Fictional product, illustrative draft. Not legal advice.
Shutterline Terms of Service¶
Draft for counsel review. Law as of 20 October 2026. This is not legal advice.
Operator: Lumenfolk Media GmbH, Spichernstrasse 12, 50672 Köln, Germany ("Lumenfolk", "we", "us"). Managing director: Theresa Brandt. Contact: legal@lumenfolk.test.
Shutterline is a free online community for hobby photographers where you can upload your own photos, comment on other people's photos, and send other users direct messages. Shutterline does not charge for access; it is funded by advertising.
These terms apply to everyone who creates a Shutterline account. Separate documents cover our content and moderation policy, our notice-and-complaint procedures, our privacy notice and our cookie notice; each is linked from the relevant section below.
1. Who can use Shutterline, and acceptance of these terms¶
You must be at least 16 years old to create a Shutterline account. By creating an account, you confirm that you are at least 16, or, if the law of your country or state sets a different minimum age for giving your own consent to an online service, that you are at least that age.
By clicking the button labelled "Create account", you agree to these Terms of Service, our [Content and Moderation Policy], and our [Privacy Notice].
[Link to the full terms, placed immediately next to this sentence and the button it names, in a colour and weight that contrasts with the surrounding text.]
We will keep a copy of these terms and make them available to you on request. This agreement is not denied legal effect only because it is in electronic form.
EU users (Germany, France, Spain and elsewhere in the EU)¶
Immediately before the "Create account" button, and with nothing else between the two, we give the technical steps to conclude this agreement, whether we file the concluded agreement and whether you can access it, the technical means to spot and correct an input error before you submit, and the languages this agreement can be concluded in (Art. 10(1)(a) to (d) Directive 2000/31/EC). We pair this with a working, not merely described, way to change your sign-up details before you submit.
We make the full terms available for you to store and reproduce, not displayed once and gone (Art. 10(3), (4) Directive 2000/31/EC). We send you an electronic acknowledgement of your account creation without undue delay; your sign-up and our acknowledgement each count as received once you or we can access them, not once sent (Art. 11(1) Directive 2000/31/EC), paired with a working input-error correction step before you submit (Art. 11(2) Directive 2000/31/EC).
We keep a standing, permanently linked legal-notice page (our name, geographic address, an email address for rapid contact, our trade register entry and VAT details) separate from this sign-up screen; see our [Impressum] (Art. 5(1) Directive 2000/31/EC).
Germany¶
Because Shutterline does not charge for an account, no order button exists and the order-button wording rules (§ 312j BGB) do not apply to account creation. [If Shutterline ever introduces a paid tier, the order-button wording duty and the full EGBGB Art. 246a pre-contract information duty would then apply to that paid sign-up flow, and the five fixed-wording controls listed in the drafting note at the end of this document would need to be checked together.]
United States¶
We pair the assent sentence with whichever control actually completes account creation, and name that control by its real, current label; a sentence that says "by signing up you agree" next to a button labelled only "Continue" does not establish assent, because the words do not match the button. We update this sentence whenever the button's label changes.
We place the sentence on the same screen as the control, in a font size and colour comparably prominent to the surrounding text, directly next to the control, and visible without scrolling. Where the terms are reached by hyperlink rather than shown in full, the link is rendered in a colour that contrasts with the plain text around it and is recognisable as a link. No unrelated question, offer or control sits between this notice and the button it governs.
Where sign-up spans more than one screen, we repeat the notice-and-control pairing on the one screen where you take the action that completes sign-up. We do not rely on a pre-checked assent box.
This agreement, a signature, and a record under it are not denied legal effect, validity or enforceability only because they are in electronic form (15 U.S.C. § 7001(a)(1), (2)).
2. No charge for Shutterline¶
Shutterline does not charge you anything to create an account or use the core service (uploading photos, commenting, direct messaging, browsing the feed). Shutterline is funded by advertising, both plain contextual advertising next to the photo feed and advertising personalised to what you have looked at and liked on Shutterline. See our [Privacy Notice] and [Cookie Notice] for how that personalisation works and the consent it rests on.
We do not currently charge for any part of Shutterline. If we ever introduce a paid feature, we will tell you clearly what it costs and ask for your separate agreement before charging you; nothing in these terms authorises a future charge without that separate step.
[Open point, see open-points.md item 19: whether ad-funded processing of your personal data counts as "paying" with personal data under the EU Digital Content Directive's data-as-price rule is a question for counsel. This document is drafted on the position that Shutterline is a free service with no price in money or in data beyond what the service itself and its advertising funding require; if counsel takes a different view, additional EU consumer-protection documents (a withdrawal-information notice) would be needed.]
3. Changes to these terms¶
We may update these terms from time to time. Where a change is more than a minor clarification, correction of an error, or an adjustment needed to keep Shutterline lawful, safe or secure, we will tell you about it in advance, state the reason for the change and when it takes effect, and give you a reasonable period before the change applies.
A change does not apply to a dispute that already exists between you and us before the change takes effect. We will not ask you to accept a change through silence or continued use alone where the change affects a right you already have; where the law lets us treat continued use as acceptance, we will still tell you clearly, before the change takes effect, what continuing to use Shutterline after that date means, and what you can do instead. If you do not agree to a change, your option is to stop using Shutterline and delete your account before the change takes effect.
EU users¶
A term letting us change these terms without a valid, contract-stated reason is itself treated as unfair and void against you; so is a term letting us change a characteristic of Shutterline without a valid reason, however that term is framed (Annex points (j), (k) Directive 93/13/EEC). We state the reason and the method for a change in these terms themselves, not only in the notice we send when a change happens.
This clause relies on the carve-out that lets any business reserve the right to alter an indefinite-duration contract's terms unilaterally, provided you get reasonable notice and stay free to leave; it still needs a valid, contract-stated reason for a change falling outside that carve-out, and for any change to a characteristic of Shutterline (Annex point 2(b), second sentence, Directive 93/13/EEC).
Germany¶
A clause letting us change these terms through your silence or continued use, with no substantive limit on what can change, unreasonably disadvantages you and is invalid, even where a separate statute also permits a deemed-consent mechanism for that kind of change (BGH, judgment of 27 April 2021, XI ZR 26/20). This is why the wording above rests on actual notice and your own choice to continue or leave.
United States¶
No change to these terms applies to a dispute that has already accrued before the change takes effect, and no change binds a person who has only browsed Shutterline without creating an account to a changed arbitration or forum term (9 U.S.C. §§ 401, 402; Heckman v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., 120 F.4th 670 (9th Cir. 2024)). We do not promise that a change takes effect only on explicit re-acceptance and then apply it through mere continued use instead.
4. Account, suspension and termination¶
You are responsible for keeping your account credentials secure and for activity on your account. You can delete your account at any time from your account settings.
We may restrict, suspend or terminate your access to Shutterline or your account where we reasonably consider your use of Shutterline is illegal or breaches these terms, our [Content and Moderation Policy] or our [Acceptable Use] section below. See our [Content and Moderation Policy] and [Notice and Complaint Procedures] for the process we follow, the statement of reasons you get, and how to raise an internal complaint.
EU users¶
Where we suspend or terminate your access for repeatedly breaching this clause with manifestly illegal content, our policy for that is set out, with concrete examples and a stated duration, in our [Content and Moderation Policy] (Art. 23(1), (4) Regulation (EU) 2022/2065). A misuse suspension of this kind is preceded by a warning and a case-by-case assessment; it is not imposed as a blanket, discretionary measure.
United States¶
We are not treated as the publisher or speaker of information you or another user provides, and reviewing, filtering, labelling, restricting or removing it does not change that (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1)). This statement covers only content we did not ourselves create or develop (47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(3)). We describe our content-moderation activity as a voluntary, good-faith exercise of discretion, not a guaranteed or contracted-for review of every item (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2)(A), (c)(2)(B)).
Where we have not already done so elsewhere, we give you notice, when you create your account, that parental control protections are commercially available that may help limit a minor's access to harmful material; see [link to list of current providers] (47 U.S.C. § 230(d)).
5. Your content and our licence to use it¶
You keep ownership of the photos, comments, messages and other content you post, upload or submit through Shutterline. By posting it, you give Lumenfolk a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt for technical formats, publicly display and distribute that content, only to the extent needed to operate, promote and improve Shutterline (for example, showing your public photos in the feed, in search, and on your profile, and generating technical versions such as thumbnails). This licence ends when you delete the content or close your account, except for a copy we keep as required by law, a backup kept on our ordinary backup cycle, or content another user has already shared further within Shutterline before your deletion.
Direct messages are not publicly displayed; the licence above covers only what is needed to deliver, store and let the recipient view a message you send.
You confirm that posting your content does not infringe a third party's rights and that you have the rights needed to grant this licence. We do not check content before it is posted and are not responsible for it; we review, restrict, label or remove content under the process in our [Content and Moderation Policy], on our own initiative or in response to a report, and doing so does not by itself make us the author or publisher of that content.
EU users¶
Because Shutterline is a hosting service under the Digital Services Act, we state in these terms, in clear, plain, intelligible and user-friendly language, any restriction we impose on using Shutterline for content you or another user provides, and the policies, procedures, measures and tools we use for content moderation (Art. 14(1) Regulation (EU) 2022/2065); see our [Content and Moderation Policy]. We do not treat this licence, or the sentence above about not checking content first, as a blanket disclaimer of liability: the hosting exemption that actually shields us applies only while its own conditions hold, and does not apply where a user acts under our authority or control (Art. 6(1), (2) Regulation (EU) 2022/2065). We do not run blanket pre-screening or general monitoring of content, and nothing in this clause should be read as promising that we do (Art. 8 Regulation (EU) 2022/2065).
Germany¶
The German standard-terms-control rules (§§ 305c, 307 BGB) apply to this licence grant and to the no-pre-check sentence; see our checklist review in annotations.md.
United States¶
Section 230 lets us state that we are not treated as the publisher or speaker of information a user provides, and that reviewing, filtering, labelling, restricting or removing content does not make us one (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1)). This statement is limited to content we did not ourselves create or develop (47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(3)). We describe our content-moderation tools as a voluntary, good-faith exercise of discretion, not a guaranteed or contracted-for review (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2)(A), (c)(2)(B)).
Where Shutterline stores material at your direction, our notice-and-takedown process under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is in Section 9 (Intellectual property) and our [Content and Moderation Policy] below; this section does not itself describe that process.
6. Acceptable use¶
You agree not to use Shutterline to post, upload, transmit or otherwise make available any content that is illegal, infringes a third party's rights, or is otherwise against our [Content and Moderation Policy]; and not to use Shutterline for any purpose that is illegal. You agree not to attempt to circumvent a restriction we have placed on using Shutterline, not to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of Shutterline or any connected system, and not to access or use Shutterline by any automated means (scraping, crawling or similar) except through a documented interface we have made available for that purpose.
You agree not to use Shutterline's direct-messaging feature, or any other feature of Shutterline, to send, or to help send, an unsolicited commercial electronic message that misstates who it is from, carries a subject line or preview you have reason to think would mislead a reasonable recipient, or lacks a working way for the recipient to ask not to receive further messages. You agree not to use an automated means to register for multiple accounts in order to send messages that would otherwise break this paragraph, and not to relay such a message through a system you do not have authorisation to use.
We state this policy, with examples of what counts as a breach, in our [Content and Moderation Policy], so that you can read it before using Shutterline; see that document and our [Notice and Complaint Procedures] for how a reported or detected breach is reviewed and what happens to the account.
EU users¶
We state the restrictions on using Shutterline in clear, plain, intelligible, user-friendly and unambiguous language, in these terms, publicly available in an easily accessible, machine-readable format (Art. 14(1) Regulation (EU) 2022/2065). We apply and enforce this section diligently, objectively and proportionately, weighing the rights and legitimate interests of everyone affected, including your freedom of expression (Art. 14(4) Regulation (EU) 2022/2065). We do not use this section as a licence to screen content before it is posted or to actively hunt for breaches (Art. 8 Regulation (EU) 2022/2065).
Germany¶
The German standard-terms-control check on a prohibited-conduct list (§§ 305c, 307 BGB) applies to this list; see annotations.md.
United States¶
We may restrict access to material we consider, in good faith, to be obscene, lewd, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable, whether or not that material is constitutionally protected, as a voluntary exercise of discretion, not a promised or guaranteed screening service (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2)(A), (c)(2)(B)). The direct-messaging restriction above matches what CAN-SPAM actually requires: no materially false or misleading header information (15 U.S.C. § 7704(a)(1)), no misleading subject heading (15 U.S.C. § 7704(a)(2)), and no message once a recipient has opted out, sent more than 10 business days after the opt-out request arrives (15 U.S.C. § 7704(a)(4)(A)(i)).
7. Content moderation, reports and complaints¶
Our full content and moderation policy, including how to report a photo, a comment or a message, what statement of reasons you get, how to raise an internal complaint, and the out-of-court settlement route available to you, is in our [Content and Moderation Policy] and [Notice and Complaint Procedures]. Those documents are part of these terms.
8. Intellectual property¶
Lumenfolk and its licensors own all right, title and interest in Shutterline, including its software, databases, trademarks, logos, and all other material we or our licensors make available through it, apart from content users post, upload or submit (see Section 5). Nothing in this agreement transfers any of that ownership to you; we reserve every right we do not expressly grant.
EU users¶
We state the trademark and other non-software intellectual property ownership as a separate statement from any software-copyright statement, since the Software Directive's rules do not extend to a trademark or logo (Art. 8, first paragraph, Directive 2009/24/EC).
United States: copyright notices and takedowns¶
Lumenfolk has designated an agent to receive notices of claimed copyright infringement. A notice must be in writing and must contain: a signature of the person authorised to act for the owner of the right claimed to be infringed; identification of the copyrighted work claimed to be infringed; identification of the material claimed to be infringing, with information reasonably sufficient for us to locate it; the complaining party's contact information; a statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that the use is not authorised; and a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the notice is accurate and that the complaining party is authorised to act for the rights owner. We may remove or disable access to material we reasonably believe is infringing.
Where we remove material a user posted in response to such a notice, we notify the affected user, who may send a counter notice; unless the original notifier tells us it has filed a court action, we forward a valid counter notice to the original notifier and restore the material between ten and fourteen business days afterward (17 U.S.C. § 512(c), (g)).
Our designated agent's name, address, phone number and email address are published on [link to designated agent page] and separately filed with the US Copyright Office; both steps are required together (17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(2)(A), (B)).
Our repeat-infringer policy (terminating the account of a user who repeatedly infringes copyright) is set out in our [Content and Moderation Policy] (17 U.S.C. § 512(i)(1)).
9. Direct messages¶
Shutterline's direct-messaging feature lets you send messages to other users. Messages you send are delivered and stored to let the recipient view them; see Section 5 for the limited licence that covers this. We apply the same acceptable-use restrictions (Section 6) and the same reporting and moderation process (Section 7) to direct messages as to public content, adapted for the fact that a message is seen only by its recipient rather than publicly: a report about a direct message is reviewed with regard to the message and its context as reported, since we do not otherwise access the content of messages you have not reported.
10. Advertising¶
Shutterline shows you two kinds of advertising: plain contextual advertising next to the photo feed, which does not depend on your individual activity, and advertising personalised to what you have looked at and liked on Shutterline. See our [Privacy Notice] for the legal basis for each and our [Cookie Notice] for the consent that personalised advertising rests on.
EU users¶
Each advertisement is labelled, clearly, concisely, unambiguously and in real time, as an advertisement, naming who it is presented on behalf of, who paid for it if different, and the main targeting parameters and how to change them (Art. 26(1) Regulation (EU) 2022/2065). You can declare that your own content is or contains commercial communications, and other users then see that marking clearly and in real time (Art. 26(2) Regulation (EU) 2022/2065). We do not show you advertising based on profiling that uses special categories of personal data, and we do not show advertising based on profiling where we are aware, with reasonable certainty, that you are a minor (Art. 26(3), 28(2) Regulation (EU) 2022/2065).
11. Liability and disclaimers¶
Nothing in these terms limits or excludes a liability that the law does not let us limit or exclude. In particular, nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury, for our own fraud or intentional wrongdoing, for a grossly negligent breach of duty, for a negligent breach of a duty essential to this contract, or for liability a specific statute states cannot be contracted away.
Outside what the paragraph above protects, our liability for a negligent breach of a duty that is not essential to this contract is limited to the loss that was foreseeable and ordinary for an agreement of this kind. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit or lost data, except where the paragraph above says this clause cannot limit that liability.
We are not liable for a problem caused by your own misuse of Shutterline, by unauthorised changes to it, or by a cause outside our control, unless the law says this clause cannot exclude that liability.
EU users¶
Nothing in this clause reaches liability for death or personal injury caused by our own act or omission (Annex point (a) Directive 93/13/EEC), or for a clause that would unduly exclude or limit your legal rights against us for non-performance or defective performance (Annex point (b) Directive 93/13/EEC). We write this clause in plain, intelligible language that lets you work out its real economic consequences (Art. 5 Directive 93/13/EEC).
Germany¶
No clause here excludes or limits liability for death, personal injury, or harm to health arising from a negligent breach of duty by us or an intentional or negligent breach by our statutory representative or vicarious agent (§ 309 Nr. 7 Buchst. a BGB). No clause excludes or limits liability for other damage arising from a grossly negligent breach, except the narrow approved-tariff-transport and state-approved lottery carve-outs the statute itself names (§ 309 Nr. 7 Buchst. b BGB).
United States¶
To the maximum extent the law allows, Shutterline is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, without warranties of any kind, and our total liability for a claim relating to Shutterline is limited to [the greater of USD 100 or the amount, if any, you paid us in the 12 months before the claim]. We are not liable for incidental or consequential damages, including lost profit or lost data.
For a California consumer, this clause does not exempt us from our own fraud, from willful injury to another's person or property, or from a violation of law (Cal. Civ. Code § 1668). No predispute arbitration clause in these terms purports to waive, in any forum, a California consumer's right to seek public injunctive relief under the Consumers Legal Remedies Act, the unfair competition law, or the false advertising law (McGill v. Citibank, N.A., Cal. Supreme Ct. No. S224086; Cal. Civ. Code § 1751).
12. Governing law and jurisdiction¶
EU users¶
This agreement is governed by German law. This choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of any mandatory rule of the law that would otherwise apply, in the absence of this clause, under the law of the country where you have your habitual residence (Rome I Art. 6(2)). Where we direct our activity to your country of habitual residence, that country's mandatory consumer-protection rules apply regardless of this clause (Rome I Art. 6(1)).
You may bring proceedings against us in the courts of Germany, or, at your own choice, in the courts of your own EU member state of domicile; we may bring proceedings against you only in the courts of your own member state of domicile (Brussels Ia Art. 17(1)(c), Art. 18(1), (2)). This dual-forum rule cannot be narrowed by an agreement reached before a dispute arises, except in the narrow circumstances Brussels Ia itself allows (Art. 19(1) to (3)).
United States¶
This agreement and any dispute arising out of or in connection with it are governed by the law of [governing law jurisdiction, e.g. the State of New York], without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. The courts of [named court or jurisdiction] have non-exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute arising out of or in connection with this agreement that is not resolved through the arbitration process in Section 13.
13. Dispute resolution¶
EU users¶
This section does not apply a mandatory pre-dispute arbitration requirement or a class-action waiver to you. If you have a complaint, use our [Notice and Complaint Procedures] first; if that does not resolve it, you can bring an unresolved complaint to any certified out-of-court dispute settlement body under the Digital Services Act (see our [Content and Moderation Policy]), and your right to go to court at any stage, in the forum stated in Section 12, is not affected.
United States¶
[Open point, see open-points.md item 11 and 26: whether Lumenfolk wants a mandatory individual arbitration and class-action-waiver clause for US users is a commercial decision, not yet confirmed. If so, drafted wording would go here, with an express carve-out preserving a California consumer's right to seek public injunctive relief (McGill v. Citibank, N.A.) and preserving a claimant's election of a judicial forum for a sexual assault or sexual harassment dispute accruing on or after 3 March 2022, which cannot be routed to arbitration or delegated to an arbitrator regardless of what a delegation clause says (9 U.S.C. §§ 401(2), 402(a), (b)). Drafting this clause before that confirmation risks delivering wording Lumenfolk does not want; it is deliberately left blank here.]
14. Dispute-resolution body notice (Germany)¶
[Placeholder, see annotations.md Part D: Lumenfolk Media GmbH is not willing or obliged to take part in dispute-resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration body (Verbraucherschlichtungsstelle) (§ 36 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 VSBG). If Lumenfolk in fact wants to participate, this sentence is replaced with the name and internet address of the specific competent body instead (§ 36 Abs. 1 Nr. 2 VSBG).]
15. Severability, entire agreement and notices¶
If a provision of these terms is found invalid or unenforceable, the rest of these terms stay in force; we will replace the invalid provision with one that is valid and comes as close as possible to its original intent, to the extent the law allows. These terms, together with our [Content and Moderation Policy], [Notice and Complaint Procedures], [Privacy Notice] and [Cookie Notice], are the entire agreement between you and Lumenfolk about Shutterline.
We will send you a notice under these terms to the email address on your account, or show it to you in-product; you can contact us at legal@lumenfolk.test.
Drafting note: the five fixed-wording controls¶
Shutterline currently has no paid order, cancellation or withdrawal flow, so none of the five German fixed-wording controls (the order button, the two cancellation-flow buttons, and the two withdrawal-function controls) apply today. If Shutterline ever introduces a paid feature, these five controls would need to be checked together as a set before launch; see references/prescribed-wording.md PW-DE-1 to PW-DE-5 in the skill and annotations.md for the full list.