One photograph of an object. Up to about two sentences about it. A first name if you give one, and a city if you give one — both optional, and most people leave one or both off. That's it. No email, no account, no password. If you seal a capsule you get a short code; the code is the only record that it's yours, and we can't recover it for you because we don't know who you are.
By submitting, you give The Archive a permission — the legal word is a licence — that is non-exclusive, worldwide, lasts indefinitely and doesn't cost either of us anything, to reproduce, display, perform and adapt your photograph and your words, credited as you gave them, as part of The Archive. That covers:
Non-exclusive means you can do whatever you like with your own photograph and words — it's still yours. Adapt means the background removal, colour work and voice reading described above, and layout for print; not changing what the object is or what you said.
Sponsors, when there are any, are named on the site and in the room as sponsors of a day or a theme. They never appear on an object.
You can ask for your object to be removed from the room and the site at any time — write to the address at the bottom of this page with the code or a description, and it's gone from future display. What we can't do is un-print a book that's already printed or un-broadcast something that's already gone out; the licence above is what makes that honest rather than a trick. If you might not be able to live with that, the sealed option is there: nothing sealed is shown until its date.
You must be 18 or older. The object must be yours to show, and the words must be your own. Nothing that shows a person, a face, or a child; nothing sexual, violent, or hateful; no weapons, no drugs; no readable personal details. Every submission is checked by software before it's shown and some are looked at by a person; anything doubtful is held, and anything that breaks these rules is refused and deleted.
Two small things, on your own device only: which objects you've hearted, so the heart stays filled for a few minutes, and nothing else. There are no tracking cookies and no analytics that follow you anywhere. If you seal a capsule, remembering the code is up to you.
Submissions are stored on servers we run. The broadcast goes out through Twitch and YouTube, which have their own terms for what they show. The voice is produced by a third-party speech service that sees the words and nothing else.