Legal

Terms of use

Last updated October 17, 2026

Short version: the data is free to use, you must credit BackToSSTV, there is no warranty, and don't hammer the API.

The data

Everything the API returns is licensed CC BY 4.0. You may copy it, redistribute it, remix it and build on it, for any purpose including a commercial one, provided you credit BackToSSTV, link to the licence, and say if you changed anything.

A credit that satisfies this:

SSTV event data from BackToSSTV, licensed CC BY 4.0.

Every response repeats these terms in its license object and in a Link: <...>; rel="license" header, so an integration never has to go looking. The code is separately licensed under the MIT licence.

No warranty

The catalogue is compiled by volunteers from public announcements. It will sometimes be wrong, out of date, or missing an event entirely. Do not rely on it for anything that matters: it is not a source of truth for operating a station, for predicting a pass, or for anything safety-related. The data is provided as is, with no warranty of any kind, and the maintainers are not liable for anything that follows from using it.

Using the API

There is no key and no sign-up, and we would like to keep it that way. In exchange:

• Cache. Responses carry Cache-Control, ETag and Last-Modified. Respect them, and send If-None-Match so an unchanged response comes back as a 304 with no body.
• Synchronise. Use ?status=all&since= instead of refetching the catalogue, and ask /api/v1/deletions?since= in the same breath.
• Keep polling sane. Events are entered by hand, a handful a week. Once an hour is plenty.
• Identify yourself. Send a User-Agent naming your application and a way to reach you, as AllmySat/2.3.0 (+https://allmysat.com) does.
• Do not scrape around the API. The endpoints are the interface; the database behind them is not reachable another way by design.

The request budget

There is a per-caller limit, counted per minute, and set generously. A response served from your cache does not count against it at all. Every response tells you where you stand:

Over the budget, the answer is 429 with Retry-After. Wait the stated number of seconds. If your use needs more than the budget allows, say so in an issue on GitHub.

These terms may change; the licence on data already published will not be made more restrictive.