Terms of Use

1. Purpose of the service

Built & Launched is a public registry and archive for information relating to boats, their builders, their histories, and their associated records. The service exists to help preserve and share that information in a responsible and consistent way.

2. Your responsibilities

You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you provide, the security of your account, and the lawful use of the service. You agree not to submit content that is false, misleading, defamatory, unlawful, harassing, or likely to cause harm to others.

You must not attempt to interfere with the operation of the site, gain unauthorised access to accounts or systems, or use the service for spam, scraping, or other automated abuse.

3. Content you submit

Unless otherwise stated, you retain ownership of the content you contribute, such as text, photographs, build notes, and personal information. By submitting it, you grant the registry a licence to display, store, organise, and preserve that content as part of the service.

You acknowledge that the service may publish or make available your content according to the visibility choices you select, and that the registry may moderate, remove, or restrict content that appears to violate these terms or the expectations of the community.

That licence outlives your account, and it has to. A vessel's entry is referred to by other entries — the boats built to the same design, the ownership chains that name her, the registry number printed on a plaque and the address somebody wrote down — and a record that vanished when its author left would take those with it. See §5.

4. Public information and editorial discretion

The registry may publish records publicly, keep them private, or limit their visibility. The service is not a guarantee of completeness, authority, or accuracy and should not be regarded as professional legal, maritime, insurance, or safety advice.

The operators of the site may correct, archive, hide, or remove entries where needed to protect the integrity of the registry, comply with applicable law, or address abuse or misconduct.

5. Leaving

You may close your account at any time, yourself, from your account page. You do not have to give a reason and you do not have to ask anybody.

Closing an account is not a way to delete a vessel record. Each boat you have published is yours to leave on the register or to withdraw from public view, one by one, on the screen that closes the account — but her entry, her registry number and her history are kept either way. That is the bargain the registry is built on, it is stated here rather than left to be discovered, and the reasoning is in §3 and in §8 of the Privacy Policy, which sets out exactly what closure does.

Before you go you may take a copy of everything the registry holds about you, in one file, from the same page. Your closed account can be reopened by signing in within 30 days; after that, by asking us.

The registry may also close or suspend an account itself, for the reasons in §2 and §4. Where it does, it writes to the address on the account and says which it was.

6. Service availability, discontinuation, and risk of data loss

Built & Launched may be suspended, discontinued, or permanently shut down, in whole or in part, at any time and, to the extent permitted by law, without prior notice. No representation or guarantee is made that the service, any account, or any submitted content will remain available for any period of time.

You acknowledge that any material stored by or submitted to the service — including records, text, photographs, images, files, and account information — may be deleted, corrupted, or permanently lost and may not be recoverable. The registry does not guarantee that backups exist or that any backup can be restored. You are solely responsible for retaining independent copies of all content you wish to preserve.

7. Disclaimer of warranties

The site and its contents are provided on an “as is” basis. We make no warranty, express or implied, that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, complete, secure, or suitable for any particular purpose.

8. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by law, the operators of Built & Launched shall not be liable for any loss, damage, or inconvenience arising from the use, interruption, discontinuation, or shutdown of the service, including indirect, incidental, or consequential losses. This includes losses relating to the accuracy of records, the availability of the site, the disclosure of information through the service, or the deletion, corruption, loss, or inability to recover content, photographs, images, files, or account information.

9. Changes to these terms

These terms may be updated from time to time. Continued use of the site after changes are made constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

10. Contact

Questions about these terms, and any dispute about a record the registry holds, may be put to the people who run it at support@builtandlaunched.org.