1. Who this agreement is between
This Worker Agreement is between Best Price LC, a Wyoming limited liability company doing business as Acorn ("Acorn", "we", "us"), and the person or organization that enrolls a Mac to supply computing capacity to the Acorn network ("you"). It covers the Acorn Mac app, the acorn command-line worker (together, the "Software"), and your participation in the network.
You accept this agreement by checking the acceptance box in the Mac app, by confirming acceptance in the command-line worker, or by signing a document that incorporates it. If we publish a new version, the Software asks you to accept it before you receive more work. The Dispute Resolution Agreement and the Privacy Notice are presented with this agreement; the Dispute Resolution Agreement is part of it.
2. Eligibility
You may participate if:
- you are at least 18 and able to enter a binding contract;
- you can lawfully participate where you live and operate the Mac, and can receive a payout through a payout method we support;
- you are not located in, ordinarily resident in, or organized under the laws of a country or region subject to comprehensive U.S. sanctions or embargo (currently Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine), and you are not a person named on, or owned or controlled by a person named on, a U.S. or other applicable sanctions list; and
- you own the Mac or have the owner's permission to run the Software on it, including permission to use its power and network connection.
If you accept for an organization, you confirm that you are authorized to bind it, and "you" means that organization. You must give us accurate information about yourself and your devices and keep your contact email current.
3. Our relationship
You are an independent provider of computing capacity. This agreement does not make you our employee, agent, or partner, and you cannot bind us. You decide whether to install the Software, when it runs, and when to pause or stop. You may use your Mac for anything else and may join other networks.
We do not promise any minimum amount of work, earnings, or future assignments. You are responsible for your own equipment, electricity, internet service, and taxes on what you earn. We do not currently collect tax forms. If the law requires us to collect tax or identity information or to withhold tax, we will ask you for it and may hold payouts until you provide it. Nothing in this agreement removes a right that applicable law gives you and that cannot be waived by contract.
4. What the Software does
Once you enroll and turn work on, the Software automatically receives jobs, runs them, and returns results. You do not approve each job. Today the network runs speech transcription. A job may give your Mac a segment of a recording or, for some jobs, the complete recording, which the Software trims locally.
Mac lending. If we offer it and you separately opt in, the Software can also run a customer's macOS virtual machine on your Mac. Customer code runs inside that virtual machine and uses your Mac's processor, memory, disk, and internet connection. Mac lending is off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time.
We route work based on your Mac's capabilities, reliability, software version, and quality record. We may run test jobs with known answers ("canaries"), compare redundant results, reject invalid results, and stop sending work to unsupported configurations. Before we add a new kind of work or materially increase the resources or permissions the Software uses, we will describe the change and ask you to agree.
5. Effects on your Mac
Running jobs increases power use, heat, fan noise, network traffic, and disk use, and adds wear to components. Virtual machine images can be large. Keep enough free disk space, run the Mac in safe conditions, keep your own backups, and pause or quit the Software if anything seems unsafe.
The Mac app stores job audio in the macOS temporary folder, marks it excluded from Time Machine, and deletes it when the job ends, including when a job fails or you pause or stop. Files left behind by a crash are removed by a cleanup sweep on a later launch once they are more than six hours old. The command-line worker stores job audio in ~/.acorn/audio-cache, which is not excluded from backups. Deleting a file is not secure erasure, and backup, sync, or indexing tools you run can make copies we cannot reach. Uninstalling the Software can leave files behind.
The Software does not request camera, microphone, or photo-library access, and it does not record your screen, keystrokes, files, or browsing history.
6. Customer data
"Customer Data" means the recordings, transcripts, virtual machine contents, code, and any other content or job information you receive through the network. You may process Customer Data only through the Software, only for the assigned job, and only for as long as the job runs. You must not:
- listen to, read, inspect, decrypt, reconstruct, or try to identify anyone from Customer Data;
- copy, keep, publish, sell, or reuse Customer Data, or use it to train models;
- upload Customer Data to any other service, or let another person or device process it;
- inspect, mount, intercept, or alter a virtual machine's disk, memory, or network traffic, or run your own programs inside it; or
- interfere with the Software's cleanup or access controls.
If you find Customer Data outside the Software's working folders, delete it. If you suspect that Customer Data or your Acorn credentials have been exposed, email security@acorncompute.com within 24 hours of finding out, stop the affected work, and follow our reasonable instructions. Do not include customer content in that email.
If a court or authority demands Customer Data from you, tell us before you respond if the law allows, and disclose only what is legally required.
These obligations continue after you stop participating for as long as you can access any Customer Data.
7. Integrity
You must not fake results or resource reports, tamper with metering, canaries, or validation, replay results, run several identities to inflate earnings, misreport your device or location, evade a suspension, bypass the Software's security boundaries, or disrupt customers, other workers, or our systems. Keep your credentials secret and use supported Software versions.
8. Earnings
Rates. You earn at the rates in Acorn's published schedule in effect when a job completes. Transcription is paid per minute of audio you complete. Mac lending is paid for each completed hour that the virtual machine was ready for the customer. If the customer ends the lease, the last partial hour is paid per minute, rounded up; otherwise it is not paid.
When you earn. An earning is recorded when the customer's job completes and its results are merged. When several workers process the same audio for redundancy, each is paid for the part it completed. You do not earn for canaries, qualification runs, or work that fails, expires, is cancelled before completion, or is redone elsewhere.
Holds. Each new earning is held in full for a period that depends on your trust tier: 14 days for new workers, 7 days for provisional, 3 days for trusted, and 1 day for elite. No percentage of an earning is withheld beyond the hold. Your tier depends on your validation record and can go up or down.
Payouts. We pay in U.S. dollars through PayPal or Venmo. Venmo is available only for U.S. accounts, and PayPal is available only where PayPal supports receiving payments. Every Friday at 5:00 p.m. Pacific time, an automated process creates a payout request for your released balance once it reaches $10. Our team reviews each request and sends approved payouts through your chosen method. Friday is when the request is created, not a guaranteed settlement date. Balances below $10 carry forward. If you close your account, you can ask us to pay a released balance below $10. Any fee your payout provider charges you is yours.
Corrections. Before a payout is sent, we may reverse or withhold earnings tied to fraud, tampering, duplicate entries, invalid results, or accounting errors. If we pay you an amount you were not entitled to, you must repay it on request. Payment for valid work does not depend on whether the customer pays us. Your balance is an accounting record, not a deposit, and earns no interest.
Questions. You can ask how an earning, hold, or reversal was calculated, or challenge it, at support@acorncompute.com. We will explain material adjustments, although we may withhold details that would reveal fraud-detection methods or customer information.
Changes. We may change rates and earning rules for future work by updating the published schedule. Changes do not affect earnings already recorded.
9. Automated decisions
Work routing, trust tiers, holds, validation results, and fraud flags rely on automated signals. If you think one of these decisions about you is wrong, email support@acorncompute.com and a person will review it.
10. Software license
We grant you a limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable, revocable license to run the Software to supply capacity to the network while you participate. We and our licensors keep all other rights. Open-source components are governed by their own licenses. You may not reverse engineer the Software or our network protocols except where the law allows it. If you send us feedback, we may use it without obligation to you.
To the extent you acquire any rights in job results, you assign them to Acorn so we can deliver them to the customer. This does not affect your own tools or independently developed work. Nothing in this agreement grants you a license to Apple software; you are responsible for complying with the license terms of the macOS software on your Mac.
11. Privacy
The Privacy Notice explains what the Software sends us, including device health and performance information, your Mac's Computer Name, crash reports, and product analytics. Read it before you accept.
12. Suspension and ending participation
You may stop at any time by quitting or uninstalling the Software. We may suspend or end your participation, or stop sending work to a device, with notice, or immediately for security risk, fraud, misuse, legal requirements, or a breach of this agreement. Earnings already released remain payable unless reversed under Section 8. Sections 6, 8, 10, and 13 through 16 continue after participation ends.
13. Disclaimers
THE SOFTWARE AND NETWORK ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE DISCLAIM IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND WE DO NOT GUARANTEE ANY AMOUNT OF WORK, EARNINGS, OR UNINTERRUPTED OPERATION.
14. Limitation of liability
TO THE EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, ACORN IS NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST EXPECTED EARNINGS. ACORN'S TOTAL LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THIS AGREEMENT IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF US$100 OR THE AMOUNTS PAID OR PAYABLE TO YOU UNDER THIS AGREEMENT IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.
These limits do not reduce earnings you have validly earned and do not limit liability for fraud, gross negligence, or willful misconduct, or any liability the law does not allow us to limit.
You are responsible for losses you cause by breaching Sections 6 or 7, including reasonable investigation, notification, and remediation costs, and you will defend and indemnify Acorn against third-party claims arising from that breach. These obligations are not subject to Acorn's limits above. Acorn may seek court orders to stop misuse of Customer Data or the Software.
15. Protected disclosures
Nothing in this agreement stops you from reporting possible violations of law to a government agency, cooperating with an investigation, or making any other disclosure the law protects, and you do not need our permission or to tell us first. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1833(b), an individual is not liable under any federal or state trade-secret law for disclosing a trade secret in confidence to a government official or an attorney solely to report or investigate a suspected violation of law, or in a document filed under seal in a lawsuit or other proceeding.
16. Disputes, notices, and general terms
California law governs this agreement, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, subject to any mandatory rights where you live. The Dispute Resolution Agreement requires most disputes to be resolved by binding individual arbitration and waives jury trials and class actions. If you are an individual, you may opt out within 30 days of first accepting it by emailing legal@acorncompute.com, as described there.
Notices to Acorn: legal@acorncompute.com and Best Price LC, 30 N Gould St, Ste R, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States. We send notices to your account email or through the Software.
We will give notice of material changes and ask you to accept the new version before further participation under it. You may not transfer this agreement or your enrollment without our written consent; we may assign it to an affiliate or a successor to our business. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver. This agreement, the published rate schedule, and the Dispute Resolution Agreement are the entire agreement about your participation.