Terms of Service · Learn Spanish at Dusty Lighthouse

1.1In these Terms, unless the context otherwise requires: “Service” means the website published at dustylighthouse.com together with all pages, features, content and functionality made available through it; “we”, “us” and “our” mean the operator of the Service; and “you” means the person accessing or using the Service.

1.2“Membership” means a paid recurring subscription conferring the access described in these Terms; “Tier” means a level of Membership; and “Payment Provider” means Stripe or Patreon, as the case may be.

1.3“Content” means all material made available through the Service, including stories, translations, flashcard decks, grammar and conversation lessons, dictionaries, images, cover art, audio, text, design and code; “Your Text” means material which you supply to the Service.

1.4“Companion” means the artificial-intelligence conversational character made available through the Service; and “Chips” and “Points” mean the in-application progression tokens described below.

1.5“Terms” means this agreement as amended from time to time in accordance with the section governing amendments.

2.1Headings are inserted for convenience only and shall not affect construction.

2.2The words “include”, “includes” and “including” are to be construed as if followed by the words “without limitation”, and the enumeration of particular matters shall not limit the generality of preceding words.

2.3The singular includes the plural and vice versa. A reference to a statute is a reference to it as amended, extended or re-enacted from time to time. A reference to writing includes email.

2.4Where these Terms confer a discretion upon us, that discretion shall be exercised reasonably. Where these Terms state that we do not presently do something, that is a statement of fact as at the date appearing above and not merely of intention.

2.5No rule of construction requiring that an agreement be construed against the party which drafted it shall apply to the disadvantage of a consumer.

2.6Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any right or remedy conferred upon you by applicable law which cannot lawfully be excluded, restricted or modified, and every provision is to be read subject to that qualification.

3.1Where any conflict arises between these Terms and any other document published upon the Service, these Terms prevail, save that a mandatory rule of applicable law prevails over every provision of these Terms.

3.2Our Privacy Policy is a notice and does not form part of this contract. Where it describes a matter of fact concerning Processing, that description is not varied by these Terms.

3.3The terms of your Payment Provider govern the payment relationship between you and that provider, and prevail over these Terms in respect of that relationship.

4.1These Terms constitute a binding agreement between you and us governing your use of the Service. By accessing or using the Service you signify your acceptance of them. If you do not accept them, you must not use the Service.

4.2Dusty Lighthouse is a Spanish-language learning website. In these Terms, “Dusty Lighthouse”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean the operator of that website.

4.3Where you subscribe, a separate contract for the supply of the Membership is formed at the moment your Payment Provider confirms the transaction, and these Terms govern that contract in addition to the terms of that provider.

4.4Our Privacy Policy explains what we do with your personal information. It is a notice and not a set of contractual terms; nothing within it is a matter to which you are asked to “agree” in exchange for the Service, and your rights under data-protection law subsist irrespective of whether you accept these Terms.

5.1You must be at least 18 years of age to use the Service, and by using it you represent that you are.

5.2The Service is designed for adults. It includes an artificial-intelligence conversational Companion intended for adult users, and certain illustrations depict adults in everyday settings such as beaches. The Service contains no sexually explicit material.

5.3We do not knowingly permit any person under 18 years of age to hold a Membership. Where we learn that such a person has created an account, we shall close it and erase the associated information. A parent or guardian who believes that a person under 18 is using the Service should write to support@dustylighthouse.com, and we shall act promptly.

5.4You further represent that you are legally capable of entering into this agreement and that you are not barred from using the Service under the law of any jurisdiction applicable to you.

6.1The Service provides Spanish-language learning material, comprising graded reading stories, vocabulary, grammar and conversation flashcards, an artificial-intelligence conversational Companion, a facility for reading Spanish text which you supply yourself, and a points-and-chips progression system, together with the tools by which the same may be studied.

6.2The Service is provided for personal, private and non-commercial study of language.

6.3We may add to, alter, suspend or withdraw any feature, lesson, story or Companion at any time, and we give no undertaking that any particular feature will be released, retained, or retained in its present form.

7.1The Service is under active development, and one advertised feature does not exist. The learning games depicted upon our membership cards are not built and are not available at any price. They represent an intention and form no part of the subject matter of any Membership.

7.2You should not subscribe in reliance upon an unreleased feature. We give no undertaking as to date and may never release it.

7.3Certain features may be released early or marked as forthcoming. Such features may be unstable, may be altered and may be withdrawn, are provided without warranty of any description, and form no part of the subject matter of any Membership until we state otherwise.

8.1As at the date of these Terms the entirety of the library — every story, every flashcard deck and the Companion — is available to every visitor without a Membership, and payment unlocks no additional Content.

8.2The Service remains under construction. A Membership presently supports the work and confers an account; it does not confer more to read than a visitor obtains without charge. You should not subscribe in the expectation of the contrary.

8.3That is the present position and not a permanent entitlement. We may begin enforcing access restrictions in respect of any material at any time, and the doing of so shall not constitute a breach of these Terms.

9.1Memberships are not sold upon this website and there is no checkout upon it. They are sold and billed by Stripe or by Patreon upon their own pages, under the terms of the relevant provider in addition to these Terms.

9.2The prices displayed upon our membership cards are indicative only. The price which binds you is that displayed by your Payment Provider at the moment you confirm the transaction. Prices are expressed in United States dollars and are exclusive of tax.

9.3There are two paid Tiers: Wanderer, at $9.00 per month, and Nómada Digital, at $19.00 per month.

9.4Your Payment Provider and your account may display these Tiers under their internal designations, Seeker and Keeper respectively; they are the same products.

9.5Subject to the section governing the present position, the subject matter of each Tier is the list displayed upon the membership cards at the time of subscription.

10.1A Membership renews automatically each month, at the price at which you subscribed, and continues to renew until cancelled.

10.2There is no minimum term and no cancellation fee.

10.3Your Payment Provider will charge the applicable amount to your payment method upon each renewal date until cancellation is effected.

11.1Cancellation is effected with the provider through which you subscribed — within your Stripe billing portal, accessible from the receipt which Stripe sends you by email, or within your Patreon account.

11.2Cancellation takes effect immediately in respect of future charges, and access continues until the expiry of the period for which payment has already been made.

11.3We do not require you to telephone any person, and we shall not interpose a retention offer between you and cancellation.

11.4Upgrades take effect immediately and are prorated by the Payment Provider; downgrades take effect at the commencement of the next billing period.

11.5Where you initiate a chargeback in preference to contacting us first, we may terminate the Membership immediately.

12.1Save as provided in this section, in the section governing suspension and termination, or where a refund is required by law, payments are non-refundable, including in respect of partial billing periods and of periods during which the Service was not used.

12.2Where you consider that you have been charged in error, you should write to support@dustylighthouse.com and we shall review the matter in good faith.

12.3Where you are a consumer in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, you have fourteen days within which to withdraw from a distance contract for digital content, without giving any reason.

12.4That right is extinguished before expiry of the period only where you have given express consent to immediate supply and have acknowledged that you thereby lose the right. We do not presently collect that consent and that acknowledgement, with the consequence that the right is not extinguished — you may write to support@dustylighthouse.com within fourteen days of subscribing and we shall refund you in full.

12.5Nothing in this section limits any non-waivable statutory right, including rights in respect of digital content which is not as described or not of satisfactory quality.

13.1We may alter the price of a Membership.

13.2We shall give you not less than 30 days’ notice by email before an increase takes effect; it shall apply only from the commencement of your next billing period; and you may cancel before it takes effect.

13.3A promotional price applies only for its stated period and thereafter reverts to the standard price.

13.4Prices are exclusive of value added tax, goods and services tax, sales tax and any other tax, which your Payment Provider may calculate and add by reference to your location.

13.5Your bank or card issuer may convert amounts into your local currency and may levy a conversion or foreign transaction fee. Such charges are for your account and lie outside our control.

14.1Authentication is effected by dispatch of a single-use link to the email address associated with your subscription. The link is valid for fifteen minutes and may be redeemed once only. There is no password.

14.2A link is issued only where an active Stripe or Patreon subscription subsists in respect of the address supplied. There is accordingly no free account.

14.3It follows that any person with access to your email inbox may authenticate as you. You should keep your inbox secure and should not forward sign-in links.

14.4A Membership is personal to you. You must not share your account, your sign-in links or your session with any other person, and you are responsible for activity conducted through your account.

14.5You should notify us promptly at support@dustylighthouse.com where you believe that your account has been accessed without your authority.

15.1The Service includes a study-progression system under which Points are earned within a lesson, may be converted into Chips by means of an in-application card game, and Chips may unlock further lessons and Companions.

15.2Chips and Points cannot be purchased. We do not sell them, no Membership includes them, and we shall not introduce a means of purchasing them.

15.3They possess no monetary value; they are not legal tender, virtual currency, a security or a financial instrument; they cannot be exchanged for money; they cannot be transferred to any other person; they are not your property; and they are not redeemed upon cancellation or termination.

15.4It follows that, no money being staked and nothing of value being capable of withdrawal, the in-application card game is a simulation provided for entertainment and study motivation only and does not constitute gambling.

15.5Chips are designed to be lost. They are staked within the in-application game, and an idle balance is reduced daily upon a published schedule. We may adjust, reduce, expire or reset any Point or Chip balance at any time, including to zero, and the doing of so shall not constitute a breach of these Terms.

15.6Unlocks already earned are permanent and shall not be withdrawn.

15.7Your Points, Chips and unlocks are stored within your browser and not upon our servers. We hold no copy. Clearing your browser data, changing device or using a private browsing window erases them permanently, and we are unable to restore them.

16.1You may paste Spanish text of your own into the reader, and you may compose messages to the Companion. You retain ownership of Your Text.

16.2You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to process, transmit and display Your Text solely for the purpose of operating the feature you have invoked. That licence subsists only for so long as is necessary for that purpose.

16.3You warrant that you are entitled to supply Your Text and that it is not unlawful, does not infringe the rights of any person, and does not comprise the confidential information of another.

16.4Text pasted into the reader is processed within your browser and is not transmitted to our servers. Messages composed to the Companion are transmitted to third-party artificial-intelligence providers, as described in our Privacy Policy.

17.1Where you send us ideas, suggestions or bug reports, we may use the same without restriction, without compensation and without obligation to you.

17.2You should not send us anything which you regard as confidential or in respect of which you expect payment.

18.1All Content is owned by or licensed to us. Our written material, translations, lesson design, dictionaries and the selection and arrangement of the whole are protected by copyright and database right.

18.2Certain imagery is machine-generated; such rights as subsist in it are ours or are licensed to us, and in every case these Terms govern the use you may make of it.

18.3The Dusty Lighthouse name and logo are ours. Nothing in these Terms grants you any right to use them.

18.4All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

19.1Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable and revocable licence to access and use the Content for your own private, non-commercial study of language.

You must not:

• copy, republish, redistribute, sell, sub-license or publicly display any part of the Content;
• use the Content, in whole or in part, to train, fine-tune, evaluate or ground any machine-learning or artificial-intelligence model;
• scrape, crawl, spider, bulk-download or otherwise systematically extract the Content, whether by automated means or otherwise;
• use the Content to construct or improve a competing product or dataset; or
• remove or obscure any copyright, credit or other proprietary notice.

This licence determines automatically upon breach of these Terms and upon expiry of your Membership.

20.1We expressly reserve all rights in respect of text and data mining, and in respect of the use of the Content for the training or development of any machine-learning or artificial-intelligence system.

20.2This reservation is made for the purposes of Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 and of any equivalent provision in any other jurisdiction.

20.3No permission granted by any file published upon the Service for the purpose of directing automated crawlers shall be construed as a licence to undertake text and data mining, nor as a waiver of the reservation made by this section.

You must not:

• interfere with or disrupt the Service or impose an unreasonable load upon its infrastructure;
• circumvent, disable or attempt to defeat any rate limit, access control, membership gate or security feature;
• access the Service by automated means, or through any interface other than a standard web browser, without our written permission;
• reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to extract source code, prompts, model instructions or configuration from the Service;
• probe or scan the Service for vulnerabilities, or access any account, system or data which you are not authorised to access;
• use the Companion to generate material which is unlawful, which sexualises a minor, which harasses or threatens any person, or which you intend to pass off as emanating from a real individual; or
• use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in contravention of any applicable law.

Where you become aware of any misuse of the Service, you are invited to report it to support@dustylighthouse.com.

22.1The Companion is a fictional character generated by third-party artificial-intelligence models. It is not a natural person, it has no feelings and forms no relationship with you, and any biography which it presents is invented. Nothing which it states is a statement by us.

22.2Output generated by artificial intelligence is frequently erroneous. It may produce inaccurate Spanish, incorrect translations, fabricated assertions of fact, or material which you find objectionable.

22.3Such output must not be relied upon as professional, legal, medical, financial, immigration or travel advice, and you should verify any matter of importance independently.

22.4Your messages are transmitted to third-party providers in order to generate responses, as described in our Privacy Policy. You must not enter confidential or sensitive information, and your use of the feature must comply with the policies of those providers in addition to these Terms.

23.1Our lessons and translations are prepared with care but are not warranted to be free from error.

23.2They teach one regional variety of Spanish, principally Mexican usage, which will not correspond to every dialect or every register.

23.3The material is provided for general education. It does not constitute a certified translation service and confers no linguistic or academic certification, and we make no representation as to the level of fluency you will attain or the results you will obtain from using it.

24.1The Service depends upon third parties, including Stripe, Patreon, Vercel (hosting and image delivery), Supabase, Resend, fal.ai and OpenRouter together with the artificial-intelligence model providers to which they route.

24.2The Service may link to websites which we do not control.

24.3We accept no responsibility for any third-party service, its availability, its content or its practices, and the terms and privacy policies of such parties govern your dealings with them.

25.1We do not undertake that the Service will be available uninterrupted or free from error, and we may suspend it for maintenance or for any other reason without notice.

25.2No service level is offered and no uptime is guaranteed. The Service is not sold upon the basis of any availability commitment, and no credit or refund arises by reason of unavailability save as provided in the section governing suspension and termination.

26.1You may cease using the Service at any time, and may cancel a Membership with your Payment Provider as described under Cancellation.

26.2We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, where you are in breach of these Terms, where we reasonably suspect fraud or abuse, or where we discontinue the Service.

26.3Where we terminate for our own convenience and you have paid for a period which you can no longer use, we shall refund the unused portion.

26.4Erasure of your account does not cancel your subscription. Cancellation must be effected with Stripe or Patreon separately, failing which charges will continue to be levied.

26.5Where a Membership lapses and an account remains inactive for 24 months, we may erase the account record.

26.6We do not hold your reading progress, Points or Chips, with the consequence that closure of an account neither removes them from your browser nor enables us to restore them.

27.1Termination or expiry of this agreement shall not affect any right or liability accrued before termination.

27.2The sections governing definitions and interpretation, intellectual property, the licence and its restrictions, the reservation in respect of text and data mining, Points and Chips, text which you supply, feedback, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, governing law and disputes, and these general provisions, shall survive termination.

28.1TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, ACCURACY OR NON-INFRINGEMENT.

28.2We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free or free of harmful components, or that any Content is accurate or complete.

28.3Some jurisdictions do not permit the exclusion of implied warranties, with the consequence that parts of this section may not apply to you.

28.4Where you are a consumer, nothing in this section excludes the statutory quality rights which you have in the digital content we supply, including that it be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. Those rights cannot be excluded and this section does not attempt to exclude them.

29.1To the fullest extent permitted by law, we shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, nor for lost profits, lost data or loss of goodwill, arising out of or in connection with your use of the Service, whether founded in contract, tort, strict liability or any other theory, and notwithstanding that we have been advised of the possibility of the same.

29.2Our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Service shall be limited to the greater of the total amount paid by you to us in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, and fifty United States dollars.

29.3Each provision of this section operates separately. If any part is held unenforceable, the remaining parts continue in effect.

29.4Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability which cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for wilful injury to your person or property, or for any violation of law whether wilful or negligent. Some jurisdictions do not permit certain limitations, with the consequence that parts of this section may not apply to you.

30.1You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Dusty Lighthouse from any claim, demand, loss, liability or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of your misuse of the Service, your breach of these Terms, or your violation of any law or of the rights of a third party.

30.2This does not apply to the extent that the claim arises from our own breach or negligence, nor where the applicable law does not permit it. This section does not apply to you where you are acting as a consumer.

30.3Where we seek indemnity we shall notify you promptly, shall permit you to control the defence with counsel of your choosing upon your confirming the indemnity in writing, and shall not settle any claim in a manner imposing an obligation upon you without your consent.

31.1Where you believe that material upon the Service infringes your copyright, you should write to support@dustylighthouse.com.

31.2Your notice should identify the work, specify the address of the material upon the Service, provide your contact particulars, and state that you believe in good faith that the use is unauthorised, that the information given is accurate, and that you are authorised to act.

31.3We remove infringing material promptly and terminate the accounts of repeat infringers. Where the material was supplied by a user, we shall forward the notice to that user and shall give effect to a valid counter-notice.

32.1You consent to receive all communications from us electronically, at the email address associated with your subscription, and agree that electronic notice satisfies any requirement of law that a communication be in writing.

32.2Notice is treated as given upon dispatch.

32.3You should keep your email address current, that being the only means by which we are able to reach you. Notices to us should be sent to support@dustylighthouse.com.

33.1You represent that you are not located in, ordinarily resident in, or a national of, any country or region subject to comprehensive United States sanctions; that you do not appear upon any United States government restricted-party list; and that you will not use the Service in contravention of export-control or sanctions law.

33.2We may terminate access immediately upon any of the foregoing ceasing to be true.

33.3We publish no application programming interface and grant no automated access. Our endpoints are rate-limited and repeated failures trigger a temporary block. Any attempt to defeat, distribute or rotate around those limits constitutes a breach of these Terms.

34.1We aim to make the Service usable by everyone.

34.2Where any part of it is not accessible to you, you should write to support@dustylighthouse.com describing the page and the difficulty, and we shall remedy it or furnish the content by another means.

35.1These Terms are governed by the law of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and we agree that the state and federal courts located in California shall have jurisdiction in respect of any dispute.

35.2Where you are a consumer, the foregoing deprives you of nothing. It does not remove the protection of the mandatory law of your country of residence, you may always bring proceedings in the courts of that country, and we shall bring proceedings against you only in the courts of the country in which you reside.

35.3Either party may bring an individual claim in a small claims court where the claim so qualifies.

35.4To the fullest extent permitted by law, each of you and we waives any right to trial by jury. Nothing in this section prevents a consumer from relying upon any non-waivable right conferred by local law.

35.5Before commencing proceedings, you are asked to write to support@dustylighthouse.com. Most difficulties are resolved more quickly by that means, and we shall engage with you in good faith.

36.1We may amend these Terms as the Service develops. The date appearing at the head of this document identifies the current version.

36.2Where you hold a Membership and an amendment is material, we shall notify you by email not less than 30 days before it takes effect, and it shall apply to you only from the commencement of your next billing period, so that you may cancel beforehand and the previous version continues to govern until you do.

36.3In respect of visitors not holding a Membership, amendments take effect upon publication.

36.4Continued use of the Service after an amendment has taken effect signifies acceptance of the amended Terms.

37.1These Terms constitute the entire agreement between you and us in respect of the Service and supersede all prior understandings in respect of it. Our Privacy Policy stands alongside them as a notice rather than as part of this contract.

37.2Where any provision is held to be invalid or unenforceable, it shall be severed and the remainder shall continue in full force and effect.

37.3No failure or delay in exercising any right shall operate as a waiver of it, and no single or partial exercise shall preclude any further exercise. Our rights and remedies are cumulative and not exclusive of any right or remedy provided by law.

37.4You may not assign, transfer or otherwise deal with this agreement or any right under it. We may assign or novate this agreement to a successor operator of the Service.

37.5Nothing in these Terms creates any partnership, joint venture, agency, employment or fiduciary relationship between you and us.

37.6No person who is not a party to this agreement has any right to enforce any of its provisions.

37.7We shall not be liable for any failure or delay in performance occasioned by circumstances beyond our reasonable control, including act of God, war, civil disturbance, industrial action, failure of telecommunications or of any third-party service, and act of any governmental authority.

37.8These Terms are written in the English language. Any translation is provided for convenience only, and in the event of conflict the English text prevails.

38.1Enquiries concerning these Terms should be addressed to support@dustylighthouse.com.

38.2Email is the contact channel we operate, and correspondence sent to that address is read.