These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of Breakpoint, a curated tech-blog aggregator available at breakpoint.blog and through associated mobile and web applications (collectively, the “Service”). The Service is operated by Nolan Donovan, a sole proprietor based in North Carolina, United States (“Breakpoint”, “we”, “us”, or “our”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy, which is available at /privacy and incorporated here by reference. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

“User” means anyone who accesses the Service.

“Free user” means a User with a free, non-paying account.

“Member” means a User with an active paid subscription. Members may submit a blog (a “Publisher”) for inclusion in the Service.

“Member Content” means blog posts, publisher metadata, brand assets (such as colors and avatars), and any other material associated with a Publisher and made accessible to the Service by a Member.

You must be at least 13 years old to create any account on the Service. You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction if higher, to become a paid Member, because Membership is a contract for paid services.

You agree to provide accurate registration information and to keep it current. One person or legal entity may not maintain more than one account without our written permission.

You are responsible for safeguarding your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us at contact@breakpoint.blog promptly if you suspect unauthorized access. We are not liable for losses caused by unauthorized use of your account that you could have prevented with reasonable care.

Free users may read the public feed and create a limited number of reading lists, subject to capacity limits we set and may change from time to time.

Subject to these Terms and our acceptance, an active Member may:

We may add, modify, or remove features at any time. Membership entitles you to access the Service in its then-current form, not to any specific feature.

Current Membership prices are shown at checkout. We may change prices for future billing periods on prior notice; price changes do not affect the current paid period.

Memberships are sold on a recurring subscription basis (for example, monthly or yearly) and automatically renew at the end of each billing period using your payment method on file, until you cancel. By starting a Membership, you authorize us and our payment processor to charge your payment method on each renewal.

You may cancel at any time through your account settings or by contacting us at contact@breakpoint.blog. Cancellation stops future renewals; your Membership and Member features remain active through the end of the current paid period, after which your Publisher will be set to Removed and your posts will be hidden from the feed (see Section 9 for retention).

All payments are non-refundable. We do not provide refunds or credits for partial billing periods, unused time, or features you choose not to use, except where required by applicable law.

If a renewal payment fails, we will attempt to collect payment over a grace period of approximately fourteen (14) days, during which we may notify you by email and your Publisher may continue to function. If payment is not successfully collected within the grace period, your Publisher will be paused and may be set to Removed.

You retain all copyright and other intellectual property rights you already hold in your Member Content. We do not claim ownership of your blog posts.

By submitting a Publisher or otherwise making Member Content accessible to the Service, you grant Breakpoint a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, scrape, cache, copy, index, transmit, display, excerpt, summarize, translate, reformat, and otherwise use your Member Content for the purposes of operating, providing, improving, and promoting the Service. This license includes the right to process your Member Content using third-party services, including third-party artificial intelligence services, for purposes such as metadata extraction, content moderation, search indexing, and the generation of vector embeddings.

This license lasts for as long as your Member Content is on the Service. If your Membership ends or your Publisher is removed, the license continues for a reasonable additional period to allow us to remove your Member Content from active systems and from any caches, backups, derived data (such as embeddings), or third-party processors.

You represent and warrant that:

You agree not to use the Service to submit, host, or distribute:

You also agree not to:

Breakpoint is a curated service. We may, at our sole discretion and at any time, with or without prior notice and with or without reason, reject any Publisher submission; remove, hide, unfeature, reorder, or stop scraping any Publisher or post; require changes to a Publisher's metadata; or terminate any Member's account. Except where expressly required by these Terms or by applicable law, exercise of this discretion does not entitle you to any refund.

You may terminate your account or cancel your Membership at any time through your account settings or by contacting us.

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service, including your Membership, immediately and without refund if:

On termination or removal, your Publisher will be set to Removed and posts will be hidden from the feed immediately. We will retain hidden Member Content for approximately 90 days, during which a removal may be reversed, after which we will hard-delete that Member Content from active systems. Backup copies and derived data such as embeddings may persist for a reasonable additional period before being expired.

The Service relies on third-party providers, including but not limited to our payment processor (Stripe), our database and authentication provider (Supabase), our hosting providers, and third-party artificial intelligence services that we use to extract metadata, moderate content, and generate vector embeddings from Member Content. Your use of the Service is also subject to those providers' terms and privacy policies. We may change providers at any time without notice.

The Breakpoint name, logo, brand, software, design, and the curated organization of Member Content are owned by Breakpoint and protected by intellectual property laws. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-transferable, non-exclusive license to use the Service as intended by these Terms. No other rights are granted by implication or otherwise.

We respect intellectual property rights. If you believe that Member Content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to contact@breakpoint.blog that includes the information required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), namely:

Counter-notices may be submitted to the same address with the information required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3). We will terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, OR ACCURACY. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE; THAT SCRAPING WILL OCCUR ON ANY PARTICULAR SCHEDULE; THAT METADATA, SUMMARIES, OR CATEGORIZATIONS PRODUCED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL BE ACCURATE; OR THAT MEMBER CONTENT WILL BE PRESERVED. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT, ACCURACY, OR OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN MEMBER BLOGS.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL BREAKPOINT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO BREAKPOINT IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US$100). THESE LIMITATIONS DO NOT APPLY TO LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED OR EXCLUDED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, SUCH AS LIABILITY FOR GROSS NEGLIGENCE OR WILLFUL MISCONDUCT.

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Breakpoint and Nolan Donovan, and our respective affiliates, officers, agents, and contractors, from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of or in any way connected with: (a) your Member Content; (b) your use of the Service; (c) your violation of these Terms; or (d) your violation of any law or any third-party right, including any intellectual property right.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. You and Breakpoint agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in North Carolina for any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service, and you consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts.

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes that affect paid Members, we will provide approximately 30 days' advance notice by email to the address associated with your Membership; the changes take effect at the end of that notice period. Non-material changes (such as clarifications, formatting, or contact details) take effect when posted. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of any change constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree, your sole remedy is to stop using the Service and cancel your Membership.

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and Breakpoint regarding the Service and supersede any prior agreements.

Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force and the unenforceable provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms or your account without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms freely, including in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

Electronic notices. You consent to receive notices from us electronically, including by email to the address associated with your account and by posting on the Service.

Force majeure. We are not liable for any delay or failure to perform caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

Survival. Sections that by their nature should survive termination will survive, including the license grant in Section 6, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, governing law, and this Section 18.

Questions about these Terms, legal notices, copyright complaints, and account or billing issues may be directed to contact@breakpoint.blog.