Terms of Service

Last updated: 17 August 2026

Effective: on first publication in the app

Draft — not yet reviewed by a lawyer. Every [[BRACKETED]] item below is a decision only you can make. The operator is now named; what remains that carries real risk is the refund position and the contact address. See docs/legal-open-questions.md.

These Terms are a contract between you and PYC Software Inc. ("we", "us"), the operator of the cram app (the "App"). By creating an account you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not use the App.

1. What this App is

The App is a marketplace where students at a supported university post study notes they wrote, and other students at that same university read or buy them. We host the marketplace. We do not write, verify, grade, or endorse any notes sold through it.

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or approved by McMaster University. "McMaster" appears in this App only to identify the university whose students it serves. All university names, marks, and logos belong to their owners.

2. Who may use it

You may use the App only if:

• you have a working email address at a supported university domain, which is how the App verifies you are a student there;
• you are at least the age of majority where you live, or you are at least 16 and your parent or guardian accepts these Terms on your behalf; and
• we have not previously suspended or removed your account.

Accounts are personal. One person, one account. Do not share your account, your sign-in codes, or your access to purchased notes with anyone else.

If you stop being a student at a supported university, you may keep reading notes you already own, but we may end your ability to post or sell.

3. Your account and handle

You choose a handle. It is public, it appears on everything you post, and it is how buyers recognise you months later. Do not choose a handle that impersonates another person, a professor, a department, or the university itself. We may reclaim a handle that does.

You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us promptly at [[CONTACT EMAIL]] if you believe someone else has access to it.

4. What you may post

You may post only notes you wrote yourself, in your own words, from your own attendance and your own study.

You may not post, and must not upload:

• lecture slides, handouts, recordings, lab manuals, or any other material prepared by an instructor, a teaching assistant, or the university — those are someone else's copyrighted work, and posting them is not made lawful by your having paid tuition;
• textbook pages, scans, figures, solutions manuals, or publisher test banks;
• past or current exams, midterms, quizzes, problem-set solutions, or any assessment material, whether or not it was distributed to you;
• another student's work, in whole or in part, with or without their permission;
• anything you were told to keep confidential, or that came from a course platform you were required to log into;
• notes for a course you are not taking and did not take;
• anything unlawful, defamatory, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit, or that contains another person's private information.

Academic integrity is yours to keep. Your university's academic integrity policy applies to you regardless of what this App permits. Selling or buying notes may be restricted, or prohibited outright, by your university's rules, your course syllabus, or your instructor's instructions — and those rules override anything here. Using purchased material to complete work that is meant to be your own is academic misconduct. We cannot and do not grant you permission to do it, and we will not defend you if you do.

5. Rights in what you post

You keep ownership of your notes. Nothing here transfers your copyright.

By posting, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, reformat, and display your notes and generated previews of them, for the purpose of running the App: showing your listing, rendering the free preview pages you chose to offer, and delivering the file to people who acquire it. This licence lasts as long as your listing is up, plus the time buyers keep access to what they paid for (see section 8).

When someone acquires your notes, you grant them a personal, non-transferable licence to read and study from that copy. They may not redistribute it, resell it, publish it, post it to a file-sharing or homework-answer site, or upload it to any service that trains on or republishes user content. Buyers who do lose their access and their account.

You confirm, each time you post, that the work is yours, that you have the right to license it to us and to buyers, and that posting it breaks no law, no university rule, and no one else's rights.

6. Prices, payments, and our fee

Sellers set their own prices. A note may be free, or priced at [[$2.00]] or more; the App will not accept a paid price below that, because card processing makes smaller charges impossible to settle honestly.

Payments are processed by Stripe. You will need to accept Stripe's Connected Account Agreement before you can be paid, and Stripe will ask you directly for the identity and banking details it needs to pay you and to satisfy its own legal obligations. We never see or store your bank details or government identifiers.

We keep a commission of [[15%]] of each sale. The remainder transfers to your Stripe account, and Stripe pays it out to you on its own schedule. Card processing fees are deducted as Stripe sets them.

Taxes are yours. Money you earn selling notes may be taxable income, and depending on your volume you may have sales tax obligations. We do not withhold, remit, or advise on tax. Keep your own records; the App's purchase history is a convenience, not a tax document.

7. Refunds

[[All sales are final.]] Notes are digital files delivered immediately, and once a file has been downloaded it cannot be returned.

We will refund you if:

• the file was never delivered, or is corrupt and cannot be opened;
• the file's contents are not what the listing described — a different course, a different term, or a fraction of the pages promised; or
• you were charged more than once for the same notes.

Ask within [[14 days]] of purchase, at [[CONTACT EMAIL]], and tell us what went wrong. We decide these case by case, and we may recover a refunded amount from the seller's balance. Disliking notes you have read is not a refund reason — that is what the free preview pages are for.

Do not file a chargeback before contacting us. A chargeback on delivered notes may end your account.

8. Access to what you buy

We intend for a purchase to last. But listings can be removed — by their author, by us, or in response to a copyright complaint — and a removed listing may stop being downloadable. If we remove notes you paid for because they should never have been posted, we will refund you.

If a seller deletes their account, listings they sold stay in your library and stay downloadable; the author simply becomes anonymous. Reviews you wrote stay up, anonymised, because deleting them would silently move other people's ratings.

9. Reviews

Review only notes you actually acquired, and describe what you found. Do not review your own notes, trade reviews, or post a review to punish someone for something other than their work. We may remove reviews that break this, and we may remove an account that does it repeatedly.

10. Copyright complaints

If you believe something in the App infringes your copyright — including an instructor whose slides or exam material has been posted — email [[CONTACT EMAIL]] with: what work was copied, where it appears in the App, how to reach you, and a statement that you believe in good faith the use is unauthorised.

We remove infringing material and we terminate the accounts of people who post it repeatedly. Because we operate in Canada, we also forward notices to the account holder where the _Copyright Act_'s notice-and-notice regime requires it.

11. Things you must not do

Do not: break into or probe the App's systems; use another student's account or sign-in code; scrape, bulk-download, or automate access; strip watermarks or copy protection; resell or redistribute anything you acquired; upload malware; create accounts to inflate ratings or sales; or use the App to break your university's rules or the law.

12. Suspension and termination

You may delete your account at any time from inside the App. Deletion is described in the Privacy Policy — read it before you do it, because parts of it cannot be undone and parts of it deliberately survive.

We may suspend or terminate an account that breaks these Terms, that we reasonably believe is being used for fraud or academic misconduct, or where we are legally required to. Where it is practical and lawful to do so, we will tell you why. Sellers whose accounts we terminate are still paid for sales already settled, less any refunds or chargebacks.

We may also stop running the App entirely. If we do, we will give at least [[30 days]] notice in the App, and you should download anything you own before that date.

13. No warranty

The App is provided "as is". We do not promise that any set of notes is accurate, complete, current, well-written, or suited to your course, your instructor, or your exam. We do not promise the App will be uninterrupted or error-free.

Notes are a study aid. Your grades are your own.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties. Some jurisdictions do not allow that, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

14. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither party is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or academic consequences — including a grade, a course outcome, or a finding of academic misconduct.

Our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the greater of [[CAD $100]] and the amount you paid through the App in the twelve months before the claim arose.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

15. Indemnity

If someone brings a claim against us because of what you posted, sold, bought, or did in the App — copyright infringement above all — you agree to cover our reasonable costs of defending it, provided we tell you about the claim promptly and let you take part in the defence.

16. Law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. Disputes go to the courts of Ontario, and we each agree those courts have jurisdiction — except that either of us may bring a claim in small claims court where it qualifies, and nothing here removes any consumer-protection right you have under the law where you live.

Talk to us first. Email [[CONTACT EMAIL]] and give us thirty days; most of this gets resolved without lawyers.

17. Changes

We may change these Terms. If a change materially affects your rights, we will notify you in the App at least [[14 days]] before it takes effect and update the date at the top. Continuing to use the App after that is acceptance. If you do not accept, delete your account.

18. If you got the App from Apple

Apple is not a party to these Terms and has no obligation to support the App. Apple is not responsible for the App or for any claim about it, including product liability, legal non-compliance, or consumer-protection claims. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you. You confirm you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as terrorist-supporting, and that you are not on any U.S. Government restricted-party list.

19. Odds and ends

If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our not enforcing something is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms; we may, to a successor of our business. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the App.

Contact: [[CONTACT EMAIL]]