Terms of Use

These terms were written without a lawyer's review. They describe what Officially actually does, and they will be revised after legal review; any change will be dated here.

Last updated: 4 October 2026

1. Who runs Officially

Officially (officially.news) is a non-commercial project run by Ștefănigă D. Cosmin-Lucian PFA (persoană fizică autorizată), CUI 34668358, trade register F11/350/2015, Str. Dacilor nr. 11, 325400 Caransebeș, Caraș-Severin, Romania ("we"). Contact: [email protected].

These terms apply to everyone who reads Officially, uses its API or feeds, creates an account, claims an organization, or publishes here.

2. What Officially is — and what it is not

Officially records where a publication came from: which organization published it, where, when, and how it changed afterwards. It does not record whether a publication is true, and it endorses no one.

• "Imported from official source" means we read the publication from the organization's own website, feed or API. It never means we verified the organization or checked the content.
• An organization listed here has not necessarily claimed its profile or had any contact with us. Its status stays "imported from official source" until someone from it proves control of its domain.
• A topic marked "Classified by Officially" is our automated reading of a title and summary, not the publisher's own label.
• Whether a publication is missing from Officially says nothing about whether it exists. Feeds expose only recent items, publishers change their sites, and some block us.

3. Imported publications

For a publication we import, we store the publisher's text and show an extract — the opening paragraphs, up to about 2,000 characters, never the whole text — with a link to the publisher's own page, which is where we send readers.

The text belongs to its publisher. We claim no rights over it. Most of what Officially carries is published by public bodies under terms that allow reuse, and we follow them:

• US federal works are in the public domain; laws and official acts are outside copyright in most countries, Romania included (Law 8/1996, art. 9).
• UK government content is reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Where we show it: Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• European Commission content is reused under CC BY 4.0: © European Union — excerpt, reused under CC BY 4.0.
• Other publishers' terms are recorded per source, and the attribution each requires is shown with the extract.

Where a publisher reserves all rights, or we have not yet read its terms, we show less: its own summary, cut at about 400 characters; where its terms forbid reuse, only the headline, date and a link.

We read publishers' sites the way their robots.txt and text-and-data-mining reservations allow, and where a publisher has reserved text and data mining we keep only its feed's own summary. For publishers that do not license reuse, we keep the full text of a publication for six months after their feed last listed it, and then only the title, summary and record.

Nothing on Officially suggests that a publisher endorses it, and we do not display government logos or crests.

A publisher that wants its full text shown here can claim and verify its profile (section 5). Anyone who wants text removed: see section 9.

4. Accounts

You never need an account to read Officially, including the API and feeds. An account lets you follow organizations, receive email alerts and arrange a dashboard.

An account gives you no relationship with any organization, no right to publish, and no operator access. Following an organization is private: it is not shown to anyone and there are no follower counts.

You must be at least 16 to create an account. Keep your password to yourself. You can close your account at any time from your account page, or by emailing [email protected] from the account's address; the Privacy Policy says what closing removes and what it keeps. A session you have not used for 90 days signs you out.

5. Claiming an organization

An organization may claim its profile by proving control of its domain with a DNS record. Public authorities, regulators and international organizations are also reviewed by a person before approval. Claiming is free and is never sold.

Verification means "this account proved control of this domain." It does not mean we have checked the organization's publications or that we vouch for it. We may refuse or revoke a claim made under false pretences.

6. Publishing on Officially

A verified organization may publish records here, through the website or the write API, and issue corrections. Every change is kept as a new version; nothing is overwritten. There is no delete: a publisher may withdraw a record, which marks it withdrawn and keeps the text and its history visible.

If you publish here, you are responsible for what you publish, including any personal data in it, and you confirm you have the right to publish it, including any photographs, quotations or other material by third parties. By publishing here — or by choosing, as a verified organization, to show your full text — you give Officially a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display and distribute that text on its pages, feeds and API, for as long as the record exists. We may remove text under section 9 and may suspend publishing for an organization that publishes unlawful content. Anyone can report a record published here that they believe is unlawful by emailing [email protected] with its link and the reason; we look at every report, decide promptly, and tell the person who reported it and the publisher what we decided and why.

7. The API and feeds

The read API and the Atom feeds are free and need no key. Write access needs an API key issued to a verified organization. A key belongs to the organization, not to a person; it carries fixed scopes, is shown once when it is issued, and can be revoked at any time.

Rate limits, per minute: anonymous API reads 60 per address; reading web pages 300 per address; with a key, 600 reads and 120 writes. Going over a limit returns 429 with Retry-After; it never revokes a key.

Please do not share keys, try to get around the limits, use the API to rebuild a copy of a publisher's full text, or present anything from Officially as verified by us. Version 1 paths stay stable; a breaking change gets a new version.

8. Four words, defined

• Withdrawn — the publisher took the publication back. We report that, and keep the text and every version.
• Source page stopped responding — our checker could not reach the publisher's page. This is an observation about a link, not a statement that anything was retracted.
• Revised — the publisher changed the text. Every version is kept.
• Text removed — we removed the publication's text under section 9 and kept the record that it existed.

9. Removal requests

We never remove anything silently. We can remove the text of a publication while keeping the record: who published it, when, and that its text was removed — with the date and the reason, shown first on its page.

We remove text:

1. when the publisher has removed it from its own page, for sources where we follow the publisher in this way;
2. at the request of a person the publication concerns, where the publisher's own page no longer carries the text; or
3. on a legal order.

If the official source still publishes the text, we will tell you so and point you to the publisher: Officially follows its source. A request from a company or organization about a notice that a regulator still publishes is declined. Where your situation is exceptional — for example, the publication puts you at risk — say so in your request and we will weigh it on its own facts.

Removal takes effect on our pages, API, feeds and search immediately, and in our edge cache within an hour. Copies already held by feed readers, API users, email recipients and search engines are outside our control, and our backups keep a copy for up to 14 days, after which it is gone; if a backup is ever restored, the removal is applied again before the site serves.

To ask, email [email protected] with the link to the publication. We answer within one month. We do not ask for identity documents.

Copyright. If you hold the rights in an imported text and object to how it appears here, email [email protected] with the link and the reason. We act on a valid notice within five working days. Copyright removal is different from the removal above: we stop showing the extract on our pages, feeds and API and mark the record "Extract removed at the rights holder's request" with the date, while keeping the title, publisher, dates, link and history — and, if you ask, we also delete the stored text.

10. Automated access and reuse

Automated reading is welcome; please use the API or the feeds rather than crawling pages. Our own metadata — which organization published what, when, where we saw it, and the links — is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0), crediting Officially. Imported text stays its publisher's and comes with its publisher's terms (section 3); reusing it beyond what those terms allow is between you and the publisher.

11. Availability and no warranty

Officially is provided as it is, free of charge. We do not promise it is complete, current or always available. Dates are the publisher's claim; where none could be read, the record says "date unknown".

12. Liability

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss arising from relying on Officially, its API, its feeds or any imported text. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited under Romanian law, or your rights as a consumer.

13. Law, contact and changes

These terms are governed by Romanian law, and disputes go to the competent courts of Romania. If you use Officially as a consumer elsewhere in the EU, you keep the protection of the mandatory rules of the country you live in. Contact: [email protected].

We may change these terms. Changes are dated here, and material ones are announced on officially.news before they apply.