Terms of use

The short version

Zula is a catalogue of places, written by hand. You can keep notes and photographs of your own against the trips you take, and publish a trip so other people can read it. Publishing is a decision you make one trip at a time, a person reads it before anybody else can, and you can take it back whenever you like. What you publish stays yours.

Using the app means agreeing to what is below. It is the end-user licence agreement the App Store requires, written as though a person will read it, because one might.

Your account

You can use nearly all of Zula without an account. Signing in with Apple adds sync between your devices, and it is what makes publishing possible — a handle has to be unique, and only a server can promise that. You are responsible for what happens under your account. You can delete it from inside the app, and deleting it removes your rows, your uploaded photographs and anything you published.

What you keep, and what you publish

Your notes, photographs, saved places, pins and trips are private. They are on your phone, and on our server only if you signed in so they could sync.

A trip is private too, until you publish it. Publishing copies the photographs on it into a public place, signed with your handle, and puts them in front of a moderator. Nothing is visible to anybody else until that person has looked. Taking it back deletes the public copies. Your originals are never touched in either direction.

You keep ownership of everything you write and photograph. By publishing a collection you give us permission to show it inside Zula and to make the copies and thumbnails needed to do that — nothing else, and only for as long as it is published.

What must not be published

There is no tolerance for abusive content or abusive people. Do not publish:

Anything that is not yours to publish — somebody else's photographs, or a place page copied from another service.
Photographs of people who did not agree to be photographed in a way that identifies them, and anything at all of a child who is not yours.
Anything sexual, violent, or made to frighten, harass or humiliate somebody.
Hatred or abuse directed at anybody, including on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, disability or disease.
Anything that endangers a place or the people at it — the location of something that survives by not being findable, or a route onto private land presented as a public one.
Anything untrue about where a photograph was taken. Zula records what a picture's own metadata said about that, and the whole value of this catalogue is that it does not lie about the ground.
Advertising, or a place that paid you to be on your trip.

Reporting, blocking and takedowns

Every published trip, every published photograph and every profile carries a way to report it, and every profile carries a way to block the person behind it. Blocking takes effect immediately, it needs nobody's agreement, and it works both ways: they will not see what you publish either.

A report reaches a person, not a queue nobody reads. We act on reports within 24 hours: content that breaks the rules above is removed, and an account that does it deliberately or repeatedly is removed with it. You will not be told who reported something, and nobody is told that you reported them.

If you believe something of yours was taken down wrongly, write to hello@tryzula.com and a person will read it.

Places you add yourself

A pin is somewhere you have been that Zula has no page on. It is yours, it is private, and it is never shown as part of the catalogue. If you offer one to us, you are giving us permission to write it up — with your name on it if it goes in — and confirming that the name, the location and any photograph are yours to give.

What we promise, and what we do not

The catalogue is written by people and is checked, but places change: hours move, gates close, roads wash out. Zula is a guide and not a guarantee, and you are responsible for your own safety on the ground. Nothing here is advice about whether somewhere is safe to visit.

The app is provided as it is. We do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and to the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from using it. Nothing in this paragraph limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

Paid itineraries

Some trips can be bought. Payment is handled by Apple, under their terms, and what you are buying is the document described on the screen where you bought it. Refunds are Apple's to give; write to us first and we will help.

Ending it

You can stop using Zula at any time and delete your account from inside the app. We can suspend or remove an account that breaks the rules above. If we do, anything you published stops being readable.

Changes

If these terms change in a way that matters, the date at the top changes and the app tells you the next time you open it.

Questions: hello@tryzula.com