to third parties.
• Data resale: You may not sell, sublicense, rent, or otherwise commercially distribute data obtained from the Platform to third parties.
• Competing services: You may not use data from the Platform to build or populate a competing benchmark data product or service.

Credential and Access Abuse

• Sharing API keys: API keys are issued to individual accounts and must not be shared with other organisations, contractors, or third parties outside your direct employment relationship.
• Account sharing: You may not share your login credentials with other people. Each user must have their own account.
• Circumventing rate limits: You may not use multiple accounts, rotating IP addresses, distributed requests, or any other method to circumvent API rate limits or access controls.
• Unauthorised access: You may not attempt to access data, endpoints, or features beyond those available in your subscription plan.

Reverse Engineering and Security

• Reverse engineering: You may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, or attempt to derive source code, algorithms, data models, or methodologies underlying the Platform.
• Security testing: You may not conduct penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, or any security testing against the Platform or its infrastructure without prior written authorisation from Lighthouse Intelligence.
• Bypassing security controls: You may not attempt to bypass, disable, or defeat any authentication, encryption, or access control mechanisms.

AI and Machine Learning

• Training competing AI models: You may not use Platform data to train, fine-tune, or evaluate machine learning models, large language models, or AI systems that will be used in a product or service that competes with Lighthouse Intelligence.
• Automated inference: Systematic automated querying of the Platform for the purpose of training any external AI or ML model is prohibited regardless of the intended end use.

Illegal and Harmful Use

• Use of the Platform for any illegal purpose under Australian law or the laws of your jurisdiction.
• Use that infringes the intellectual property rights of Lighthouse Intelligence or any third party.
• Transmission of malicious code, viruses, or any content intended to disrupt or damage the Platform or its users.
• Any use that violates the privacy rights of any individual under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 or GDPR.

4. API Fair Use Guidelines

Our API is designed to support legitimate programmatic access to Platform data. To ensure fair access and platform stability for all users, we ask that you follow these guidelines in addition to hard rate limits:

Plan	Requests / Minute	Requests / Day	Burst Allowance
Standard	60	5,000	120 for 30 seconds
Professional	300	25,000	600 for 30 seconds
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Custom

Best Practices

• Respect rate limits: Implement exponential back-off when you receive a 429 Too Many Requests response. Do not immediately retry at full speed.
• Cache responses: Cache API responses locally for the appropriate duration. Avoid fetching the same data repeatedly within a short window. Most benchmark data does not change more frequently than daily.
• Do not hammer the API: Avoid sustained request patterns that push against your rate limit ceiling. This degrades service for other users and may trigger automatic suspension.
• Use webhooks where available: For data-change notifications, use available webhook or polling endpoints rather than polling the API at high frequency.
• Batch requests: Where the API supports batch or bulk endpoints, prefer these over many individual requests.
• Off-peak scheduling: Schedule large batch jobs during off-peak hours where possible.

5. Enforcement

Lighthouse Intelligence monitors Platform usage for compliance with this AUP. Enforcement actions are applied based on severity and intent:

Appeals

If you believe an enforcement action was applied in error, you may appeal by contacting [email protected] within 14 days of the action. We will review appeals within 5 business days.

Legal Action

For violations involving mass data theft, intellectual property infringement, or security attacks, Lighthouse Intelligence reserves the right to pursue civil and criminal remedies under applicable Australian and international law, including but not limited to claims under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and GDPR.

6. Intellectual Property

All data, benchmarks, methodologies, rankings, and content on the Platform are the proprietary intellectual property of Louder Online Pty Ltd or its licensors. Your subscription grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to access and use the Platform for the permitted purposes described in Section 2. No ownership rights are transferred.

The Platform's underlying software, algorithms, data collection methodology, and scoring systems are trade secrets and confidential information of Louder Online Pty Ltd.

7. Changes to This Policy

We may update this AUP from time to time. Material changes will be communicated via email to registered account holders at least 14 days before taking effect. Continued use of the Platform after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

8. Contact Us

To report a suspected violation, raise an appeal, or discuss a use case not covered by this policy: