Terms of Service

Last Updated: August 2026

Welcome to Judge Assist. By registering an account, accessing, or using our real-time speech transcription and AI-assisted debate judging platform, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service.

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1. Acceptance of Terms

These Terms of Service constitute a legally binding agreement between you and Judge Assist. If you are using the service on behalf of an academic institution, debate club, or tournament organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that entity to these terms.

2. Service Scope & AI Assistant Disclaimers

Judge Assist provides live audio speech-to-text streaming (powered by Cartesia Ink 2 STT) and automated ballot reasoning (powered by GPT-5.6):

• Assistive Role: AI-generated transcriptions, argument flows, and ballot decisions are designed solely to assist human debate judges.
• Final Authority: Presiding human judges retain complete sole discretion over official tournament ballot decisions, win/loss calls, and speaker point assignments.
• No Tournament Liability: Judge Assist is not responsible for official tournament decisions, pairing adjustments, or ballot rankings.

3. User Accounts & Security

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account login credentials. Any activity conducted through your account is your responsibility. You agree to notify us immediately of any unauthorized access.

4. Acceptable Use & Debate Ethics

When using Judge Assist, you agree to adhere to academic integrity standards and tournament rules (e.g., NSDA, APDA, BP, PF guidelines):

• You must comply with all local recording consent laws and tournament rules regarding audio capture during debate speeches.
• You agree not to attempt to reverse-engineer, exploit, or bypass session API authentication limits.
• You agree not to upload malicious payloads or engage in abusive platform behavior.

5. Intellectual Property & User Content

You retain full ownership of all debate notes, speech flow inputs, and custom judging criteria submitted to your account. Judge Assist retains all rights, titles, and intellectual property in our platform software, branding, and dynamic UI systems.

6. Warranty Disclaimers & Service Availability

Judge Assist is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. While we maintain 99.9% uptime, we do not guarantee uninterrupted real-time audio streaming in the event of local client network latency or third-party API outages.

7. Termination of Service

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms or engage in unauthorized platform misuse without prior notice.

8. Legal & Terms Contact

For questions or inquiries regarding these Terms of Service, please contact our legal team at legal@judgeassist.com.