Terms of use

1. Purpose and acceptance

These terms set out the basis on which the publisher makes PaintCards available, and the rights and obligations of everyone involved.

Creating an account, and more generally using the service at all, means accepting these terms in full. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

The service is intended for people with the legal capacity to enter into a contract under French law. A minor may only create an account with the consent of their legal guardian.

2. What the service does

PaintCards is an online service for recording how a miniature was painted and keeping that recipe as a collectible-style card. It includes:

• a paint catalogue, with colours, ranges and calculated matches between products from different brands;
• recipes made up of ordered steps, paints, mixes, techniques and a photograph of the result;
• card generation, preview and export, front and back;
• printing A4 sheets of nine cards;
• a reading mode, meant to be used while painting;
• community features: publishing a recipe publicly, revocable share links, and reporting content.

The publisher may change what the service includes, on the terms set out in section 9.

3. Accounts

Using the personal features of the service requires an account, which requires a valid email address and its verification.

You agree to give accurate information and to keep it up to date. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for everything done from your account. Tell the publisher without delay if you become aware of unauthorised use.

You can delete your account at any time from the settings screen, or by writing to the contact address.

4. Your content and intellectual property

You keep every right you hold in what you publish on the service, including your recipe text and the photographs you upload ("your content").

So that the service can work at all, you grant the publisher a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence, lasting as long as the content is stored, to host, store, reproduce, resize, crop according to the framing you set, display and transmit your content. That licence is limited to the technical operations needed to run the service and to show your content to the people you choose to show it to. It carries no separate commercial exploitation, no assignment and no editorial rights. It ends when the content is deleted, subject to the time it takes to clear backups.

By uploading an image you confirm that you hold the necessary rights in it, or have permission to publish it here. In particular, please make sure you are not publishing:

• someone else's photograph without their permission;
• a screenshot taken from another site or application;
• official artwork, illustrations or promotional images belonging to a game publisher, a manufacturer or any other rights holder;
• an image of an identifiable person without their consent.

You are solely responsible for what you publish. You agree to indemnify the publisher against any claim, action, award, damages or reasonable costs of defence arising from content you published in breach of these terms or of a third party’s rights.

For your content, the publisher acts as a host within the meaning of article 6-I-2 of the LCEN: it stores content supplied by users without selecting it editorially, without modifying it and without being its author. Under article 6-I-7 of the same law it has no general obligation to monitor what it stores, nor to look actively for facts indicating unlawful activity. It becomes liable only if, having actual knowledge that content is manifestly unlawful, it fails to act promptly to remove it.

5. Reporting unlawful content

Anyone can report content they believe is unlawful. There are two routes:

• from within the service, using the report control on any publicly visible recipe;
• by email to [TO BE COMPLETED].

To be actionable, and following the form set out in article 6-I-5 of the LCEN, a report sent by email should include:

• the date of the report;
• who you are: name, email address and, for a company, its legal form, name and registered office;
• a precise description of the content and exactly where it is, in particular the address of the page;
• why you believe the content is unlawful, citing the legal or contractual grounds and, where relevant, evidence of your rights;
• where the situation calls for it, a copy of what you sent the author of the content, or an explanation of why they could not be reached.

The publisher reviews every actionable report and promptly removes or blocks access to content that is manifestly unlawful. Decisions taken this way are recorded in an internal log.

A report that is plainly abusive or unfounded may expose the person making it to liability under the law.

6. Acceptable use

When using the service, you must not:

• publish content that is unlawful, defamatory, abusive, hateful, violent, pornographic, or that infringes anyone's rights;
• impersonate anyone, or claim a status you do not have;
• extract the data in bulk by automated means, in particular where doing so degrades availability or reconstitutes a substantial part of the catalogue;
• work around the technical limits of the service, including storage quotas, rate limits and access controls;
• reverse engineer the service, except where the law expressly allows it;
• try to reach data or accounts belonging to other painters, or otherwise interfere with how the service runs.

The publisher applies a storage quota per account and rate limits on requests. These protect availability and are not a commitment to any particular capacity.

7. Trade marks and independence

PaintCards is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or approved by any paint manufacturer or games publisher, Games Workshop included.

The brand names, range names and product names shown in the paint catalogue and in recipes belong to their respective owners. They are used purely descriptively, so that a painter can identify the product being referred to, and that use is neither a claim of rights nor an assertion of any commercial connection.

Any rights holder who considers that a name used by the service infringes their rights is invited to write to the legal contact address.

8. Paint data and colour matching

The swatches shown by the service are indicative digital colours, rendered in sRGB on an uncalibrated screen. They do not faithfully reproduce the colour of a paint once applied and dried, and are in no sense a colour-match guarantee.

Matches between paints from different brands, highlight and shadow chains, and the suggestions built on them are calculated automatically from the colour values in the catalogue, using a perceptual distance (ΔE2000) and a grouping by paint behaviour. They are there to help you decide.

These results may be incomplete or wrong, and they do not guarantee that two products are physically equivalent. A small colour distance says nothing about finish, opacity, flow, coverage, the undercoat a paint needs, or variation between manufacturing batches and under different lighting. Test for yourself before putting a paint on a model you care about.

The paint catalogue is assembled from public sources and manual entry. The publisher does not warrant that it is complete, current or correct in every entry. Painters can report a wrong value from the paint it belongs to.

9. Availability and changes

The publisher works to keep the service available but does not guarantee that it will be. Access may be suspended temporarily, in particular for maintenance, updates, work by the host, or events outside the publisher’s control.

The service changes over time. The publisher may add, alter or withdraw non-essential features without notice. Removing an essential feature, or making a change that would materially restrict how the service can be used, will be announced to painters by reasonable means beforehand.

Keep your own copies of anything you would not want to lose. The exports the service offers, cards and print sheets, exist for exactly that.

10. Liability and warranties

The service is provided as is and as available. To the extent the law allows, the publisher does not warrant that it will be free of errors or interruptions, or that it will suit any particular purpose you have in mind.

To the extent the law allows, the publisher is not liable for indirect loss, for the consequences of a painting decision taken on the strength of the colour data described in section 8, or for content lost because you deleted it yourself.

Nothing in these terms sets aside the mandatory rights you have under French or European Union law, in particular consumer law, or limits the publisher’s liability for gross negligence, wilful misconduct or personal injury.

11. Termination

You may stop using the service and delete your account at any time, without notice and without giving a reason.

The publisher may suspend or delete an account for breach of these terms, in particular repeated publication of protected content that has been the subject of well-founded reports, deliberate circumvention of technical limits, or attacks on the security of the service.

Except where the seriousness of the breach or a legal obligation requires immediate action, suspension is preceded by a warning giving you the chance to put things right. Removing a reported piece of content does not by itself close its author’s account.

12. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms are governed by French law.

If a dispute arises, the parties will try to settle it amicably before going to court. Failing agreement, the dispute will be brought before the courts having jurisdiction under the ordinary rules. A consumer keeps the right to bring proceedings where they live and to use a consumer mediator free of charge.

13. Changes to these terms, and contact

The publisher may change these terms to reflect changes in the service, in the applicable law or in case law. The date at the top of this page says when they last changed.

A substantial change will be announced by reasonable means before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that date means accepting the new version; if you do not accept it, you can delete your account.

Questions about these terms can go to [TO BE COMPLETED]. Legal questions and content reports should go to [TO BE COMPLETED].