Terms of service

Who we are

pastel.cloud is run by Pastel-Cloud OÜ, a private limited company registered in Estonia (registry code 17571600, Jõe tn 3-312, 10151 Tallinn, Estonia). "We" and "us" in these terms mean Pastel-Cloud OÜ.

What these terms cover

These terms cover this website and the waitlist. The Pastel Cloud service will have its own terms, which you'll see and accept before you create an account. The sections marked as drafts below show the rules we plan for the service, so you can read them early.

The waitlist

• Joining the waitlist is free and doesn't commit you to anything.
• You must be at least 16 to join the waitlist.
• It doesn't guarantee a place, a launch date or a price. We'll invite people in stages and tell you when it's your turn.
• Give us an email address you're allowed to use. We may remove sign-ups that look automated or abusive.
• You can leave at any time with the link in any of our emails.

Using this site

Please don't try to disrupt the site, get around its security or use it to send spam. Automated sign-ups are not allowed.

Who gets a nickname

Draft for the Pastel Cloud service, not yet reviewed by our lawyer. It applies once the service opens.

A nickname is your name on Pastel Cloud. We issue it to your PunkDB identity: the set of keys your Pastel Cloud accounts run on. The identity is yours. These terms cover your nickname and what you publish under it, and we never ask for a passport or any other identity document.

• You can get a nickname if your account has an active paid plan, or if at least one person you referred starts a paid Pastel Cloud subscription. A free account with no such referral gets no nickname for now. We check this when you take, hold or change to a new nickname. [What happens to your nickname when a paid plan ends: to confirm.]
• You need a nickname to publish. Everything published on Pastel Cloud appears under one, and each nickname comes with a personal page.
• Nicknames use only the letters a to z, the digits 0 to 9 and hyphens, up to 63 characters. We clean what you type automatically: capitals become small letters, accents are dropped (José becomes jose), a few letters are spelled out (ß becomes ss), and any other character, including letters from other alphabets, becomes a hyphen. A name typed only in another alphabet can’t be used. This makes it harder to pass off one name as another.
• While you choose, we can hold a nickname for you for 15 minutes at a time. You can hold one nickname at a time, and the same name for no more than 60 minutes in total in any 24 hours. Other people see a held nickname as not available.

Names you can’t use

Draft for the Pastel Cloud service, not yet reviewed by our lawyer. It applies once the service opens.

A nickname or blog address must not:

• break the law or someone else’s rights, including registered trademarks;
• pretend to be someone else (parody and fan names are fine when they say so clearly);
• be on our blocklist;
• be taken only to sell it on or to keep someone else from using it.

Our blocklist keeps some names back. It covers words we need to run the service, our own names and brands, names of public authorities, names likely to mislead people, and offensive words. Some of our own names, such as hq and labs, are kept for our official accounts.

Changing your nickname

Draft for the Pastel Cloud service, not yet reviewed by our lawyer. It applies once the service opens.

You can change your nickname. To keep names stable for the people who follow you, each change makes you wait longer before the next one:

• The wait comes back down one step for every full 6 calendar months without a counted change, until there is no wait at all.
• Every new nickname and every change comes with one free typo fix, usable within 72 hours. It doesn’t count as a change.
• Some changes never count and can be made at any time, without documents: for your safety (harassment, stalking or threats), after a change of name or gender, to restore a nickname after your account was hijacked, and when we ask you to rename.
• After a change we hold your old nickname for you for 30 days. Switching back to it during that time counts as a change. Once you let it go, nobody else can take it for another 30 days.
• Before you confirm a change, the app shows when your next change will be possible. If we refuse a change, we tell you which rule applies and, for a wait, the date you can change again.
• All these times run in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Limits and automatic slowdowns

Draft for the Pastel Cloud service, not yet reviewed by our lawyer. It applies once the service opens.

We don’t publish fixed limits on reports, blogs or new web addresses. We watch for unusual activity, such as bursts of sign-ups, reports, new nicknames or referral rewards, and automatic tools may slow down or pause that activity while we look into it.

What you publish is public

Draft for the Pastel Cloud service, not yet reviewed by our lawyer. It applies once the service opens.

When you publish a post, anyone with the link can read it, including our staff. Encryption protects your private workspace, not what you choose to publish. Copies kept by search engines or web archives are outside our control. We never edit what you publish.

Reporting content

Draft for the Pastel Cloud service, not yet reviewed by our lawyer. It applies once the service opens.

Anyone can report content they believe is illegal, with or without an account, using the form at pastel.cloud/report. Name and email are optional. Reporting from inside the Pastel Cloud apps is coming. You can also email reports, and questions about a report, to report@pastel.cloud.

A person reviews every report. If you give an email address, we send you a receipt and, later, our decision, the reason for it, whether automatic tools were used, and how to ask for a review.

We handle every report, in this order:

• threats to someone’s life or safety, and child sexual abuse material;
• then other clearly illegal content;
• then everything else, oldest first. Once reporting from the apps opens, reports sent from a nickname may also be ordered by that nickname’s past reports.

We don’t tell the person you report who you are, unless the law requires it, for example for some copyright claims. When a threat to someone’s life or safety comes to light, we report it to the police of the country concerned. If we can’t tell which country, we report it to Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board, Europol, or both.

What we can do, and why we tell you

Draft for the Pastel Cloud service, not yet reviewed by our lawyer. It applies once the service opens.

We can’t read your private content, and we never edit what you publish. When something breaks the law or these rules, we act in steps, mildest first:

• stop publishing a post;
• stop publishing a blog;
• refuse or take back a nickname or blog address (when we take one back, you can pick a new one);
• ban, for serious or repeated breaches.

You keep your own copy of anything we stop publishing. Every time, we give you a written reason: what we did, where and for how long, the facts we relied on, whether a report or our own check started it, whether automatic tools were involved, the rule or law we relied on, and how to challenge it. You can ask for a free review by a person within six months.

Bans

Draft for the Pastel Cloud service, not yet reviewed by our lawyer. It applies once the service opens.

A ban applies to the PunkDB identity that holds the nickname, not just to one nickname. During a ban, the identity can’t get, hold or change to a new nickname, and can’t publish. [What else a ban does to the identity’s existing nicknames and published posts: to confirm.] The identity itself stays yours.

• A first ban lasts 1 year. Each later ban lasts three times as long as the one before: 3 years, then 9, then 27, and so on.
• Bans are counted in calendar years, in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Every ban has an end date, and a ban is never shortened. A new ban starts when the one before it ends.
• Every ban comes with a written reason, as described above. If a review finds a ban was a mistake, we lift it, and it doesn’t count towards the length of any later ban.

Where to write

Draft for the Pastel Cloud service, not yet reviewed by our lawyer. It applies once the service opens.

• General questions, including from authorities: hello@pastel.cloud. People read it, and you can write in English or Estonian.
• Reports of illegal content, and questions about a report or our decision on it: report@pastel.cloud.
• Security problems you find in Pastel Cloud: security@pastel.cloud.

Our name and artwork

The Pastel Cloud name, the Pastel logo, Cacti the cactus and the other artwork and text on this site belong to Pastel-Cloud OÜ. You're welcome to link to us and to share the site, but please don't use our name or artwork in a way that suggests we endorse you.

What we promise, and what we don’t

We do our best to keep this site accurate and available, but we provide it as it is. Plans, features and timings described here may change before launch. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under consumer law that can't be limited.

Which law applies

These terms are governed by Estonian law. If you live in the European Union, you also keep the protection of the consumer law where you live, and you can bring a claim in your local courts.

Changes and contact

If we change these terms we'll update the date at the top. Questions go to hello@pastel.cloud. People read it, and you can write in English or Estonian.