Website Policies

Terms of Use, Content, Privacy, Cookies, Accessibility, and AI

Effective date: August 18, 2026      Last updated: August 18, 2026

Welcome to Boldly Blue (https://boldly.blue). This page brings together the policies that govern your use of this website: our Terms of Use, our Content and AI policies, our Cookie Policy, our Privacy Policy, our Acceptable Use rules, and our Accessibility Statement. By using the site, you agree to these policies. If you do not agree, please do not use the site. In this document, the words “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to David Somerfleck, who writes and publishes under the Boldly Blue Press imprint. Boldly Blue Press is an imprint name, not a separate company, and this is a personal author website. The word “you” refers to any visitor to the site.

1. Acceptance of Terms

By visiting the site, reading its content, subscribing to any list, or submitting any comment or form, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to these policies. We may update these policies from time to time. When we do, the new version applies from the date it is posted. Your continued use of the site means you accept the current version.

2. Who May Use This Site

You may use the site only if you can form a legally binding agreement under applicable law. If you are under the age of majority where you live, use the site only with a parent or guardian involved. Please give accurate information when you subscribe or submit a form, and use the site only for lawful purposes.

3. Intellectual Property and Content Ownership

Unless noted otherwise, everything on this site is owned by or licensed to us. This includes the text, blog posts, fiction, poetry, excerpts, book covers, artwork, images, graphics, logos, design, and the way the content is selected and arranged. It is protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. All rights are reserved except as described below. Nothing on the site gives you a license to use any content, name, mark, or logo without our written permission.

4. Permitted Use of Content

We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, revocable license to read and enjoy the site for your own personal, non-commercial use. Within that limit, you may:

  • Read and view the content for personal purposes;
  • Share links to our pages;
  • Quote a brief excerpt for commentary, criticism, review, news, or scholarship, as long as you credit the source and link back to the original page.

Any other use needs our written permission. This includes copying, republishing, distributing, public display, adapting, or making new works based on the content.

5. Acceptable Use and Prohibited Activity

We ask that you use the site responsibly and lawfully. You agree not to:

  • Copy, reproduce, republish, sell, license, or distribute the site’s content, in whole or in large part, without permission;
  • Use bots, crawlers, scrapers, spiders, or harvesters to access, index, copy, or extract content, except for normal search-engine indexing that respects our robots.txt file;
  • Frame, mirror, or link to the site in a way that hides its source or removes credit;
  • Try to gain unauthorized access to the site, its server, or connected systems, or interfere with how the site runs;
  • Introduce viruses or malicious code, or attempt hacking, packet spoofing, flooding, or denial-of-service attacks;
  • Send spam through the site, or use it to harass, threaten, defame, or discriminate against any person or group, including through hate speech;
  • Use any comment area or form to collect addresses or run mailing lists without consent;
  • Impersonate David Somerfleck, claim a business relationship that does not exist, or claim ownership of Boldly Blue content or brand, in order to gain trust, service, or payment;
  • Use the site in any way that breaks the law or these policies.

If these rules are broken, we may remove content, block users, or suspend access, without notice, to the extent the law allows.

6. Comments and User-Submitted Content

If the site allows comments or other submissions, you are responsible for what you post. By submitting content, you confirm you have the right to share it. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, ongoing license to display, store, reproduce, and moderate it as part of running the site. Do not post anything unlawful, defamatory, obscene, harassing, hateful, infringing, or spam. We may review, edit, refuse, or remove any submission at our discretion, and we may block users who break these rules. Comments reflect the views of the people who write them, not ours. We do not allow bulk or bot-generated spam.

7. Artificial Intelligence, Scraping, and Text and Data Mining

7.1  No use for AI training or data mining. All content on this site is reserved against text and data mining, machine learning, and AI training. You may not use any content on the site, including text, fiction, poetry, images, or metadata, to develop, train, fine-tune, evaluate, or ground any machine-learning model, large language model, generative-AI system, or dataset, whether commercial or not, without our written permission. This is an express reservation of rights against text and data mining, including for the purposes of applicable copyright and data-mining laws. It applies even if our robots.txt file or another page appears to allow broader access.

7.2  No AI scraping. Automated collection of our content by AI crawlers, dataset compilers, or model-training pipelines is not allowed. Operators of those systems must respect our robots.txt file and this policy. If no technical block is present, that does not mean we have given consent.

7.3  Our use of AI on this website. This website was rebuilt from two older sites. Those older sites had changed hosting several times over many years, and they carried dozens of aging blog posts and pages as content and business names changed over the passage of time. The rebuild went along with a personal change, from running a digital marketing agency and consulting practice to writing as a retired author. During the rebuild, we used AI tools to help update, consolidate, and refresh the site. Specifically:

  • Some blog posts were edited, revised, updated, or written with the help of AI during the rebuild;
  • Some website pages were edited, revised, updated, or written with the help of AI;
  • Some images were edited, improved, or created with the help of AI.

A human directed and reviewed all of that work. Going forward, we do not use AI to write, edit, or update the website’s pages or blog posts. New pages and posts are written by a human.

7.4  No AI content in the books or on the covers. There’s simply no AI-generated content used in the author’s published books, and none will be. This encompasses interior text, cover text, cover art and design. The final manuscript wording comes from the author’s own mental peregrinations, woolgatherings, flights of fancy, and human editorial review. The past rebuild of this website may have been AI-assisted; the books aren’t, the covers aren’t, and they never will be.

7.5  Enforcement. We keep all rights and remedies available under the law for unauthorized scraping, copying, or AI use of our content, and we may take technical, contractual, and legal steps to protect it.

8. Where I Stand on AI Use

My books. My books are written by me. I do not use AI to write, co-write, edit, revise, or generate any text or artwork for my books, including the interior text, the cover text, and the cover art and design. The final wording is my own, backed by human editorial review.

This website. During the rebuild described above, some blog posts, pages, and images were created or updated with AI tools. From now on, I do not use AI to write, edit, or update the pages or blog posts on this site. New writing here is my own. Where an image was made or changed with AI, that was part of the rebuild.

To put it plainly, and for the record: no AI in my books, none on my covers, and none in any blog post or website page I write from here on. The only AI-assisted work was the one-time rebuild of this site, and nothing beyond it.

The ideas, opinions, and experiences in my writing are mine, drawn from my own background running businesses, advising, freelancing, teaching, woolgathering, and all the rest. Any commentary or opinion on this site, written with or without AI help, reflects my own views. It is offered for information and, I hope, some modest measure of enjoyment.

9. Content Disclaimer

Web pages and outside links change over time, so some content may contain errors or become out of date. All content is provided as-is, with no warranty or guarantee of accuracy. Treat blog posts and page content as general information. Please check anything important through your own research, or by asking a qualified professional where that makes sense. Results and experiences vary from person to person, from business to business, and depending on circumstances, budgets, tools, and goals. What works for one may not work for another and I have no way of knowing each individual’s circumstances, aptitudes, and practices.  So what you read here is for your information, entertainment; and not professional advice.

10. Cookie Policy

We use cookies to improve your experience on https://boldly.blue and its subdomains. This Cookie Policy is part of our privacy policy. It covers the cookies used between your device and our site. We also note some third-party services that may set their own cookies. This policy does not cover those third-party cookies. If you do not want to accept our cookies, you can set your browser to refuse cookies from https://boldly.blue. If you do, some features and content may not be available to you.

What’s a cookie? A cookie is a small piece of data a website stores on your device when you visit. It usually holds information about the site, a unique ID that lets the site recognize your browser on your next visit, data that serves the cookie’s purpose, and the cookie’s lifespan. Cookies help run features like logins, measure site usage, remember your settings, and personalize content. Cookies set by the site you are visiting are called first-party cookies. Cookies set by other companies are called third-party cookies, and they can track you across other sites that use the same service.

Essential cookies. These are needed for core features like logins, account management, and forms. We use them to run key functions on the site.

Performance cookies. These track how you use the site during a visit. The information is usually anonymous and grouped together. It helps us understand usage, find problems, and improve the site. These do not collect personal information about you.

Targeting and advertising cookies. These help decide which content or promotions are most relevant to you, and can limit how often you see something. They may be set by us or by third-party services. Third-party targeting cookies may track you on other sites that use the same service.

Controlling cookies. You can decide whether to accept or reject cookies. You can manage your choices in our Cookie Consent Manager, which lets you pick which categories to accept or reject. Essential cookies cannot be rejected, because they are needed to provide the site. You can also set or change cookie preferences in your browser settings. Each browser is different, so check your browser’s help section. If you refuse or disable cookies, you can still use the site, but some features may not be available.

Updates. We may update this Cookie Policy to reflect changes in the cookies we use, or for operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. The current version applies each time you use the site. Please check the date at the top of this page and review any changes.

11. Privacy Policy

Your privacy matters, and this section explains how we handle your personal information. It is part of these policies. It covers the information you give us, the information collected automatically when you visit, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It works together with the Cookie Policy in section 10 above.

Information you give us. When you subscribe to updates, use a contact form, or send us a message, you may give us personal details such as your name and email address, along with anything you choose to include in your message. We collect this only when you provide it, and we use it for the purpose you gave it for.

Information collected automatically. Like most websites, we collect some technical information when you visit. This can include your IP address, browser type, device information, the pages that referred you, and how you move through the site. It is gathered through cookies and similar tools and through website analytics. We use it in an aggregated, mostly anonymous form to understand usage and improve the site. See the Cookie Policy in section 10 for the cookies we use and how to control them.

How we use your information. We use the information we collect to respond to your messages, to send the updates or newsletters you asked for, to run and secure the site, to understand how the site is used, and to meet legal obligations. We do not use it for purposes you would not reasonably expect.

Email and newsletters. If you subscribe, we store your name and email so we can send the updates you requested. Every message includes a way to unsubscribe, and you can opt out at any time. When you unsubscribe, we stop sending and we remove or deactivate your subscription details, except where we must keep a record for legal reasons.

Third-party services. We rely on trusted service providers to run the site. These include our website host, our email and newsletter system, and website analytics. Each handles data only as needed to provide its service. The site may also include embedded content from other websites, such as videos from podcast platforms. Embedded content behaves as if you had visited that other website, so that site may collect data about you, use cookies, and track your interaction with the embedded content under its own policies.

Sharing and disclosure. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for others to market to you. We share information only with the service providers described above, or when the law requires it, such as a valid legal request, or to protect our rights, safety, or property.

Data retention. We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purpose it was collected, or as the law requires. Subscription details are kept until you unsubscribe. Contact messages are kept as long as needed to handle your inquiry and our records.

Security. We take reasonable steps to protect your information, and the site is served over a secure connection. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot promise absolute security, but we work to keep your information safe.

Your rights and choices. You may ask us to access, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you, and you may unsubscribe from emails at any time. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws such as the GDPR or state privacy laws. To make a request, contact us at hello@boldly.blue. We will respond as required by applicable law.

Children’s privacy. This site is intended for adults and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us information, please contact us and we will remove it.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, as described in section 18. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page shows the latest revision. For any privacy question or request, contact us at hello@boldly.blue.

12. Accessibility Statement

boldly.blue works to make its services accessible to people with disabilities. We have put real effort into making the site easier to use for everyone, because we believe accessibility helps all users, and that every person deserves to live with dignity, equality, comfort, and independence.

The site uses UserWay’s Web Accessibility Widget, powered by a dedicated accessibility server. This helps the site move toward compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). You can turn on the accessibility menu by clicking the accessibility icon in the corner of the page. Please give it a moment to load fully.

We keep working to improve accessibility, and we regularly scan the site with UserWay’s Accessibility Scanner to find and fix barriers. Even so, some content may not yet meet the strictest standards. Sometimes this is because the right technical solution has not been found yet. If you have trouble with any content, or need help with any part of the site, please contact us and we will be glad to assist. To report an accessibility issue or ask a question, use https://boldly.blue/contact. Please note that spam and solicitation messages are deleted and blocked.

13. Third-Party Links

The site may link to third-party websites, retailers, or services, such as booksellers or social platforms. We offer these links for convenience. We do not control or endorse those sites, and we are not responsible for their content or practices. Visiting them is at your own risk. If the site takes part in an affiliate program, we may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. We disclose affiliate relationships where the law requires it.

14. Disclaimers

The site and its content are provided as-is and as-available, with no warranties of any kind, express or implied. This includes implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not promise that the site will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, or that any information is complete or current. Fiction, opinion, and commentary on the site are creative and personal, and are not professional, legal, medical, or financial advice.

15. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost data, profits, or goodwill, arising from your use of the site or your inability to use it, even if we were told such damages were possible. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the most the law allows.

16. Indemnification

You agree to protect and hold harmless the site and its owner from any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and expenses, including reasonable legal fees, that arise from your use of the site, your submissions, or your breach of these policies or of any law or third-party right.

17. Copyright Complaints

We respect the intellectual-property rights of others, and we expect users to do the same. If you believe content on the site infringes your copyright, send us a written notice with your contact details, a description of the work, the location of the material on our site, and a statement of your good-faith belief. Send it to hello@boldly.blue. We will review valid notices and may remove the material.

18. Changes to These Policies

We may revise these policies at any time by posting an updated version on this page. Changes take effect when posted, and the “Last updated” date at the top shows the latest revision. Please review this page from time to time. Continuing to use the site means you accept the current version.

19. Governing Law

These policies are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising from these policies or your use of the site will be handled in the state or federal courts located in Virginia, unless the law requires otherwise.

20. Contact

Questions about these policies, permission requests, or licensing inquiries can be sent to:

David Somerfleck, Boldly Blue Press

Website: https://boldly.blue

Contact: https://boldly.blue/contact