BenchNotes — Terms of Use

Version 1.6 — 19 October 2026

These terms are between you and Brian Astl ("we", "us"), of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and they cover your use of BenchNotes.

By installing or using BenchNotes you agree to them. If you do not, do not install it, and if you have already paid, write to us and we will refund you.

1. What you may do

We give you a licence to use BenchNotes on up to three computers, for the period your licence covers.

You may:

Use it for as many teams, games and seasons as you like.
Install it on up to three computers that you or your coaching staff use.
Keep, share and sell nothing of ours — but everything you produce with it, including your clips, statistics and reports, is yours to use however you wish, commercially or otherwise.

You may not:

Give, sell, rent or sub-licence BenchNotes or your licence key to anyone else.
Take the software apart to build a competing product, or remove or hide any notices in it.

Nothing here stops you doing anything the law says you may do regardless.

2. The free month

BenchNotes runs free for 30 days from the first time you open it, on that computer, with no key and no payment. Everything is switched on during that period.

When it ends, BenchNotes keeps working in a read-only form — see section 5 — until you buy a licence.

The free period is once per computer. Reinstalling does not start it again.

3. Your video never reaches us, and your players' information only if you publish it

This is the most important thing in this document, so it is written plainly.

BenchNotes runs entirely on your computer. Your game video, your roster, your players' names, everything you tag and every statistic produced from it stay in your own folders on your own machine. None of it is ever sent to us unless you publish a player's page or a team page, which are described below, and which happens only when you choose it.

BenchNotes sends exactly two things over the internet, and neither contains anything about your team.

The first is a check that your licence is still valid. That message contains your licence key and a one-way fingerprint of the computer, and nothing else.

The second is a check for a new version. It asks our website for a small file that lists the current version number, in the same way your browser asks for a web page. It sends nothing at all about you — no key, no fingerprint, no name — so it cannot be used to tell one person from another.

Neither contains video, names, statistics or any information about any player.

There is one more connection, and it only happens if you choose it. You may give a game a link to a video you have put on YouTube. A computer that does not have the video file then plays the game from YouTube, inside BenchNotes. That is a request to YouTube, made by you, under YouTube's own terms, and it carries the video's address and nothing about your team. BenchNotes never uploads anything to YouTube; putting a video there is something you do yourself, and whatever you upload there is governed by YouTube's terms, not these.

Player pages, only if you publish them

You may publish a page for a player, for that player's family to open on a private link you send them. Nothing is published until you choose who, choose which notable plays, and confirm. When you do, BenchNotes sends us, for each player you chose:

the team's name, and the player's first name and jersey number — never a surname, theirs or anyone's;
the player's position, and the plays from complete games that their statistics are worked out from: their own shots, goals, assists, faceoffs, penalties and hits, and the other team's shots they blocked; the goals in each game, so the score is right, naming nobody unless the player scored or assisted; and, for a goalie, the shots they faced;
where those shots came from and where they finished on the net;
the team's plays in those games, so the page can show the team's numbers and heat maps: each shot and goal, for and against, with its result and where it came from, and the team's faceoffs, penalties (with their minutes) and hits — with nobody named and no times;
the first names and jersey numbers of teammates who helped on the player's goals or assists, or who are in the notable plays you ticked;
the notable plays you ticked, with the descriptions exactly as you wrote them;
any custom tags you made and chose to show on player pages — their names and choices, exactly as you wrote them — with the player's own plays of them;
which of these things your team was recording in each game, so the page does not show a zero for something nobody was counting;
for games you have put on YouTube, the video's YouTube address, and its highlights video's address if you gave one; and
your licence file, which we check and do not keep.

It never includes video, a surname, the rest of your roster, who took anyone else's shots or penalties, anyone else's notable plays, a custom tag you have not chosen to show, or anything from a game you have not marked complete.

A team page for your coaches, only if you publish it

You may also publish one page for the whole team, meant for your coaching staff. Nothing is published until you tick it and confirm. When you do, BenchNotes sends us:

the team's name, and the first name and jersey number of every player on your roster — never a surname;
each player's position, who played in each game, and every play from your complete games that the team's statistics are worked out from, for both teams: shots, goals, assists, who was on the ice for goals, who blocked shots, faceoffs, penalties, hits, goalie changes and shootouts;
where each shot came from and where it finished on the net;
every notable play in those games, with the descriptions exactly as you wrote them, and whether each one is on a player page;
every custom tag you made, with its names and choices exactly as you wrote them, and every play of it;
which of these things your team was recording in each game;
for games you have put on YouTube, the video's YouTube address, and its highlights video's address if you gave one; and
your licence file, which we check and do not keep.

It never includes video, a surname, or anything from a game you have not marked complete. Anyone with its link can see every player's statistics and every description you wrote, so send it only to people who should see the whole team's.

We keep each page on our servers, which are provided by Cloudflare, so that anyone who has its link can open it. The link is long and random and is not listed or indexed anywhere, but it is not a password: anybody you or a family passes it to can see the page. We keep each page until you take it down, which deletes it and stops the link working; publishing that player again makes a new link. We do not look at published pages, use them for anything else, or pass them to anyone.

For published pages, we store that information on your behalf. You decide what is in them and who receives the link, and you can remove them at any time.

Apart from published pages, we are not the holder or the processor of any information about your players. You are. That means:

You are responsible for having the right to record and use the footage you tag, and for following your league's, association's or school's rules about recording and about information concerning children.
Before you publish a player's page or a team page, you are responsible for having the families' agreement, for what the descriptions you publish say about the players, and for who you send the links to.
You are responsible for keeping your own files safe — backing them up, and deciding who you send them to. A season file you email to an assistant coach contains your players' names.
If the law where you live places obligations on the person holding that information, those obligations are yours, because the information is only ever in your hands.

We are glad to answer questions about how BenchNotes stores things, but we cannot advise you on your own obligations.

4. What we may collect

Only what section 3 describes: your licence key, a one-way fingerprint of the computer, and the dates of licence checks, which we use for one purpose — to see whether a licence is valid and how many computers are using it; and the player pages and team page you choose to publish, which we keep only so that the people you send them to can open them, until you take them down.

BenchNotes contains no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting and no advertising. Apart from the four connections described above — the licence check, the update check, YouTube when you choose it, and publishing when you choose it — it makes no network connection of any kind.

5. When a licence ends

When your licence period ends, or your free month runs out, BenchNotes opens read-only. You can still:

Open every season you have tagged
Read every statistic, shot map and report
Watch your video
Export your clips, spreadsheets and analysis files

Only tagging new plays, and creating or editing games and rosters, stops until you renew.

Your work remains yours and remains readable. We will not use the end of a licence to withhold access to seasons you have already tagged. Your season files are ordinary files in your own Documents folder and you may keep, copy or move them whenever you like, licence or no licence.

6. Renewing

A licence runs for one year from the day you activate it, unless we agree otherwise in writing.

Renewing extends the same licence key — you never receive a new one. Renewing before your year is up adds to the time you have left rather than replacing it.

7. Payment and refunds

Prices are as shown at the time you buy.

Because BenchNotes gives you a full month to try, free and unrestricted, we do not generally offer refunds after purchase. If something has gone wrong, write to us — we would rather sort it out than argue about it.

8. Updates

We may release updates. You are not obliged to install them, but we support the current version, and a licence covers whatever versions are released while it runs.

9. What we do not promise

BenchNotes is supplied as it is. We have tested it carefully and we use it ourselves, but we do not promise that it is free of faults, that it will suit any particular purpose, or that it will work with every video file, camera or computer.

In particular, the statistics BenchNotes produces come from what you tag. They are as accurate as the tagging that went into them, and they are not a substitute for your own judgement as a coach.

To the extent the law allows, we exclude all other warranties and conditions, whether written, spoken or implied.

10. Limits on what we owe you

If we are liable to you for anything arising out of BenchNotes, our total liability is limited to the amount you paid us for it in the twelve months before the claim.

We are not liable for lost footage, lost statistics, lost time, lost opportunity, or any indirect or consequential loss.

Nothing in this section limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit.

BenchNotes keeps recent backups of your seasons automatically, but you are responsible for your own backups. Your seasons are ordinary files; copy them somewhere safe.

11. Other people's software

BenchNotes includes FFmpeg, used under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence version 2.1 or later. FFmpeg is not ours and is not covered by these terms. Its licence is included with your installation, and the source code it was built from is available from us on request. You may replace the included FFmpeg libraries with your own build.

BenchNotes is built on Electron and Chromium, which carry their own open-source licences, included with your installation.

12. Ending this agreement

You may stop using BenchNotes at any time. Uninstalling it does not delete your seasons; they stay in your Documents folder.

We may end your licence if you breach these terms in a serious way — for example by sharing your key. If we do, we will tell you why, and we will refund the unused part of your year unless the breach was deliberate.

Even after your licence ends, your seasons stay readable as described in section 5.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms for future versions or future purchases. The terms you agreed to when you bought your licence continue to apply for that licence period.

14. Law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the laws of Canada that apply there, and the courts of Ontario have jurisdiction.

15. Getting in touch

wildcatcoachbrian@gmail.com

We are one coach, not a support department, and we answer as quickly as we can.