Terms of Service

1. These terms

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and Rebecca G. Power, an individual doing business as The Invisible Citizen (“we”, “us”, “our”). They govern your use of theinvisiblecitizen.photos, our weekly email (“Dispatches”), our social media accounts, and everything you submit through them (together, the “Service”).

By visiting the Service, creating an account, or submitting a photograph, you accept these Terms and our privacy practices in sections 15 to 17. If you don’t accept them, please don’t use the Service.

We may change these Terms (see section 25). The date at the foot of this page tells you when they last changed.

2. What The Invisible Citizen is

The Invisible Citizen is a photo game inspired by Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. Each week names one of the book’s fifty-five cities; players photograph a real place that reminds them of it and submit the photograph for the atlas.

The Service is an independent fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the estate of Italo Calvino, his publishers, or any other rights holder in Invisible Cities.

3. Who may use the Service

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account or submit a photograph. By doing either, you confirm that you are, and that any information you give us is accurate and kept up to date. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13; if you believe we have, email us and we will delete it.

If you are using the Service on behalf of someone else, you confirm that you have their authority to accept these Terms for them.

4. Your account

You may sign in with an email address and password, or with a Google account. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in details confidential and for everything that happens under your account, whether or not you authorised it, until you tell us otherwise.

If you think your account has been used without your permission, email hello@theinvisiblecitizen.photos as soon as you can. Don’t use another person’s account, share yours, or open a new account to get around a suspension.

5. Your photographs: ownership and the license you give us

You own your photographs. Submitting a photograph does not transfer your copyright to us.

So that we can run the Service and the project around it, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable license to host, store, back up, reproduce, resize, crop, display, distribute and otherwise use your photograph, with your chosen credit: on the Service; in our emails, including Dispatches; on The Invisible Citizen’s social media accounts, including posts that promote the project; and in print, in books, on postcards and prints, and in art exhibitions of the project, including ones that are sold. You also allow our service providers (such as our hosting, email and printing providers) to do these things on our behalf.

To the extent permitted by law, you agree not to object to the cropping, resizing and placement needed to show your photograph in these formats, and you agree that we may show it alongside the name and quotation of the city you submitted it for.

Your photograph only ever appears as part of The Invisible Citizen. We will not sell it on its own or license it to anyone else for their own use. Submissions are unpaid: you are not entitled to any royalty, fee or other payment for any of the uses above.

You may remove a photograph at any time from its page on the Service, or by deleting your account, and we will take it off the Service. The license then ends, except that: (a) Dispatches and other emails already sent, and social media posts already published, may stay as they are; (b) books, postcards, prints and exhibitions already produced are not affected; (c) copies may remain in routine backups for up to 90 days; and (d) we may keep the record of the submission (without the image) for the reasons in section 16.

We credit you as you ask when you submit. If a credit is wrong or missing, tell us and we will correct it.

6. What you promise about every photograph you submit

Each time you submit a photograph, you represent and warrant that:

• you took it yourself, and you hold all rights needed to grant the license in section 5, including rights in anything visible in it (such as artwork or signage) that would otherwise prevent us showing it;
• you were lawfully present where you took it, and you did not trespass or break any rule of the place to do so;
• any person who can be recognised in it has consented to appearing on the Service, where that consent is required by the law of the place it was taken, and it does not show an identifiable child;
• it does not single out, demean, harass or embarrass anyone;
• it is not sexually explicit, hateful, violent or unlawful, and does not infringe anyone’s privacy, publicity, trademark or other rights;
• the place name, location and credit you give are accurate, and the photograph has not been altered to misrepresent what or where it shows;
• it was not produced in whole or in substantial part by generative AI tools.

We may remove any photograph that we reasonably believe breaks these promises, without notice.

7. Editorial discretion

Submitting a photograph does not guarantee that it will appear. Our editors decide which photographs go on the atlas, which one represents a city, and how each is cropped and displayed, and they may decline or remove any photograph at any time for any reason. Submissions are voluntary and unpaid, and you are not entitled to attribution beyond the credit you choose.

Stamps, first-find marks and other game features have no monetary value, may be changed or withdrawn, and cannot be sold or transferred.

8. Rules of use

You agree not to:

• break any law, or help anyone else to;
• impersonate any person, or misrepresent who took a photograph or where it was taken;
• use the Service, or any location shown on it, to find, follow, surveil or harass anyone;
• upload anything that contains malware or that is designed to interfere with the Service;
• copy the Service’s content, photographs or data in bulk, or access it with bots, scrapers, crawlers or other automated tools, including to train machine-learning models;
• circumvent its security or access controls, probe or test its vulnerabilities, or overload it;
• copy, modify, decompile, reverse-engineer or create derivative works of its software, except as the law allows;
• send spam, or use the Service to advertise or sell anything;
• remove any copyright notice or credit from a photograph;
• use the Service in any way that infringes the rights of the photographers whose work appears on it.

9. Visiting places you find here

Photographs and locations on the atlas are supplied by players. Pins are approximate, places change, and some are private property or not open to the public. Before visiting a place you find on the Service, check that it is safe and lawful to do so. You visit at your own risk, and you are responsible for respecting private property, local laws and the people who live or work there.

10. Our content and trademarks

The Service’s design, writing, illustrations, street-map drawings, stamps, software, and the name and logo of The Invisible Citizen are owned by Rebecca G. Power and protected by copyright, trademark and other laws. Photographs belong to the players who took them. Quotations from Invisible Cities are the work of Italo Calvino and his translators, are used for the purposes of commentary and reference, and remain the property of their rights holders.

You may view the Service and share links to it. Except as these Terms or the law allow, you may not reproduce, distribute, modify or make commercial use of any part of it, or of any photograph on it, without written permission from us or, for a photograph, from its photographer.

11. Feedback

If you send us suggestions or ideas about the Service, we may use them without any obligation to you.

12. Copyright complaints

We respect the rights of photographers and other creators and respond to notices of claimed infringement under the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). If you believe that a photograph or other material on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent at hello@theinvisiblecitizen.photos that includes:

• a physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorised to act for them;
• identification of the work you say is infringed;
• the address (URL) of the material on the Service you say is infringing;
• your name, postal address, telephone number and email address;
• a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, their agent or the law;
• a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorised to act for them.

On receiving a valid notice we will remove or disable access to the material promptly and notify the person who submitted it. That person may send a counter-notice meeting the requirements of 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3); if they do, we may restore the material after 10 business days unless you tell us you have filed a court action. Knowingly making a false claim in a notice or counter-notice can make you liable for damages under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).

We close the accounts of players who repeatedly infringe other people’s copyright.

13. Other complaints about a photograph

If a photograph shows you, your home or your property in a way you object to, or raises any concern other than copyright, email hello@theinvisiblecitizen.photos with a link to it and the reason. We will review it promptly and remove it where we think that is right. Our editors’ decision is final, but you keep any rights the law gives you.

14. Third-party services and links

The Service uses third-party services, listed in section 17, and links to other websites. We don’t control them and are not responsible for their content, policies or practices; your use of them is governed by their own terms. Links are not endorsements.

15. Your data: what we collect and why

We collect: your email address, display name, handle and the optional profile details you choose to add; your password (stored only as a cryptographic hash) or, if you sign in with Google, the name, email address and profile identifier Google provides; the photographs you submit, with the place name, location, date and credit you give; and the technical information any website receives, such as your IP address, browser and the pages you visit, which we keep in server logs for a limited time.

We use this information to run your account, display your photographs with your credit, send you emails about your account and your submissions, send Dispatches if you have asked for them, keep the Service secure, and comply with law. We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t share it except with the service providers in section 17, to comply with law or a court order, or to protect the rights and safety of the Service and its players.

If a photograph carries GPS data, we read it to place the pin, and you can move the pin before you submit. On the Service your photograph appears with the place name you give it, its town or area and country, and a pin rounded to within about a kilometre of the spot; only the editors see the exact location. Every copy of your photograph shown on the Service has its metadata removed.

16. Your data: where it lives, how long we keep it, and your rights

The Service is operated from the United States, and your information is stored and processed there and by the providers in section 17, some of which are in other countries. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you consent to this transfer, which we make on the basis of your agreement to these Terms and our legitimate interest in running the Service.

We keep your account information while your account is open. When you delete your account, we delete your personal information within 30 days, except: photographs you chose to leave on the atlas stay with your credit; routine backups are overwritten within 90 days; and we may keep a minimal record of removed photographs, complaints and suspensions where we need it to enforce these Terms or meet a legal obligation.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete the personal information we hold about you, to object to or restrict our use of it, and to complain to a data-protection authority. You can see, change and delete most of it yourself in Settings; for anything else, email hello@theinvisiblecitizen.photos and we will respond within 30 days. Residents of California have the rights described in the California Consumer Privacy Act; we don’t sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we don’t discriminate against anyone for exercising their rights.

17. Cookies, analytics and the services we rely on

We use one cookie to keep you signed in and one to remember your cookie choice; both are necessary for the Service to work. If you allow it, we also use Google Analytics, which sets its own cookies, to count visits and see which pages are used. It tells us things like the country a visit came from and the kind of device, not who you are, and we don’t use it for advertising. You can change your choice at any time with Cookie settings at the bottom of every page.

We rely on these providers, each of which handles only what it needs to do its job: Google (Google Analytics, and Google sign-in if you use it); Amazon Web Services (storing photographs and email delivery); Mailgun (email delivery); Heroku (hosting); and OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap (map tiles, and place names from your pin).

18. Ending your account

You can delete your account at any time in Settings, and choose whether your photographs stay on the atlas with your credit or come down with it.

We may suspend or close your account, and remove your photographs, if we reasonably believe you have broken these Terms, if the law requires it, or if your use puts the Service or other people at risk. Where we reasonably can, we will tell you why. Sections 5 (to the extent stated there), 6, 10 to 13 and 19 to 24 survive the ending of your account.

19. Availability and changes to the Service

The Service is a small project run by one person. We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of it, at any time, with or without notice, and it may sometimes be unavailable. We keep backups, but you should keep your own copies of your photographs; we cannot promise that a photograph will never be lost.

20. Disclaimer of warranties

THE SERVICE AND EVERYTHING ON IT ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE OR ERROR-FREE, THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, OR THAT ANY PHOTOGRAPH, LOCATION OR OTHER CONTENT IS ACCURATE, COMPLETE OR SAFE TO RELY ON. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO SOME OF THESE EXCLUSIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

21. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF DATA, PHOTOGRAPHS, PROFITS, GOODWILL OR OPPORTUNITY, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS, HOWEVER CAUSED AND UNDER ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO ONE HUNDRED US DOLLARS (US$100).

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot be excluded or limited by law. If you live in a country whose consumer laws give you rights that these Terms cannot take away, those rights are not affected.

22. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Rebecca G. Power and anyone who helps run the Service from any claim, demand, loss, liability and expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to a photograph you submitted, your breach of these Terms or of any law, or your violation of anyone else’s rights. We may take over the defence of any such claim, in which case you agree to cooperate with us.

23. Governing law and disputes

If you have a problem with the Service, email hello@theinvisiblecitizen.photos first: we will try to resolve it with you informally within 30 days. If we can’t, these Terms and any dispute arising out of them or the Service are governed by the laws of the State of California and the United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in California. You and we each consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Either of us may instead bring a qualifying claim in small-claims court.

Any claim relating to the Service must be brought within one year after it arose, unless the law of your place of residence does not permit that limit.

24. General terms

These Terms are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service and replace any earlier agreement. If any part of them is found unenforceable, that part will be enforced to the extent permitted and the rest will remain in effect. If we do not enforce a term straight away, we have not waived our right to enforce it later. You may not assign or transfer these Terms or your account; we may assign them to anyone who takes over the project, and will tell you if we do. There are no third-party beneficiaries of these Terms. You agree that we may give you notices electronically, by email to the address on your account or by posting on the Service, and that electronic notices satisfy any legal requirement that a communication be in writing.

25. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the game grows. If we make a material change, we will tell account holders by email, or by a notice on the Service, at least 14 days before it takes effect, unless the change is needed sooner to comply with law or to address a security risk. Using the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the new Terms. If you don’t, you can delete your account at any time.

26. Contact

The Invisible Citizen is run by Rebecca G. Power in California, United States. Questions about these Terms, your data, or a photograph: hello@theinvisiblecitizen.photos.