Terms

What you are buying

A light costs 10¢ and is a public token of support for one named creator. It is not a share, an investment, a subscription, or a claim on anything. Lights appear on the board the moment payment clears and do not expire during the season they were bought in. Cheering is free, changes no ranking, and can be undone.

Money held for creators

• 70% of every paid light belongs to the named creator from the moment the payment clears, whether or not they have ever contacted us. The remaining 30% covers card processing and running the board.
• We hold that money on their behalf. It is their money, not ours, and it is not revenue.
• Payout is on request. A creator writes from an account we can match to the listed public profile, and we send the balance by a method both sides can use. We may ask for proof that the person asking controls the profile.
• Unclaimed balances. We contact a creator as soon as they have a balance worth collecting, not at the end. If a balance is still unclaimed 90 days after the season it was earned in ends, we make one more documented attempt at the public contact on their profile; anything still unclaimed after that is donated and we say publicly where it went. It is never quietly kept, and the window is short on purpose - holding somebody else's money for a year serves nobody.
• A creator who leaves the board keeps any balance already earned; removal is not a forfeit.

Being listed

Creators are listed from public profiles, using the name, handle, avatar and description those profiles publish. Nobody pays to be listed and nobody pays for a better position. Any creator can ask to be removed at hey@penlight.moe and it happens the same day, no reason needed. We also remove anyone on request from someone who can show they control the profile.

Refunds

Lights are delivered immediately, so they are not generally refundable. We do refund duplicate charges, payments the cardholder did not authorise, and cases where lights were charged but not delivered. Write to hey@penlight.moe. Chargebacks filed without contacting us first may result in the associated lights being removed from the board.

Fair use

Do not use Penlight to harass anyone, to buy lights with a card you do not control, to write notes containing abuse or personal information, or to manipulate the board through automation. Every note is read before it appears, and one that breaks this is deleted rather than published; the lights are delivered either way, because they were paid for and they belong to the creator. We may refuse service.

The board is a game, and it ends

A season freezes on its published end date and the standings become permanent. We may change prices, mechanics or the length of a season, but not retroactively: lights already bought keep the value they had when bought. If Penlight shuts down, creator balances are paid out before anything else.

The boring part

The service is provided as-is, without warranty. To the extent the law allows, our liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before it. Nothing here limits liability for fraud or anything else that cannot be limited by law.