Community Service Terms

1. Scope

1.1. These Community Service Terms apply to every Session you launch on a Machine of the Community tier. They are part of the Terms of Service, whose definitions apply.

1.2. If these Community Service Terms conflict with the Terms of Service, these Community Service Terms prevail for Community Sessions.

2. How Community works

2.1. Independent Hosts. Community Machines belong to independent Hosts who pair them with Node Lodge under our Host Agreement. Hosts are not our employees or agents.

2.2. Our role. VDTI sells you the Community Session, collects payment, and runs the platform that isolates, meters, stops and erases it. The Host provides the hardware, power and network. Your contract is with VDTI only; you have no contract with the Host through the Service.

2.3. Review. We review each Machine before it is listed, against published requirements, and we monitor its availability. Hardware details are reported by the Host’s agent. We do not certify the performance of a Machine.

2.4. Country. Each Machine shows the country declared by its Host. The Host Agreement requires Hosts to declare it accurately and to keep it up to date.

3. Isolation

3.1. Each Community Session runs in a micro-VM dedicated to it, with the GPU passed to that VM alone and never shared with another Session. Multi-GPU Machines are rented whole.

3.2. The Session boots from a signed, read-only image checked block by block. Its work disk is encrypted with a key that never reaches the Host’s disk in clear, and the key is destroyed at the end of the Session, which makes the disk unreadable.

3.3. You reach the Session over SSH and JupyterLab through the Node Lodge relay. The Host’s Machine opens no inbound port.

4. What the Host can access

4.1. The Host keeps physical and administrator access to the Machine. A Host with that access can, by deliberate action and in breach of the Host Agreement, read the memory of a running Session, GPU memory included, and observe its network traffic. Disk encryption does not protect data in use.

4.2. The Host Agreement forbids Hosts to access, copy, inspect or interfere with Sessions, and we act against any Host who does. These obligations do not change the technical fact in section 4.1.

5. Data you must not place on Community

5.1. Community is not suited to sensitive or regulated data. You must not place on a Community Session:

• personal data of special categories or sensitive personal information (such as health, biometric, genetic, financial account or government identification data);
• personal data of children;
• data subject to professional secrecy, financial or health regulations, or confidentiality obligations that require controlled datacenters;
• controlled technical data under export control laws;
• secrets whose disclosure would cause serious harm, such as production credentials or private signing keys.

5.2. Use Secure for confidential code, data and model weights. If you place data on Community despite section 5.1, you do so at your own risk and you are responsible for that choice toward the people concerned.

6. Session events

6.1. Host offline or Machine lost. If the Machine loses power or network, or its agent stops answering, your Session ends. You pay only for the time the Machine ran for you, and the unused Budget returns to your Credit.

6.2. Withdrawal by the Host. A Host may withdraw a Machine. The Host Agreement requires Hosts not to stop a Machine during a running Session except for an emergency.

6.3. Stops by us. We may stop a Session to protect you, the Host, other users or the Service, or under the Acceptable Use Policy.

7. Network records

7.1. To answer abuse complaints, each Community Session keeps a record of the connections it opens outside the relay: time, protocol, destination address and port, and volume. The record never contains content, source ports or names looked up.

7.2. These records are kept for 90 days on the Host’s Machine, where only our software writes them, and are read by us only to handle an abuse report or a request of a competent authority. The Host Agreement forbids Hosts to read or use them.

8. Deletion

At the end of a Session, the micro-VM is destroyed and its encryption key erased, which makes the work disk unreadable. We keep no backup of a Community Session.

9. Liability

9.1. The disclaimers and limitations of liability of the Terms of Service apply to Community Sessions.

9.2. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for the acts of a Host that breach the Host Agreement, except for our own fault in selecting, reviewing or monitoring the Machine. We cooperate with you, and with the competent authorities, to pursue a Host who breaches it.

9.3. This section does not limit the rights of a Consumer under section 21 of the Terms of Service.