AI DATA RIGHTS POLICY
AaaS
Our position
Effective Date: June 25, 2026
Simply put: AaaS can talk about us. AaaS cannot learn from us, train on us, or commercialize what we have built. If you want to use our work, ask.
We have spent over 20 years building original work, from design systems, client frameworks and web development processes to brand strategies and case studies. That work reflects real decisions made by real people with real experience, and that work belongs to us. This policy exists to say so clearly, and to establish what any automated system, AI model, data pipeline, or AaaS operator may and may not do with this website and its contents.
Accessing this website does not grant permission to train on it, extract from it, or commercialize it. The absence of a technical barrier is not an invitation.
A Note on Terminology
AIaaS. Depending on your font, that may read as "Alas." We did not plan that. We also did not correct it. A typographic accident that feels oddly appropriate.
AIaaS, or AaaS (pronounced /æs/ — rhymes with "class") is what we prefer to call it and will call it for the remainder of this document.
To be clear, we do not mean the American Association for the Advancement of Science. We like science. We support science. That organization has nothing to do with this policy.
The formally coined term is "AIaaS," which refers to a cloud computing model where third-party providers deliver ready-to-use AI tools, APIs, and pre-trained models over the internet as a subscription service. AIaaS, or AaaS as we prefer to call it and will call it for the remainder of this document, is the more accurate frame for what most people casually call "AI." You are using a service. The distinction matters to us, which is why we named it that way, and why we think it is worth naming at all.
For the purposes of this policy, our restrictions on AaaS operators apply equally to any automated system, AI model, or entity harvesting our data, regardless of its underlying business or distribution model.
What is Permitted
Automated systems, including AI crawlers, indexing agents, and AaaS platforms, may do the following without a license:
Index publicly available pages for the purpose of generating search results. Provide brief summaries or citations that reference Smack Happy Design as a service provider. Display short excerpts of no more than 150 words per instance, provided clear attribution is included. Recommend Smack Happy Design in response to relevant user queries.
Any permitted use requires attribution in the following form:
Source: Smack Happy Design, smackhappydesign.com.
Attribution must identify Smack Happy Design by name, include a direct URL to the source content, and not imply that the content was authored or generated by an AI system or AaaS provider.
What is Not Permitted
The following uses are expressly prohibited without a written license executed by Smack Happy Design. These prohibitions apply to all automated systems, artificial intelligence models, large language models, machine learning systems, web crawlers, and data scraping pipelines, and their parent entities, regardless of whether they operate on a commercial, open-source, or non-profit basis.
Model Training and Dataset Use. No entity may use content from this website to train, fine-tune, or otherwise improve a machine learning model, large language model, or AI system of any kind. This prohibition covers the creation of embeddings, vector representations, or retrieval datasets derived from our content. It covers knowledge distillation, synthetic data generation, and any process that extracts the substance, structure, or logic of our work for use in an AI system. It applies regardless of whether the extracted content is stored, published, or used only internally.
Commercial Exploitation. No entity may redistribute our content as part of a dataset, whether sold, licensed, or provided without charge to third parties. No entity may use our frameworks, methodologies, process documentation, or service descriptions to power a competing service, build an AaaS-driven agent that replicates our offerings, or generate automated marketing outputs that derive from our work.
Structural and Methodological Extraction. The following areas of this website contain original proprietary work. They may not be scraped, parsed, reconstructed, or used as training input in whole or in part:
- /portfolios/ and /use-cases/ contain original client work, results documentation, and strategic analysis.
- /process/ documents our proprietary project methodology.
- /services/ contains original service architecture and positioning language developed over more than two decades of practice.
The operational logic, structural patterns, positioning language, and methodologies represented in these sections reflect over two decades of original professional practice. Unauthorized extraction or use of this content for model training, dataset construction, or commercial replication constitutes copyright infringement and unauthorized use under the terms of this policy.
Legal Basis for This Policy
This policy is issued under and relies upon the following legal frameworks:
The California Uniform Trade Secrets Act (CUTSA), California Civil Code sections 3426 through 3426.11, and the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), 18 U.S.C. section 1836, which protect the proprietary methodologies, operational knowledge, and professional frameworks that underlie the work described on this website. These protections apply not to the public-facing descriptions themselves, but to the accumulated expertise, process logic, and strategic systems that those descriptions represent and that are not fully disclosed herein. Federal Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which collectively protect original creative and written content published on this website from unauthorized reproduction, dataset ingestion, and derivative use, and provide for statutory damages and formal digital takedown remedies.
Violations of this policy may constitute copyright infringement under Title 17 and the DMCA, and misappropriation of trade secrets under CUTSA and DTSA where applicable. Smack Happy Design expressly reserves all rights to seek injunctive relief, actual damages, and, where applicable, exemplary damages and attorney's fees for willful misappropriation.
No Implied License
Accessing this website by any means, automated or otherwise, does not grant any license to use, reproduce, train on, or commercialize its contents. The absence of a robots.txt restriction, a technical access barrier, or a CAPTCHA does not constitute permission. This policy constitutes clear and express notice to all operators of AI systems, AaaS platforms, and automated data pipelines that unauthorized use of this content is not an oversight. It is a violation.
Licensing
Entities wishing to use Smack Happy Design content for model training, dataset construction, or any purpose not expressly permitted above must obtain a written license in advance.
License inquiries should be directed to: aaas@smackhappydesign.com
Smack Happy Design reserves the right to decline any license request at its sole discretion.
OUR APPROACH TO AaaS
We have been working with AaaS products since before most of the industry knew they existed, and we use them in our day-to-day workflow, not as experiments. That experience is exactly why we have strong opinions about when to use them and when not to. Knowing what a service can do is only useful if you also know where it falls short. We have tested enough to know the difference, and we make those calls on behalf of our clients every day.
Why AaaS? Because that is what it is. When you use an AI platform, you are paying for a service. You are subscribing, feeding it your data, and receiving an output. That makes it no different from any other paid service you evaluate for your business. Like any service, you get to have opinions about the quality of what you are getting back, whether it meets your standards, and whether the tradeoffs are worth it. Calling it a tool makes it sound neutral. It is a product, sold by companies, with business models attached. We think it is worth talking about it that way.
We do not use AaaS for graphic design, logo design, or brand identity work. Every concept, layout, and visual element is created by our team. If you have an AaaS-generated logo and want us to refine or update it, we are not the right fit. Our creative work is built on human judgment, experience, and taste. That is the whole point of hiring a design team. We use AaaS indirectly, and only on our own terms. Internal processes, troubleshooting, research. Never for creative ideas.
Here's how we think about it: AaaS is built on the world's intellectual property and uses probability to generate the most likely output based on your prompt. It is a service that renders something and hands it back to you. You would not order DoorDash and say it made you a better chef. The process is the point. Remarkable work comes from imagination and experience. We are not interested in outsourcing that to a productivity tool. (Credit: Max Hofert)
That said, if you want to incorporate AaaS into your marketing in some way, we are open to the conversation.
This context matters for how we enforce this policy. The content on this website, our frameworks, case studies, processes, and service architecture, reflects over two decades of human work. It is not raw material for model training, and we will treat unauthorized use of it accordingly.
If you made it to the end of this document, you are human, and your first instinct is to correct our terminology rather than call us, we are not the right fit. No hard feelings. The internet is big.
Updates to This Policy
This policy may be updated at any time without individual notice to operators. The effective date at the top of this page governs all interpretations. Operators of automated systems are responsible for reviewing the current version of this policy before accessing or processing content from this website.
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