Terms

These are the agreements between you and us. We have written them as short and as plainly as we could, because terms you cannot read are worth nothing.

This is a translation. The Dutch text is the binding one.

Article 1. Who we are

ThatMinute is a service of Evello. Evello is the party you enter into the agreement with.

Article 2. What this covers

These terms apply to everyone who uses ThatMinute: when you buy a minute, but also when you only look at the clock or leave a congratulation on someone else's page.

The Dutch text is the legally binding one. Translations are here to help you; where a translation says something different from the Dutch text, the Dutch text applies.

How we handle your data is not here but in our privacy statement, which belongs with this document.

Article 3. What you are buying

You are not buying ownership of time. Time belongs to nobody, and we cannot give it to you.

What you are buying is this:

• a lasting, exclusive entry for that one minute in our register,
• the right to decide what is shown on that minute, within the limits of article 7,
• and that we keep and show the page that goes with it, for as long as ThatMinute exists.

A minute is one minute on one date, unique worldwide, recorded by us in UTC and shown to you in your own time. There is exactly one owner per minute, and while that minute is yours nobody else can buy it. That is not a promise of ours but a rule in our database: two people buying the same minute in the same second both run into the same latch, and exactly one gets through.

We say "buy a minute" because that is what it feels like. This article says what it is.

Article 4. Price and payment

All prices on the site are in euros and include VAT. The price you see at the checkout is the price you pay; nothing is added.

What a minute costs depends on which minute it is. An ordinary minute costs the least, a whole hour more, and midnight the most. You see which price applies to your minute before you pay.

Payment goes through Stripe. Your card or bank details arrive at Stripe and not at us; we only see that a payment was made, how much, and under which reference.

Your minute becomes yours once the payment has reached us. Until then we hold it for you for ten minutes, so that nobody buys it out from under you while you are filling in the form.

Article 5. Delivery and the reveal

The moment you have paid, you get everything at once: the entry for your minute, your private page, the link to share, the admin link that lets you change anything, and your certificate. That is true even if the minute you chose still lies in the future. You have it already; what comes later is only the moment others get to see it.

For a minute in the future it works like this. Your public headline appears on the clock when that minute arrives. Until then a visitor sees only that the minute is taken and when it will be revealed, never what it says. You can have your private page open at a different moment than the minute itself, for instance if you want to show it during a dinner. What sits behind that reveal is not released by us beforehand, not even to a visitor reading the page source.

Delivery is therefore complete the moment you pay. That matters for the next article.

Article 6. No cooling-off period, but an exchange

No cooling-off period. You are buying digital content that is delivered right away. At the checkout you tick a box with which you expressly ask for that immediate delivery and confirm that it ends your statutory fourteen day right of withdrawal. It is a real choice: without that tick there is no purchase. You get the confirmation of it by mail, so you can find it again.

Exchanging. Picked the wrong date or time? Then we exchange it, because what you want is the right minute and not your money back.

• Once, free, within fourteen days of your purchase.
• To a free minute at the same price level. If you want to go from an ordinary minute to a whole hour or to midnight, you buy that one separately; there is no topping up.
• Your share link stays the same. Everyone who already has it from you needs nothing new.
• Your message, your photographs and the congratulations come along.
• The minute you leave behind becomes free again for someone else.

You do the exchange yourself, through your admin link.

Refunds. Only where we fail to deliver:

• your headline is refused at review and you do not want an alternative,
• you were charged twice,
• the minute turned out to be taken already,
• or your minute is lost through something on our side.

Beyond that we do not refund. If you delete your moment yourself that is your own choice, as the screen you do it on says, and there is no money back.

Article 7. What you may post

ThatMinute is for personal moments. Births, wedding days, first meetings, farewells. That is what we keep it for.

This is not allowed:

• advertising, offers, discount codes, or a company name used as advertising,
• links, telephone numbers and @-handles in your public headline,
• hatred, threats, discrimination, harassment or the glorification of violence,
• sexually explicit material,
• photographs or data of identifiable others that you are not entitled to post,
• photographs of children, unless you are their parent or guardian,
• claiming a disaster, an attack or someone else's suffering as your moment.

You warrant that you hold the rights to everything you post. That includes music and imagery made by others.

Article 8. Review and enforcement

Every public headline goes through a review before it reaches the clock. Your longer message and the photographs on your private page do not: those are yours, and we only see them if somebody points us at something.

That review is a set of fixed rules plus a person. The rules catch what is not allowed in any case, such as links and telephone numbers, and they hold back headlines falling on a sensitive date. Anything the rules cannot settle goes to a person. No computer decides about your moment without someone being able to look at it. At this time none of your text goes to a language model; if that ever changes, it will be in our privacy statement first.

Where something does not meet article 7 we can refuse it, hide it or remove it. In the last resort we withdraw a minute, and then we refund you. We do that as little as we possibly can, because it is your moment and not ours.

Do you disagree with a decision? Write to [email protected]. You get an answer from a person within fourteen days, and that is never the same decision repeated without thought.

Article 9. Reporting content

If you see something that does not belong, or it is your photograph that somebody else posted, report it. The route is on our contact page.

Put the link to the moment in your report and say what is wrong with it. For copyright, add why the rights are yours and how we can reach you.

What we do: we confirm that we have your report, we assess it, and within fourteen days we say what we decide and why. If it is serious we hide the moment first and look afterwards. Whoever posted something we take down hears from us as well, unless that is not possible.

Article 10. Your rights in what you post

Your photographs, your videos and your text stay yours. We do not become their owner.

You give us only what we need to make your moment work: storing, showing, resizing and displaying what you post on different screens. That right lasts as long as your moment does and ends when you delete it.

If we want to show your moment in our own materials, we ask you separately and each time. That permission is not hidden in this article.

Article 11. Congratulations and reactions

As the owner you decide whether visitors can react, whether you want to approve reactions first, or whether you switch them off altogether. You can remove any reaction, without explanation.

We only step in where a reaction conflicts with article 7.

If you write a reaction on someone else's moment, you are giving that person permission to show your name and your text on that page. Reactions never appear on the public clock.

Article 12. How long we keep things, and what happens if we stop

Your moment stays for as long as ThatMinute exists. We put no end date on it and we do not let it lapse.

Should ThatMinute ever stop, this applies:

• we announce it at least six months beforehand, by mail to every owner's address,
• we make sure you can download everything you posted: your message, your photographs, the congratulations,
• and that download stays open for those whole six months.

This article is here because people leave letters to the future with us. Then you deserve to know what happens if we are no longer around.

Article 13. Handing a minute over

You can give your minute to someone else. You fill in their email address, they get an invitation, and nothing changes until they accept it. So a typo in the address never costs you your minute.

After the handover they are the owner and get an admin link of their own; yours stops working. That you once bought the minute stays in our records, because that is the payment that belongs to you.

An invitation that is not accepted in time lapses by itself.

Article 14. Availability

We do our best to keep the site running, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. Sometimes there is maintenance, and sometimes something breaks.

One thing in particular, because it belongs to this product: the clock and the reveal run on our server time, and your device or connection may differ from it. If a reveal arrives with you a few seconds later than with your sister across the table, that is not a failure on our part.

Article 15. Liability

If something goes wrong that we are responsible for, we compensate at most what you paid for your minute. We do not compensate consequential loss.

That limit does not apply where the damage is caused by our intent or conscious recklessness, and not in case of death or personal injury. Your statutory rights as a consumer in the event of a defect always remain; nothing in this article affects them.

Article 16. Your admin link

You do not need an account to buy a minute. Your admin link is your key: whoever holds that link can change your moment. So keep it as carefully as a password and do not forward it.

The link for sharing is a different link. It gives access to the page only, not to the administration.

Lost your admin link? Sign in with the email address you bought under and you will find your moments again. We cannot tell whether someone holding your link really is you, and that is exactly why we do not leave it lying anywhere else.

Article 17. Age

If you are under eighteen, buy only with the permission of your parents or guardian. Reacting to someone else's moment is allowed from sixteen.

We do not actively check this. We write it down because it applies, not because we can enforce it.

Article 18. The historical canon

The clock also carries moments the world has not forgotten: a moon landing, a goal, a day everybody remembers. We put those there ourselves. They are not for sale and they have no owner.

Every canon moment says where we checked the time. Where there is a photograph it comes from Wikimedia Commons and its author and licence are named with it.

If something is wrong, if a credit is incorrect, or if you hold the rights to a photograph and want it taken down, the route is the one in article 9. The same goes if you object to your name being mentioned in a canon moment.

Article 19. Changes to these terms

We can change these terms. The version number and the date it applies from are always at the foot of this page, and at your purchase we record which version you accepted then.

For a minute you have already bought, what applied when you bought it keeps applying, at least on these points: what you bought, how long it stays, and what happens if we stop. Those three we never make worse for you after the fact.

Article 20. Complaints and disputes

If something is wrong, tell us first at [email protected]. We answer within fourteen days, and usually sooner.

If we cannot settle it between us, you can take your complaint to the European ODR platform: ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

Dutch law applies to this agreement. If you are a consumer, you can always bring a dispute before the court of your own place of residence.