Terms

Who we are, and what this is

Philoteknia is run by C-Ware BV, Hof ter Bollen 13, 2870 Puurs-Sint-Amands, Belgium. Company number (KBO/VAT): BE 0447.286.794. "We" and "us" mean that company. "You" means whoever is reading.

These terms are the agreement between you and us. You accept them when you register, and they apply each time you use the site afterwards. Reading asks nothing of you: the archive, a record, a page like this one, all open without an account and without accepting anything.

The privacy notice sits beside these terms and says what we do with personal data. The two are meant to say the same thing wherever they overlap. If you find them disagreeing, please tell us, because it means one of them is wrong.

What Philoteknia is for

Philoteknia keeps a permanent record of an artwork in someone's private care: photographs, what its custodian tells us about it, and an identifier that stays with the artwork through everyone who looks after it next.

It is a record, not a market. No artwork is sold here. An artwork can be offered for rehoming, which means given to a new custodian: the artwork itself costs nothing, and the new custodian pays Philoteknia a fixed transfer fee to take it on. An approved professional can ask to be put in touch with a custodian, and pays a fee only if the custodian agrees. We take no part in selling an artwork, and no price for an artwork is ever agreed here.

A member may open collection pages: public pages, each under a name they choose, showing the public records they put in it, which anybody with an account may follow for nothing. The name is checked like anything else written for others to read, and we may close a page whose name breaks these terms. A collection page says nothing about who its owner is beyond the name they chose.

The custodian of a record may link it to exhibitions it was shown in, and write an exhibition that is not on Philoteknia yet. An exhibition is shown only once what was written about it has been checked and while at least one public record is linked to it, and only with its public records. What is written about it is checked like anything else written for others to read, a website given for it is shown only once a person at Philoteknia has read it, and we may correct an exhibition, merge it with another that is the same, take a record off it, or delete it. Linking a record to an exhibition adds nothing to the record's history.

Your account

You are 18 or older

We ask you to confirm it when you register. We do not ask for your date of birth. If we learn an account belongs to someone younger, we erase it.

The account is yours alone

One person, one account. Keep your password to yourself, and tell us if you think someone else has got into it.

Your email address must reach you

Your display name does not have to be your legal name, and nothing on a public record shows it. Your email address is different: it is how we reach you about your own records, and it has to be one you read.

We expect to be able to find you

If we hear nothing from you for a year, we write and ask whether you are still there, and write twice more if you do not answer. You can also name one person for us to contact if we cannot reach you at all. That is the whole of it: we are looking after records meant to outlast their custodians, and a custodian nobody can reach is the problem this is for.

What you put on record

The artwork is in your care

You confirm this when you record an artwork, and it is the one thing the platform cannot work around. Recording an artwork you do not look after misleads everybody who reads the record afterwards.

What you write is your claim, not our finding

We do not check it. We do not authenticate an artwork, do not attribute it to an artist, and do not value it. Every record says so on its face. If you are wrong about an artwork, the record is wrong, and it is wrong in your name.

It has to be yours to put there

Do not upload photographs somebody else took, or record an artwork you have no right to describe. If you photograph an artwork by an artist whose copyright is still running, having permission to publish that photograph is your responsibility, not ours.

What others will read is checked first

What you write for other people to read (what you tell us about an artwork, the conditions on a rehoming, an application) is checked for spam, scams and misuse before it is shown. Software does the first pass; when something is held, a person reads it. Text carrying contact details is refused rather than cleaned up: we say that they are not allowed here and you take them out, because a record is not a classified advertisement.

Your photographs and your words

You keep every right you had. The copyright in your photographs, and in what you write, stays yours. Nothing here transfers it, and nothing here is exclusive: they remain yours to use anywhere else, in any way you like.

What you give us is permission to show them on Philoteknia. It is free of charge, it applies anywhere in the world, and it lasts as long as the record lasts, which is meant to be permanently. It does not end when your account ends, because the record does not end when your account ends: that is the whole promise of a permanent record, and without this permission we could not keep it.

That permission covers showing the record and nothing else. We cannot sell your photographs, cannot license them to anybody else, and cannot use them for anything but the record they belong to. Not to advertise Philoteknia, not for press, not for prints, not for a book. If we ever want to do something outside that, we have to come and ask you.

If somebody tells us that a photograph or a piece of text on a record infringes their rights, we may take it away. Understand what that means for a photograph: the original and every copy we made of it go from our storage, and it cannot be put back. The history of the record will show that its details changed that day. It does not say a photograph went, or why: that is kept with us.

Records are permanent

A record is meant to last as long as the artwork does, through everyone who looks after it. If you close your account, your personal data is erased and the records you saved stay, attributed to "a former custodian".

There is one exception, and it is narrow. While an artwork has never been in anyone else's care, the person who put it on record may take that record away completely: the record, what they wrote, its history and its photographs, here and from our storage. Once the artwork has passed to somebody else, the record is more than one person's own, and that is no longer possible.

An identifier is never given to a second artwork, whether or not the first record is still there. A number that has meant one artwork means that artwork for good.

A record can also outlive the artwork itself. If an artwork is destroyed or lost, its record stays and says so, with the year and what happened.

Rehoming an artwork

Offering an artwork for rehoming is offering to give it away. Whoever receives it pays Philoteknia a fixed transfer fee when they confirm, and is shown the amount before paying; the custodian who gives the artwork pays nothing and receives none of it. If the handover falls through, the fee is returned. No money should pass between you and whoever receives it. If you want to sell an artwork, this is not the place to do it.

Who receives it is the custodian's decision alone. We do not choose, do not recommend anybody, and do not vouch for anybody. We show the custodian what applicants wrote and let the custodian decide, and a custodian may decide nobody.

The handover itself is between two people. Once the custodian has chosen and the applicant has confirmed and paid the transfer fee, each is given the other's email address to arrange it. The record passes only when both have said on the site that the artwork has changed hands; until then it stays with the custodian who is giving it. How the artwork travels, what it costs, whether it is insured, whether it arrives: all of that is between the two of you. We are not a party to it and cannot put it right if it goes wrong.

Whoever receives an artwork accepts one condition of ours: not to sell it commercially for three years, and to offer it for rehoming again through Philoteknia rather than dispose of it otherwise. It is a promise made to the custodian who gave it, and nothing in the site enforces it.

Conditions a custodian attaches on top of that are between them and whoever receives the artwork. We show them; we do not enforce them.

Professionals

A professional account is for somebody who works with art professionally: a dealer, an exhibitor or curator, a researcher, or another. You tell us what you do, the name you work under and where you work, a person reads the application, and approval is ours to give. It is also ours to take back, if what you do with the account is not what you asked for; we write and tell you when we do, and your ordinary account and your own records are untouched by it.

Trading as a dealer

Only a dealer lists artworks. A dealer buys places for them in blocks: a block of ten places, which is the dealer fee and their registration, and, while one runs, single places alongside it. Each block runs for 90 days from the day it is bought, at the price in force that day; blocks bought while others run add places. Listings take the places of the oldest block first, and when a block ends its listings move to free places in another or stop being shown until one is free. Time a place is not used is not credited. The prices are on the How to participate page. Nothing renews by itself: we hold no payment mandate and charge nothing automatically, and we write to you before a block ends. A dealer may show their business details beside their listings. What anybody writes on a record, dealers included, may still not contain contact details.

Asking to be put in touch

Any approved professional can ask the custodian of a public artwork whether they will be put in touch, unless the custodian has turned professional enquiries off for it, or the artwork is a dealer's listing or recorded as destroyed. Asking costs nothing. If they say yes, you have fourteen days to pay the introduction fee, shown before you pay, and the moment it is paid you are each given the other's email address. If they say no, do not answer within thirty days, or you do not pay in time, nothing is charged and nothing is shared. After a no you may not ask about that artwork again for a year. What you write with an ask may not contain contact details: they are what the fee is for.

What you pay

Reading costs nothing. Following artworks costs nothing, and always will. Putting artworks on record costs nothing, however many. Until one of your records has been approved, a record you make public may be looked at by a person at Philoteknia before it appears in the archive, and we may decline to show it, telling you why; after that, your records appear as soon as you save them. To keep the archive from being flooded, one account can put a limited number of artworks on record in any 24 hours, fewer in its first week; when you reach it, we tell you when you can carry on.

Everything else shows you its price before you pay. Prices are in euro and include Belgian VAT at 21%. You pay on Stripe's own pages, so your card or bank details never reach Philoteknia, and Stripe sends you the receipt.

Nothing renews by itself. Every payment is one you choose to make, each time.

Where you are a consumer you have a right to withdraw from a distance purchase. Before you can pay, checkout explains what that means and asks you to give the right up; nothing here can be bought without that.

One thing about it is worth saying plainly. That explanation is written for something handed over the moment you pay, which is what most of what we sell is. It fits a dealer's block of places less well, because a block runs for 90 days rather than being handed over at once. We have not yet written a separate wording for it. If you want to withdraw from something and think the wording did not fit what you bought, write to us: we would rather settle it than stand on a form of words.

If you think something you bought was not given to you, write to us before anything else: we would rather put it right than argue about it.

What we may take away

Taking away a record against its custodian's wishes is the sharpest thing this platform can do, and it is meant to be rare. We may do it when a record is unlawful, when a court, a police force or a regulator tells us to, when somebody with a right in the artwork or in the photographs asks us to, or when what is on the record breaks these terms.

When we do, we write to you and give the reason, unless the law forbids us to tell you. Be warned that the reason is drawn from a short list of categories and may be no more than "something else"; if that is not enough, reply and ask, and a person will read it. Be clear about what a reply can and cannot get you: taking a record away cannot be undone, because the record, its history and its photographs go from our storage and the identifier is retired for good. What a reply can get you is an explanation, and, where we were wrong, our saying so.

The identifier of a record we take away is retired and never given to another artwork.

We can stop an account or close one for the same reasons, and for using the site to harass somebody or to get at other people's personal data. Stopping it means it cannot sign in until we lift that, which we can. Nothing you have put here is deleted by it, though you are signed out everywhere, and any app logins you had made have to be set up again. If we stop yours you are told so, and told why, the next time you try to sign in, and a reply reaches a person.

What we do not promise

We do not say what an artwork is

No authentication, no attribution, no valuation, no certificate. A record is what its custodian says about an artwork, and its worth is as evidence of that, kept over time.

We do not promise an artwork finds a home

Offering an artwork for rehoming may bring nobody at all.

We do not promise the site is never down

We intend the records to be permanent and we run the site to make that so. Every night the database is copied, encrypted, and kept somewhere other than the server it came from; and before every change to the site another copy is taken, on the server itself and readable only by us. What we can promise is that we take it seriously and that we will tell you if something is lost, not that nothing ever will be.

We are not in the middle

What happens between a custodian and a new custodian, or between a custodian and a professional, is theirs. We introduce people and then step out.

If something goes wrong

We are responsible for what the law makes us responsible for, and we do not try to sign that away. In particular we do not limit or exclude our liability for fraud, for deliberate wrongdoing, for gross negligence, or for death or personal injury.

Beyond that, and only as far as the law allows us to limit it, what we owe you is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before whatever went wrong. If you have paid us nothing, that is not a way of owing you nothing: it means the limit does not apply to you, and the law decides instead.

Nothing in these terms takes away a right you have as a consumer. Where a line here and a consumer right disagree, the consumer right wins and the line does not apply.

Ending it

You can stop at any time. Ask under "Closing your account" in My account: we write to say we have the request, a person carries it out by hand rather than a button doing it at once, and you can call it off until then. Your personal data is erased. Two things stay: your records, attributed to "a former custodian", for the reasons in "Records are permanent"; and what you paid, which bookkeeping law obliges us to keep and which the privacy notice sets out.

We can end this agreement by closing your account, for the reasons under "What we may take away". If we do it for something you could put right, we say what it is first.

If we ever have to stop running Philoteknia, we will tell every account holder at least three months beforehand. In that time we will try to find somebody to take the archive on, whether another organisation or a public archive that keeps such things.

If we cannot, we will send every custodian a copy of their own records and their photographs before anything is switched off, so that what you wrote does not go when we do.

You do not have to wait for that, and you should not. "A copy of your data" in My account gives you everything you wrote, at once, as a file. It does not contain the photographs themselves: it carries links to them that are good for about a quarter of an hour, so download them while the file is fresh. A permanent record kept by a small company is only ever as permanent as the company, and keeping your own copy of something you care about is a reasonable thing to do.

Changes to these terms

We can change these terms. When a change matters to you, we email account holders, say plainly what has changed, and give at least thirty days before it applies to accounts that already exist. If you do not want to accept it, close your account before then.

A change that only corrects a mistake, or that we are obliged to make by law, can take effect sooner, and we still say so here.

These terms exist in English, French, Dutch and German. The one that applies to you is the one in the language you registered in. They are meant to say the same thing; if you find a difference that matters, tell us, and the reading that favours you is the one we will take.

Which law, and which courts

Belgian law applies. If you are a consumer living elsewhere in the European Union, you also keep whatever protection the law where you live gives you and Belgian law does not.

The Belgian courts can hear a dispute about these terms. If you are a consumer, you can also bring one before the courts where you live, and we will only bring one there.

Before any of that, write to [email protected]. If that does not settle it and you are a consumer, there is a free mediation body for consumer disputes in every EU country and you can go to the one where you live. In Belgium it is the Consumer Mediation Service, consumerombudsman.be.

If your complaint is about a record we took away or an account we closed, you can also complain to the Digital Services Coordinator of the country you live in, which every EU country has. In Belgium it is the BIPT; in Germany, the Bundesnetzagentur. We do not run an internal complaints body, and we would rather say so than name one that does not exist.