Buy The World is operated by Spaghetti Code, Hesseløgade 6, 3. tv., 9000 Aalborg, Denmark, CVR 39003252. Contact: [email protected].
A square is a non-exclusive licence to display one image, one caption and one link on a single cell of the Buy The World map, for as long as you hold it. It is a digital service. It is not real property, not a legal interest in land, not a security, not an investment, and not a token. It confers no rights over the physical territory the cell happens to cover.
Claiming a square is free. Nothing is charged for a square, nothing is owed for one, and holding one puts you under no payment obligation of any kind. There is no subscription, no renewal fee and no bill later. A claim is not a purchase and creates no payment relationship between us.
A square is held, not owned outright, and it can be lost. It is yours while its shield holds, you keep the shield going yourself, and when it runs out anybody may claim the square and it stops being yours. That is the term most likely to surprise you and it is written out in clause 3. Read that clause before you put a picture on anything you would mind losing.
One thing on this site costs money, and it is protection. Protection is bought for a square you already hold, it is $2.00, and a protected square can never be claimed by anybody. It is optional, it is the only contract between us with money in it, and clause 6 is the whole of it.
This is not an investment, nothing here appreciates for you, and no money ever comes back to you from holding a square.
What also has a clock on it is the map itself. The site runs on a countdown shown publicly on every page: it opens with a fixed number of days, and every square anybody protects adds 3.65 more. Claiming is free and adds nothing to it. If it reaches zero the map goes dark and stops being published. That is a limit on how long the service exists, and we are telling you about it at the top rather than burying it: a square is a claim on a map, and a map has to be somewhere. Clause 12 is the detail.
The picture is the claim. You claim a square by putting an image on it. That is one action and there is no other: there is no reserving a square to fill in later, no holding one while you decide, and nothing to pay on the way. The image goes up at once, for everybody, the moment the claim lands.
You need an account, and an account is an email address. We send a six-digit code to the address you give us and you type it back. That is the whole of it. The address is what the account is, it is where we write to you about your squares, and it is what the limit below is counted against.
One claim an hour. 60 minutes have to pass between one claim and the next on the same account. Replacing the image on a square you already hold is not a claim, costs nothing against that limit, and may be done as often as you like.
Some squares cannot be claimed at all: one that is protected (clause 6), one whose shield is still running (clause 3), one somebody is part-way through buying protection for, and one we have suspended or retired (clause 5). The panel says which of those it is, and how long it has to run where that is a question of time.
Claiming is for people. Automating it — scripts, bots, farmed accounts, anything that takes squares faster or more often than a person at a keyboard — breaches the acceptable use policy and we will close the accounts doing it.
This is the clause most likely to catch somebody out, so it is written as plainly as we can write it.
A square is yours only while its shield holds. A claim carries a shield of 24 hours from the moment you make it. While it holds, nobody else can claim that square, and the panel shows how long is left.
You put another 24 hours on it by hand. There is a button on your own square that does it, it is free, it costs you nothing against the hourly limit, and it comes back every 6 hours. Pressing it sets the shield to a full 24 hours from that moment — it does not add to what is left, so pressing it early banks nothing and nothing is ever stored up.
When the shield runs out, anybody may claim that square, and you lose it. Not after a warning period, not after we have reached you: the moment it lapses the square is open, and the next person to claim it takes it. Your image is deleted, your caption and your link go with it, and the square is theirs. We do not keep a copy and we cannot give it back to you. We will tell you when it happens, and we will normally write to you before it happens, but a message from us is not a condition of any of this — the shield is the rule, and nothing else is.
So a square is kept by turning up: roughly once a day, for as long as you want to hold it. That is the game and it is the same one for everybody. If you would rather not play it, protection is the way out and it is the only one. A protected square has no shield, no countdown and nothing to come back for.
You may claim a square somebody else held once their shield has lapsed, on exactly the same terms — and what you take, somebody else can take from you the same way.
Each square carries one image and one inscription — a caption and a link.
You may change any of it as often as you like, for as long as you hold the square. There is no limit on the number of times the image, the caption or the link may be replaced, and no charge for doing so. Nothing has to be spent and nothing is used up.
The caption and the link are one inscription and are saved together, so a square is never left with a caption describing something the link no longer points at.
Replacing an image deletes the one it replaces. We do not keep previous versions of your image and cannot restore one for you, so keep your own copy of anything you care about. Every change is recorded against the square as a matter of record; the picture itself is not.
The caption and the link are limited to 2000 characters each. That is a limit of the register, not a rationing of changes.
You must own or be licensed to use whatever you upload, and it must comply with our acceptable use policy. You grant us the licence needed to store, resize, re-encode and display your image on the map and in previews.
Illegal content is removed immediately, at our sole discretion, and no money is returned. This applies to everything you put on a square — the image, the caption and the link alike. If any of it is unlawful, or breaches the acceptable use policy, we may take it down at any time, without notice beforehand, without waiting for a complaint, and without refunding anything you have paid us — including the price of protection, if the square was protected. We do not have to prove a case to you first, and we do not have to put it back.
We may also remove a square where a link on it points somewhere unlawful, deceptive or harmful, even though the image itself is unobjectionable. The link is content you published.
Removal is not a transfer. The square stays registered to you and is never handed to anybody else. What comes off is what was printed on it. A suspended or retired square cannot be claimed by anybody for as long as it stays that way.
You will be told what was removed and why, and you can dispute it — see clause 10. That is your right and it is not affected by anything above; what it does not do is delay the removal.
$2.00, once, for one square, and that square can then never be claimed by anybody. Not when a shield lapses, because a protected square has no shield. Not by us, not by anybody who wants it more, not ever. There is no countdown on it, no button to press, and nothing to come back for.
It is permanent and it is the only thing here with a price. It is bought by the person holding the square, for that square, and it takes effect the moment the payment clears. The price does not change with demand, with how many squares are left, with how long you have held yours, or with who you are. There is nothing further to pay, ever, and no renewal.
Protection is a digital service and we supply it immediately. That matters for the 14-day right of withdrawal, which is clause 8 and is about protection and nothing else.
It travels with the square. Give a protected square away (clause 9) and it is protected in the other person's hands, at no cost to them.
What it does not do. It does not put anything on the square, it does not buy you the cell or the ground under it, and it is no defence at all to clause 5: illegal content comes off a protected square exactly as fast, and no money is returned when it does.
Squares paid for under the earlier version of this site are protected. When a square was bought for a fixed price it was bought to be kept, and that promise is honoured: every one of those squares is protected, permanently, with nothing further to pay.
Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card details. While a payment for protection is open, the square it is for cannot be claimed by anybody else — for up to 31 minutes, which is longer than the checkout stays payable. If the square has somehow stopped being yours by the time the payment lands, nothing is protected and the whole charge is refunded automatically.
The price you see is the price you pay. $2.00 is the total. Nothing is added at the end, nothing changes with where you are, and there is no separate line for tax, fees or handling.
No sales tax or VAT is charged to you. None is added to your payment, none is itemised on your receipt, and you are not asked for a billing address in order to work one out. We are not registered for VAT, so we may not charge it, may not show it on a receipt, and do not issue VAT invoices. The price is set high enough to cover what it costs us to take the payment — the card fee, the currency conversion, and any tax we may owe on the supply — and those are ours to carry rather than lines added to your bill.
Your own bank is not us. We charge $2.00, in USD, and nothing else. If your card is issued in another currency your bank or card issuer may add its own conversion or cross-border charge on top of that, at its own rates and without telling us. That is between you and them: we do not set it, do not receive it and cannot refund it.
If you need a receipt, write to [email protected] quoting the address you paid with and we will send a plain one, showing what you paid and for what. If any of this changes — if a tax has to be collected from you and shown to you — this clause changes with it before it happens, not after.
This clause is about protection. Nothing else on this site is paid for, so there is nothing else to withdraw from.
As a consumer in the EU you have 14 days from the day the contract is concluded to withdraw from a distance purchase of digital content, without giving any reason.
How to withdraw. Tell us in a clear statement before the 14 days are up: an email to [email protected] saying which square and the address you paid with is enough. It is enough that you send it before the deadline. We refund everything you paid within 14 days of being told, by the same means you paid, at no cost to you.
A refund unwinds the protection and does not touch the square. You never paid for the square, so there is nothing about it to give back: it stays yours, exactly as it was, and it goes back to being held the ordinary way — with a fresh 24-hour shield starting the moment the refund goes through, so getting your money back never drops your square into somebody else's hands the same second. From then on it is clause 3 again.
We do not ask you to give the right up. The square is protected the moment the payment clears — we are not going to leave you paid up and unprotected — and you keep the full 14 days anyway. There is no box to tick at checkout and no consent to immediate supply to give: protection is instant either way, so asking you to trade the right for it would have bought you nothing. Withdrawing removes the protection and refunds what you paid, on the terms in the paragraph above.
This clause applies to consumers in the EU, the EEA and the UK, and it is the connection you pay from that we go by. That can be wrong about where you live. If you were entitled to the 14 days and our records say otherwise, you have them anyway: write to [email protected] and say so.
The email we send when the payment completes says which applies to you.
You may give a square you have protected to anybody. There is no sale, no transfer fee and no market: a square is given or it stays where it is. This is the one way a square passes straight from one person to another by somebody's choice rather than by a shield running out.
Only a protected square can be given. A shield can run out while your offer is still unread, and we are not going to hand somebody a square that a stranger claimed in the meantime. Protect it first and it is yours to give.
Nothing moves until they accept. You name an email address; we write to it and ask. Until somebody at that address says yes, the square is still yours in every respect — it stays on the map, you can still change the image, the caption and the link, you still keep the shield going, and you can take the offer back. If they say no, or say nothing for 14 days, the offer closes and the square is still yours.
Once they accept it is theirs, and you cannot take it back. It is theirs on exactly these terms: it stays protected in their hands, at no cost to them. You stop being able to change what is on it, and we will not show you what they choose to put there.
A square suspended while we review a report cannot be given away; handing it on is not how that gets settled.
Giving a square away is not a refund and does not entitle you to one.
We may suspend a square from public display while we review a report, before deciding anything. Suspension is not a finding against you.
Where content is removed for being unlawful or for breaching the acceptable use policy, no refund is due — not for the image, not for the protection on the square, not in part. What you may not do is use a square for that.
Where we remove a protected square for our own convenience rather than for anything you did, we refund what you paid for its protection in full.
When we remove or suspend something of yours we will send you a statement of what was removed, on what ground, and how to contest it. You may reply to that statement and ask us to look again, and a person will. If you think we have it wrong you may also take the matter to an out-of-court dispute settlement body, or to a court — nothing in these terms takes that away.
Anyone can report a square from the panel beside it, or by writing to [email protected]. Reports of apparently criminal content are passed to the authorities where the law requires it.
You may close your account at any time, from your own account page. It deletes your account, your name, your address and your settings, and it cannot be undone.
You choose what happens to your squares, and the two answers are genuinely different:
Closing your account is not a refund, and it is not how you exercise the right of withdrawal — if you mean to withdraw from a protection payment, do that first.
The number of days left is shown on the front of the site at all times. It is not a marketing device and it is not reset quietly: it goes up only when somebody pays to protect a square, by 3.65 days each. Claiming a square adds nothing to it, however many are claimed; neither does extending a shield, taking a square somebody else held, or being handed one. The map lasts as long as it is paid to.
A refund does not take those days back off the clock. They were added in front of everybody watching it, and we are not going to shorten a public countdown afterwards.
If it reaches zero we stop publishing the map. We will write to every holder before that happens, at the address on their account. Nothing is charged at that point and nothing further is owed by you.
So do not read protection as a promise that a website will exist forever — no honest seller can promise that. Read it as what it is: for as long as this map is published, a protected square cannot be claimed by anybody.
We aim to keep the service running indefinitely but make no guarantee of uptime. If the service is discontinued, we will give reasonable notice and make holders' images available for download.
Buy The World is a satire about who owns the world and what it costs to keep hold of any of it. Being a joke does not make it less of a contract: protection is real money paid to a real company, and everything above applies exactly as written.
Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited. Otherwise our total liability in connection with any square is capped at what you have paid us for that square, which for a square nobody has protected is nothing.
These terms are governed by Danish law, without prejudice to the mandatory consumer protections of your country of residence. EU consumers may also use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform.