Legal Disclaimers & Privacy Policy

1. Archival Entity & Non-Affiliation Disclaimer

The Sanctuary Gaming (hosted at the domain thesanctuarytaiwan.org) is an independent, non-commercial digital humanities initiative and open research repository dedicated to the preservation, documentation, and critical analysis of video game software, extinct network architectures, and interactive digital culture.

Strict Non-Affiliation Notice: The Sanctuary Gaming, its domain owner, hosting administrators, and research contributors are completely unaffiliated, unassociated, unauthorized, or endorsed by any commercial video game developers, hardware manufacturers, or publishing conglomerates, including but not limited to Sony Interactive Entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., Microsoft Corporation, Capcom Co., Ltd., Konami Digital Entertainment, Square Enix Holdings, Electronic Arts Inc., Ubisoft Entertainment SA, Valve Corporation, Bandai Namco Holdings, Sega Sammy Holdings, Take-Two Interactive, or their respective parent corporations, subsidiaries, or affiliates.

All trademarks, service marks, registered trade names, product names, game titles, character identities, logos, and iconography cited, analyzed, or displayed on this website are the intellectual property of their respective owners. Their reference on this domain is strictly nominative and descriptive, intended solely for academic identification, comparative ludological analysis, and historical documentation.

2. Fair Use & Statutory Preservation Safe Harbor

All screenshots, video captures, code disassembly excerpts, hardware architectural schematics, audio samples, and packaging artwork cataloged on this domain are reproduced strictly under non-commercial fair use provisions pursuant to:

• United States Copyright Law (17 U.S.C. § 107): Transformative non-profit educational research, academic criticism, commentary, scholarship, and historical archiving.
• Library of Congress DMCA Section 1201 Exemptions: Statutory anti-circumvention exemptions for computer software and video games preserved by cultural heritage institutions and independent archival researchers.
• International Fair Dealing & Cultural Heritage Doctrines: Article 10(2) of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, permitting educational illustration and archival citation.

3. Notice and Takedown Policy (DMCA Safe Harbor & Protocol)

The Sanctuary Gaming operates in compliance with Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512). If you are a copyright owner or an authorized legal representative and believe in good faith that any material accessible on this domain infringes upon your proprietary copyright without legal justification under statutory fair use or preservation exemptions, you are invited to transmit a formal written notice to our designated Archival Copyright Agent:

To ensure prompt processing, your written notification must include:

1. A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest;
2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;
3. Exact URL path(s) within the domain thesanctuarytaiwan.org where the contested material resides;
4. Adequate contact information (including legal entity name, email address, physical address, and telephone number);
5. A statement affirming your good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
6. A statement made under penalty of perjury that the information in the notification is accurate and that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner.

Mandatory 30-Day Informal Review Period: In the interest of constructive resolution, the domain owner and operator request a mandatory thirty (30) business-day review window following receipt of verifiable notice to investigate the claim, engage in dialogue, and where appropriate, voluntarily excise or contextualize the contested material prior to the initiation of any formal administrative, arbitral, or judicial proceedings.

4. Complete Disclaimer of Liability & Hold Harmless Provision

The domain owner, website creators, host providers, system administrators, and individual research contributors (collectively, the "Sanctuary Parties") provide all site materials, code analyses, hardware disassembly guides, and emulation documentation strictly on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, ACCURACY, HARDWARE INTEGRITY, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT.

Under no circumstances shall the Sanctuary Parties be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special, punitive, or exemplary damages—including but not limited to loss of data, hardware bricking, capacitor damage, electrical faults, motherboard failure, loss of software access, digital account suspensions, or intellectual property disputes—arising out of or in connection with your access to, use of, or inability to use this website, or your reliance upon any tutorial, code snippet, memory patch, or hardware instruction published herein.

By browsing this website, you explicitly agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the domain owner, server administrators, and contributors from and against any and all claims, liabilities, losses, damages, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your breach of these terms, misuse of archival documentation, or violation of third-party rights.

5. Zero Software Binary Distribution (No File Hosting)

The Sanctuary Gaming strictly adheres to a zero-binary hosting policy. This web server does not host, store, mirror, distribute, or provide direct download links to proprietary commercial game software, retail ROM images, disc ISO files, proprietary BIOS dumps, or cryptographic encryption keys. All research monographs describe software architecture conceptually and mathematically. Any links or citations to external community git repositories, open-source emulator homepages, or archival libraries are hosted on independent third-party servers over which the domain owner exercises zero operational control.

6. Data Minimization & Privacy Protection (GDPR & Global Compliance)

In accordance with international privacy principles (including the EU General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act), The Sanctuary Gaming operates with an uncompromising data minimization architecture:

• Zero User Accounts: No user registration, no account creation, no password storage, and no personal profile harvesting.
• Zero Tracking Cookies: We do not deploy third-party advertising cookies, cross-site tracking pixels, marketing beacons, or fingerprinting scripts.
• Zero Data Monetization: We do not sell, rent, license, trade, or share visitor data with commercial advertising brokers or data brokers under any circumstances.
• Ephemeral Operational Server Logs: Standard web server connection logs (IP address, browser user-agent, operating system string, referring URL, timestamp) are generated strictly for server uptime monitoring, security diagnostics, and denial-of-service mitigation. These logs are automatically purged on a rolling 14-day schedule and are never correlated with personal identities.

7. User Inquiries & Communications

When you transmit correspondence to our archival team via the site inquiry terminal or via email (archivist@thesanctuarytaiwan.org), you warrant that:

1. Your submission does not contain proprietary trade secrets, confidential corporate documentation, or infringing materials;
2. Any research tips, corrections, or public historical documentation provided are submitted on a voluntary, non-confidential basis;
3. Your transmission does not establish an attorney-client relationship, joint venture, employment, or commercial agency between you and the domain owner.

8. Severability & Dispute Resolution

If any provision of this agreement is determined by a court of competent jurisdiction to be unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that provision shall be deemed severable and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions. Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising from this website or its content shall be resolved through mandatory good-faith informal negotiations via archivist@thesanctuarytaiwan.org for a period of not less than sixty (60) days before any other avenue of recourse may be pursued.