Terms of Service

Who we are

Slow Ink (“the app”) is operated by Wallabout, LLC (doing business as Wallabout Studios), a Delaware limited liability company, of Brooklyn, New York. In these terms “we”, “us” and “our” mean Wallabout, LLC; “you” means the person holding an account.

These terms cover the app at app.slow.ink and this site at slow.ink. Our Privacy Policy explains what we do with the data involved, and forms part of this agreement.

Accepting these terms

You accept these terms by creating an account or by using the app. If you do not accept them, do not use it.

Who can have an account

You must be at least 16 years old to hold an account. Slow Ink is not designed or intended for children, and we do not knowingly let anyone under 16 sign up. If we learn that an account belongs to someone younger, we will close it and delete what it holds.

Creating an account needs nothing more than an email address. What it does not get you is a group: Slow Ink is built around small, standing groups of six to twelve people, and the only way into one is an invitation from a current member. Passing an invitation on, or using one that was not meant for you, is not permitted. A group may set its own limit on how many invitations are outstanding at once; that limit is theirs to set, not ours.

Your account

• Give an email address that is genuinely yours and that you can receive mail at. Verification, password reset and invitation links all go there.
• Keep your password to yourself, and treat an invitation or password-reset link the same way — anybody holding it before it expires can use it.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account.
• Tell us at hello@wallabout.studio if you think somebody else has got into it.

One person, one account. Automating account creation is not permitted.

Your groups, and why writing here stays put

This is the clause that shapes the product, so it is worth reading in full. A group is a small, invited circle — six to twelve people who agreed to read each other properly. Two things follow from that design that a faster app would not ask of you:

• A group's pace is decided by the group, not by us. How long a member waits between posts, how long a post sits before comments open on it, how many comments each member gets — every group sets its own answer to each of these by a standing vote of its members, recounted regularly. You take part in that vote by virtue of being a member, and the group's current answer binds everyone in it, including you.
• Once something reaches your group, it generally stays. Slow Ink is not a chat you can quietly edit or a feed you can scrub. A published post or comment cannot be edited once it has gone out; you can delete your own writing, but a place built around people reading properly is not one where the record of what was said gets rewritten after the fact. Write knowing that.
• What you write is read by your group, and only your group. A post or comment is delivered to the current members of the group you wrote it to, on the schedule each of them chose, and to nobody outside it. We do not build a social graph across your groups, and one group cannot see another's writing.
• Leaving a group, or being asked to leave it, is a decision the group's own members make of each other — a group can vote to remove a member, and any member can leave on their own. That is the group's business, governed by the app's own rules for it, not a dispute we referee.

What you may not use it for

Do not use Slow Ink to:

• Harass, threaten or intimidate anybody, in a group or out of it.
• Post anything you do not have the right to post, or that infringes somebody else’s rights.
• Break the law, or help anybody else do so.
• Circulate anything unlawful, including sexual content involving a minor — we report this to the relevant authorities when we find it.
• Resell, sublicense or provide the app to anybody else as a service.
• Scrape it, load it by automation, or make requests at a rate a person could not.
• Get round the group's invitation gate, its voted limits, or any other restriction; probe or test our security without our written permission; or reverse engineer, decompile or copy the app except to the extent the law says we cannot stop you.
• Upload malware, or anything designed to interfere with the app or with other people’s use of it.

Reporting a security problem you found without going looking for it is welcome, not a breach of this section. Write to hello@wallabout.studio.

This is a beta

Slow Ink is early software, offered while we find out whether it is any good. It will change. Features may be added, altered or taken away. There is no uptime commitment, no support commitment and no guarantee that any particular thing will keep working.

Keep your own copy of anything you would be upset to lose. We take reasonable care with your data and we run database backups, but a beta is not a safe deposit box. The app can export everything you have written as files, any time, from /my-content — use it.

We may end the beta, or the app, at any time. If we do, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice by email to the address on your account and a way to get your writing out before it is deleted — unless we are prevented from doing so by law or by circumstances outside our control.

What it costs

Nothing, during the beta. There is no advertising in Slow Ink, and we do not sell or rent your data.

We expect it to be paid for eventually by the people using it. We reserve the right to introduce charges — but not by surprise. If we start charging, we will tell you by email at least 30 days beforehand, and Slow Ink will not begin charging you for anything without you actively agreeing to pay. If you do not want to, you can export your writing and close your account, and nothing you owe will be taken from you for the period before you were asked.

Your content stays yours

Everything you write into Slow Ink — your posts, comments and notes, the pictures you attach to them — is yours. We claim no ownership of it.

To run the app we need your permission to handle it, so you grant us alimited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, copy, transmit and display your content, and to make the technical changes needed to do that (backing it up, moving it between our providers, formatting it for your screen and, where you attached a picture, generating the smaller sizes the app shows). That licence exists only so we can operate the service for you, extends to our sub-processors only as the Privacy Policy describes, and ends when you delete the content or close your account, apart from copies sitting in backups until they age out.

We do not use your content to train machine-learning models, our own or anybody else’s.

If you send us feedback or an idea, we may use it to improve Slow Ink without owing you anything for it. That is not a claim on anything else you own.

Our software

The app, the site, the name, the design and everything in them other than your content belong to us or to our licensors. These terms give you permission to use Slow Ink as an account holder; they do not give you any other right in it.

Copyrighted material and takedown notices

If you believe something posted to Slow Ink infringes your copyright, write to hello@wallabout.studio with: (1) the material you believe infringes and where it is, (2) the work you believe is being infringed, (3) your contact details, and (4) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them and that your notice is accurate. We will act on a complete notice, tell the person who posted it, and give them a way to reply if they believe the removal was a mistake.

Ending it

You may close your account at any time from /settings/leaving — export your writing first, since closing erases it from the live database.

We may suspend or close your account if you break these terms, if keeping it open would expose us or somebody else to legal risk or harm, or if we shut the service down under section 7. Except where the breach is serious enough that we cannot, we will tell you first and give you a chance to put it right, and we will give you the chance to export your writing before it goes.

Sections 9, 13, 14, 15, 17 and 18 survive the end of this agreement.

Disclaimers

Slow Ink is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the app will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, or that any data will be preserved without loss.

Nothing here excludes any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, and some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, for lost profits, lost goodwill, or for the loss, corruption or unavailability of data — even if we were told such damage was possible.

Our total liability arising out of or relating to Slow Ink, in aggregate and whatever the legal theory, is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or 100 US dollars. While the beta is free, that figure is 100 US dollars.

This limit does not apply to liability for our own fraud, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or to anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits, in which case they apply to you only as far as that jurisdiction permits.

Indemnity

You will indemnify us against any third-party claim, and the reasonable legal costs of defending it, arising from what you posted, from your breach of these terms, or from your unlawful use of the app.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms as the app changes. If a change materially affects your rights, we will tell you by email to the address on your account, or in the app, at least 14 days before it takes effect. Continuing to use Slow Ink after that date means you accept the new terms; if you do not, close your account and we will delete your data.

Every version carries the date it was last updated at the top of this page.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and we agree that the state and federal courts sitting in Delaware have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of them.

If you are a consumer resident somewhere whose law gives you the right to bring proceedings locally, or to rely on rules that cannot be contracted out of, nothing here takes that away from you.

Talk to us first. Before starting anything formal, please write to hello@wallabout.studio and give us 30 days to sort it out. Most things are a misunderstanding and a reply.

General

• These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about Slow Ink, and replace anything said before.
• If any part of them is unenforceable, the rest stands.
• Not enforcing something once does not mean giving it up.
• You may not transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer ours to a successor of our business, on notice to you.
• Nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms.
• Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something genuinely outside our control.
• We will send notices to the email address on your account. Send yours to the address below.

Contact

Wallabout, LLC, Brooklyn, New York, United States.
hello@wallabout.studio

A real person reads that address. Questions about these terms, copyright notices, and anything there is not yet a button in the app for all go there.