Terms of service

What this is

FreshPlastic is a community log of when climbing gyms strip their walls and set new routes, plus a dated photo archive of those walls. Reading it is open to anyone. Following a gym needs nothing but an email address. Posting a reset needs a free account, because a post goes out to every follower of that gym and ought to have a name attached to it.

Your account

• You must be at least 13 years old to create one.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account.
• One person per account. Do not create accounts to get around a suspension.
• You can delete your account at any time from your account settings.

What you post

You keep ownership of everything you post. By posting it you give REEDSTER LLC a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display and distribute it as part of the site, including in the emails we send to followers of that gym, and to use it to train and test the software described below. That licence lasts as long as the post is up.

Using photos to improve the software

Every photo uploaded here is read by software of ours before it goes up: it decides whether the picture really is a climbing wall, and it finds and blurs out any people in it. Both of those jobs are done by a model, and most of what that model learns from is synthetic: a 3D gym we render ourselves rather than photograph, textured with openly licensed images that carry their attribution with them. What a render cannot supply is what a real gym in real light looks like, and that is the part real photographs do. So the licence above also covers using your photos, and the labels our reviewers add to them, to train and evaluate that model.

That is the whole of the permission, and these are its limits:

• Only to improve this site’s own software. Not to train anything sold, published, or shared with anyone else.
• Not sold, not licensed on, not handed to a third party as data.
• Not used to identify anyone. The photos used are the published ones, which are the copies with people already blurred out. See the privacy policy for exactly what that means.

If that ever needs to change, we will say so here first, not afterwards.

Only post photos you actually took, or have the right to share. Do not post photos in which someone is identifiable without their agreement.

Because the archive is only useful if it is continuous, posts and photos stay up after an account is deleted, with your name removed. If you need a specific photo taken down, ask us and we will take it down.

When we take a photo down, this is exactly what happens to it: the photo is deleted, and so is every label anybody made on it. It is not in the next training run, and it is not in the set the model is measured against. That is a thing we can do, so it is a thing we promise.

And the limit on it, stated plainly rather than buried: a model that has already been trained cannot be made to unlearn a photo it has seen. What is left behind is a set of numbers, not your photograph. But we are not going to pretend we can reach into a model that is already trained and take a picture back out of it, because nobody can. What we can promise is everything from the next run onwards, and that is what we promise.

What not to post

Keep it about climbing. Specifically, do not post:

• Advertising, promotion, affiliate links, or anything pushing people to your social accounts or another site.
• Content unrelated to a gym reset.
• Anything harassing, hateful, threatening or sexual.
• Anything untrue, such as a reset that did not happen.
• Other people's personal information.
• Automated or bulk submissions.

Submissions are screened automatically, by pattern matching and by a machine classifier, before they go live. Automated screening gets things wrong in both directions. If yours was refused and should not have been, write to us and a person will look at it.

Measurement

We count pageviews so we can tell which parts of the site are worth keeping. The counter sets no cookies and does not build a profile of you, which is why this site has no cookie banner. It honours Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control, and blocking it breaks nothing. What it collects, and how to switch it off, is set out in the privacy policy.

Moderation and termination

We can remove any post and suspend or close any account, with or without notice, if we think these terms have been broken. We are not obliged to host anything. Where we can give a reason, we will.

Gym data

Gym names, locations and addresses come from OpenStreetMap and are used under the Open Database Licence. That data can be wrong or out of date. Corrections to a gym's location or details belong upstream in OpenStreetMap, and they flow back here. Links to gym websites are provided for convenience; those sites are not ours and we are not responsible for them.

No promises about accuracy

Everything here is posted by other climbers. We do not verify that a reset happened, that the grades are right, or that the photos are current. Do not drive across a city on the strength of a post here without checking with the gym. The site is provided "as is", without warranties of any kind, and we do not promise it will be available or uninterrupted.

Climbing is dangerous

Nothing on this site is instruction or safety advice. Grades, route counts and photos say nothing about whether a climb is safe for you. Climbing carries a risk of serious injury or death, and how you manage that risk is between you and your gym.

Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, REEDSTER LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of your use of the site. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits, in which case they apply to you only as far as the law permits.

Changes and governing law

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects you we will say so on the site and by email rather than editing this page quietly. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept it.

These terms are governed by the laws of the state in which REEDSTER LLC is organised, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

Questions about these terms go to [email protected].

See also the privacy policy.