Terms of Service

§ 1. General Provisions & Operator Info

Welcome to Sardinista (the "Service" or "Platform"). This document constitutes the Terms of Service (referred to as the "Terms") and outlines the legally binding rules for accessing and using our Platform.

By creating an account, scanning tins, or posting reviews, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Platform.

These Terms are provided free of charge to all users prior to creating an account or using services, in a format that allows the document to be downloaded, saved, and printed.

§ 2. Scope & Types of Services

We provide the following free-of-charge electronic services to our users (referred to as "Curators"):

• Public Catalog: Browsing, searching, and filtering canned seafood profiles (conservas) sourced from open and curated databases.
• Visual Scanner: Submitting images or barcodes of tins to automatically detect, parse, and identify matching products using text recognition (OCR) and intelligence modeling.
• User Account ("The Cellar" / "Stash"): A personal, password-protected digital cellar where Curators can save, track, and organize their personal collection of premium tins.
• Review System: Writing ratings (1-5 stars), adding organoleptic parameters (richness, saltiness, firmness), assigning sensory tags, uploading custom tin photos, and using the built-in translation system to view global reviews in multiple languages.

§ 3. Technical Requirements

To use Sardinista, the Curator must meet the following basic technical conditions:

• An active connection to the internet.
• A modern web browser (e.g., Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge) with JavaScript and HTML5 enabled.
• A device with a functioning camera or image-upload capability (required to use the visual scanning and OCR features).

§ 4. Curator Obligations & Unlawful Content Ban

Creating an account on the Platform is voluntary and completely free of charge.

Ban on Unlawful Content: In compliance with EU regulations, Curators are strictly prohibited from delivering or uploading content of an unlawful nature. This includes:

• Submitting reviews, ratings, images, or texts that violate third-party copyrights, trademarks, or intellectual property rights.
• Submitting defamatory, hateful, offensive, abusive, harassing, or obscene material.
• Injecting malicious code, virus strains, spam, or executing automated scripts to scrape or overload the Platform.

Intellectual Property License: By uploading reviews, ratings, tags, or tin photos to Sardinista, you grant the Operator a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual license to host, display, translate, and distribute this content on the Platform to allow other Curators to discover it.

§ 5. Review Integrity & Transparency (EU Omnibus Disclosure)

In accordance with the EU Omnibus Directive (Directive 2019/2161) regarding consumer review authenticity:

1. Reviews, ratings, and organoleptic parameters published on Sardinista represent the individual, subjective, and voluntary opinions of our user community.
2. Because canned seafood can be acquired globally and logged or scanned directly into our system, Sardinista does not verify whether the Curator has actually purchased or consumed the specific tin before writing a review.
3. We do, however, implement automated spam checks and a manual moderation queue (accessible to Administrators via /admin) to filter out commercial spam, bots, offensive content, and fake accounts to protect the integrity of our collaborative data.

§ 6. Complaint Procedure

If you experience technical issues, errors, or feel that these Terms have been violated, you have the right to file a complaint.

Complaints should be sent via email to: [email protected].

To help us resolve the issue swiftly, please include your registered email address, a detailed description of the problem, and the approximate date it occurred.

The Operator will review and respond to all complaints within 14 days of receipt. The response will be sent to the email address from which the complaint was submitted.

§ 7. Account Deletion & Termination

The contract for providing services (Account maintenance) is concluded for an indefinite period.

Curators can terminate their contract and request the immediate deletion of their account at any time. This can be initiated directly within your profile settings (e.g., /stash#settings) or by sending an email request to [email protected].

Upon deletion, your email authentication details and private cellar lists will be removed from our databases. Public review text may be anonymized to prevent broken text links.

§ 8. Final Provisions

The Operator reserves the right to amend these Terms for legitimate reasons (e.g., legal updates, adding new features, security revisions). Curators will be notified of changes at least 7 days in advance.

For matters not covered in these Terms, the provisions of EU consumer protection regulations and general principles of European contract law shall apply.

If you are a consumer in the EU, you also enjoy the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your country of habitual residence.