Terms

Last updated: 28 September 2026

A Stranger's Shelf ("the Shelf", "we", "us") is operated from the Philippines. By using the site you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

1. What this place is

The Shelf shows one creation at a time, chosen at random from work that strangers have left. There are no accounts, no follower counts, no rankings and no search. Everything left here is reviewed by a person before anyone can find it.

We are a host for what other people make. We do not endorse it, we did not write it, and we make no claim that it is accurate, original or suitable for you.

2. Who may use it

You must be at least 18 years old to leave something here. If you are under that age, you may not submit.

You may not use the Shelf if doing so is unlawful where you are.

3. What you keep, and what you give us

You keep everything. You retain all copyright and all other rights in what you leave. We claim no ownership, at any point, and nothing here transfers your copyright to us.

What you grant us is the permission we need to operate the site: a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, reformat (for example, resizing an image or rendering a PDF page-by-page), moderate, display and make your work available to visitors of the Shelf, for as long as it remains published here.

That licence exists only so the site can show your work. It does not let us sell it, licence it to anyone else, use it in advertising, or make merchandise from it.

When you take your work back, or we remove it, the licence ends for future display. Copies may persist briefly in backups and caches until they expire in the ordinary course.

4. What you promise when you leave something

At the moment of submission you confirm four things, and they are repeated here because they are the whole basis on which we can publish:

• You created the work, or you hold the rights and permission to share it.
• You are submitting it voluntarily for public display, and understand it may be shown at random to strangers.
• You keep ownership, and are granting the permission in clause 3.
• You agree to the Submission Guidelines and these Terms.

You further promise that the work does not infringe anyone's copyright, trademark, privacy or publicity rights; that any identifiable living person in it has consented; and that it does not break the Submission Guidelines.

If that is not true, do not submit it. A false confirmation is the single thing most likely to cause harm to someone else here.

5. Moderation, and our discretion

Everything is reviewed before publication. We may decline, remove, or stop displaying anything, at any time, with or without explanation, including work that has already been approved.

We are one small operation, not a platform with an appeals department. There is no guaranteed review time, no queue position and no appeal. We will act on valid legal notices promptly.

Where we are required to give reasons for a moderation decision — for example under the EU Digital Services Act — we will provide a statement of reasons to the extent we are able to reach the person concerned. Because we hold no contact details for anonymous submissions, that may not be possible, and we say so plainly rather than promising what we cannot deliver.

6. Taking your work back

When you leave something you are issued a private link. It is the only way to remove that piece yourself, it is shown once, and it cannot be reissued — there is no account and no email address on file. Keep it somewhere safe.

7. Reporting

Any visitor can report a creation. Reports are read. If something is unlawful or breaks the Guidelines it is removed. Copyright complaints have their own route — see the Copyright and Takedown page.

8. What you must not do

You may not:

• submit work that is not yours to share
• attempt to identify, contact, track or deanonymise another person here
• scrape, bulk-download, crawl or systematically copy the creations
• use the Shelf or anything on it to train a machine-learning model
• interfere with the site's operation, security or bot protection
• use the Shelf to advertise, recruit, solicit or sell

9. No warranty

The Shelf is provided "as is" and "as available". We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that anything you leave will remain available. We do not warrant the accuracy, legality or quality of anything a stranger has left.

You may encounter work that you find strange, sad, unfinished, confusing or not to your taste. That is the nature of the place.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, for loss of data, or for loss of the work you left.

Nothing here excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

11. Indemnity

If what you leave here causes a claim against us — for example, because it was not yours to share — you agree to indemnify us against the reasonable costs of that claim, except to the extent it arises from our own fault.

12. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of the Philippines, and the courts of Manila have exclusive jurisdiction.

13. Changes

We may change these Terms. The date above will change with them. Continuing to use the Shelf after a change means you accept it.

14. Contact

hello@astrangersshelf.com — A Stranger's Shelf, operated from the Philippines.