Terms of Service
The short version. buythemoon.lol is a digital artwork: a 3D picture of a moon that people decorate with their logos. When you pay, you get your logo displayed on that picture. You do not buy, own, or get any right to any part of the real Moon, which no one can sell. Rankings and sizes change as others buy. All payments are final and non-refundable. Only upload logos you have the right to use.
- Who we are
- What you're buying
- The real Moon and space law
- How placement works
- Prices and payment
- Refund and Cancellation Policy
- Your logo and link
- Content rules
- Review and removal
- Availability and changes
- Our intellectual property
- Disclaimers and liability
- Governing law
- Changes to these Terms
- Contact
- Complaints and rights notices
- General
1. Who we are
buythemoon.lol (the "Site") is operated by Krish S Garlapati ("we", "us"). The best way to reach us is by email (see Contact); we'll provide a postal address for legal notices on request. By using the Site or buying a placement, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you buy on behalf of a company, you confirm you're authorised to bind it. You must be at least 18 years old to buy, and you may not buy if trade sanctions or other laws that apply to you or to us prohibit it. These Terms, including our Refund and Cancellation Policy in section 6, work together with How it works; if they conflict, these Terms control.
2. What you're buying
You are buying a placement: a licence for your logo or image ("your Logo"), together with a name, short description and link, to be displayed on the Site's digital moon artwork and its leaderboard, for as long as the Site operates and subject to these Terms.
- A placement is a digital display service. It is not property, land, a deed, a title, a share, a security, an investment, or a collectible token, and it has no cash value.
- Placements can't be resold or transferred through the Site, and we don't operate any market for them.
- "Share of the moon", "rank", "size" and "King of the Moon" are descriptions of how your Logo is shown in the artwork, nothing more.
- Placements are paid advertisements. Appearing on the moon is not our endorsement, review or verification of you, your product or your claims.
- It is a one-time payment. There is no subscription and nothing renews or is charged again.
3. The real Moon and space law
The "moon" on this Site is an artwork, not the real Moon. It's a 3D picture rendered in your browser, built from public-domain imagery and elevation data published by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio. We are not affiliated with NASA or any space agency.
Under the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (the "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies"), which has been ratified by more than 110 countries, including the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and India, the Moon and other celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means (Article II). Outer space is the "province of all mankind" (Article I). It is widely understood that, as a result, no person or company can validly own or sell land on the Moon.
Accordingly:
- We do not claim, own, sell, lease, or transfer any part of the real Moon or any other celestial body, and nothing on the Site is a "lunar deed" or similar.
- Your purchase gives you no right, title, interest, or claim of any kind to any physical place in space.
- Any wording on the Site such as "buy the moon", "claim", "own a piece" or "King of the Moon" is playful language describing the artwork.
Because the Site sells only the display of images in a digital artwork, it does not involve any appropriation of, or activity on, the Moon, and is consistent with the Outer Space Treaty.
4. How placement works
- Ranking. Placements are ranked by the amount bid, in US dollars before any tax. If two placements were bought for the same amount, the earlier one ranks higher.
- King of the Moon. The top-ranked placement is shown at the center of the artwork's default view and drawn largest. To take the top rank, a purchase must exceed the current top placement by at least 5% or US$5, whichever is greater.
- Size and position change. Sizes are calculated from rank, the amount paid and the number of placements, and are rebalanced every time someone buys. Positions are arranged automatically to pack logos tightly, and smaller logos may be moved. Your Logo will shrink as more people join and may move down in rank when others pay more. That is how the Site works and is not a reason for a refund.
- You don't disappear. Except as described in section 9 and section 10, your Logo stays on the artwork, though it may become small enough that it's only readable when zoomed in.
- No promises about results. We don't guarantee any number of visitors, clicks, views, sales or any particular size, position or visibility on any device.
- We may change how sizes and positions are calculated, as long as existing placements stay displayed.
5. Prices and payment
- Prices are in US dollars. Bids must be whole dollars from US$10 to US$999,999.
- Payments are processed by our payment partner, Dodo Payments, which acts as the merchant of record and may add applicable taxes. Their terms and privacy policy also apply to the payment. We never see or store your full card details.
- Applicable taxes (such as sales tax, VAT or GST) may be added at checkout and the checkout may be shown in your local currency. Your rank and size are always based on your bid in US dollars, not on tax or currency conversion.
- Crown hold. When you start a checkout to become King of the Moon, no one else can start a checkout for the Crown for the next 10 minutes. Your rank is assigned when your payment is confirmed, at the position your bid supports at that moment. If someone has paid more by then, you take the next rank down.
- Your placement normally goes live as soon as payment is confirmed. We may review it afterwards (section 9).
6. Refund and Cancellation Policy
All payments are final and non-refundable. A placement is a one-time payment for a digital service that starts as soon as your payment is confirmed: your Logo is added to the moon and your bid is counted on the public leaderboard. None of the following entitles you to a refund:
- changing your mind after paying;
- being outranked, losing the Crown, or your Logo getting smaller or moving as others join;
- getting fewer visitors, clicks or sales than you hoped for;
- mistakes in the details or Logo you approved at checkout (email us and we'll correct them);
- downtime, delays, or the Site closing after the notice described in section 10;
- removal of your placement under section 9, or at your own request.
By completing checkout you ask us to start this digital service immediately and acknowledge that you lose any statutory right of withdrawal or cooling-off period, to the extent the law allows that waiver. Where a consumer right can't be waived under the law that applies to you, we honour it.
Cancelling. Before you pay, simply close the checkout page; nothing is charged, and any Crown hold ends on its own after 10 minutes. After you pay there's nothing to cancel: there is no subscription and you will never be charged again unless you make a new purchase.
Chargebacks. Please email us before disputing a charge with your bank. A chargeback or payment dispute without a legally required basis is a breach of these Terms; we may remove the placement and refuse future purchases.
Payments are processed by Dodo Payments as merchant of record. Questions about a payment: see section 15.
7. Your logo and link
- Your rights. You confirm that you own, or have permission to use, everything you submit or that we fetch from the link you give us, including trademarks and logos, and that displaying it won't infringe anyone's rights or break any law. Don't use someone else's brand.
- Fetching. If you give us a website link, you authorise us to fetch its logo, name and description and to use them for your placement. Check what we show you before you pay. We use third-party names and logos only to identify the placement and where it links; this doesn't suggest any affiliation with or endorsement by the rights holder, unless the buyer is that rights holder.
- Accuracy. The information you submit must be accurate, must not impersonate anyone, and must stay accurate while your placement is live.
- Linked sites. Logos link to sites we don't control. Those sites have their own terms and practices, and we're not responsible for them.
- Licence to us. You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, resize, recolour within the artwork's style, display and reproduce your Logo, name, description and link on the Site and in screenshots, videos and posts that show the Site, for as long as the Site operates and for a reasonable period afterwards in archives and promotional material.
- Changes. To change your Logo or link, contact us. Changes go through review again.
8. Content rules
Logos, names, descriptions and links must not contain or point to:
- sexual or pornographic content, or anything involving minors;
- hate, harassment, threats, or content that promotes violence or terrorism;
- illegal products or services, gambling where it is illegal, weapons, drugs, or fraud;
- malware, phishing, scams, or misleading redirects;
- impersonation of any person, brand or organisation, or false claims of affiliation (including with NASA or any government);
- someone else's private information;
- affiliate or referral links disguised as your own brand, or link shorteners that hide the destination;
- content that infringes copyright, trademark or other rights.
You also may not interfere with the Site: no automated purchases without our written permission, scraping beyond ordinary browsing, bypassing rate limits, or attempts to break or reverse engineer it except as mandatory law allows. To report a placement, see section 16.
9. Review and removal
- We may review any new or changed Logo and link, before or after it goes live.
- We may refuse, hide or remove a placement, or ask you to change it, if it breaks these Terms or the law, if we receive a credible complaint (for example an infringement notice), or if a link starts pointing somewhere that breaks these rules.
- Removal doesn't entitle you to a refund (see section 6).
10. Availability and changes to the Site
We aim to keep the Site and every placement online, but we provide it "as is" and can't promise uninterrupted availability. We may change the Site's design, artwork, features and calculations. If we ever have to shut the Site down, we'll give at least 30 days' notice on the Site, and we'll try to keep a public archive of the final moon. Downtime, or the Site closing after that notice, doesn't entitle you to a refund.
11. Our intellectual property
The Site's software, design, artwork composition and brand belong to us or our licensors. The moon imagery and elevation data are courtesy of NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio and are used under its public-domain release. Your Logo remains yours.
12. Disclaimers and limitation of liability
To the extent the law allows, the Site and placements are provided "as is", without warranties of any kind, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We don't warrant that the Site will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that ranks, sizes, names or images shown are always accurate. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, lost profits, lost data, or loss of goodwill. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Site is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim. Nothing here limits liability that the law says can't be limited, such as for fraud or wilful misconduct.
Indemnity. You agree to defend and compensate us for claims, losses and reasonable legal fees arising from content you submit, the site you link to, a chargeback without valid reason, or your breach of these Terms.
13. Governing law and disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of India, and the courts of Bengaluru (Bangalore), India have jurisdiction over disputes. This doesn't take away any mandatory consumer protections or the right to bring a claim in your own country that the law where you live gives you. Please contact us first; most issues can be sorted out quickly.
14. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. We'll post the new version here with a new date, and for significant changes we'll give notice on the Site. Purchases are governed by the Terms in force when you bought.
15. Contact
Questions, support and payment questions: krishna.sumanth.garlapati@gmail.com. We aim to reply within 2 business days. You can also reach us on X at @KrishSGarlapati, but please send payment questions and legal notices by email.
16. Complaints and rights notices
If you believe a placement infringes your copyright, trademark or other rights, or links somewhere unlawful, email krishna.sumanth.garlapati@gmail.com with:
- your name and contact details;
- which placement it is (its name or link);
- what the problem is; and
- a statement that your notice is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.
We may hide a placement while we look into it, and we may share the notice with the buyer. We may ignore notices that are repeated without new information, or that are abusive.
17. General
If any part of these Terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies. If we don't enforce a term straight away, we haven't waived it. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms without our consent; we may transfer them as part of a transfer of the Site. These Terms (including the Refund and Cancellation Policy), How it works, the Privacy Policy and the details you confirm at checkout are the whole agreement between us about the Site.