Terms of Service | Elephant

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of Elephant, a Korean study companion at elephant-project.net (the "Service"), operated by Elephant ("we", "us", or "our"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. Acceptance of Terms

You must be at least 16 years old to use the Service. By registering, you represent that you meet this requirement and that all information you provide is accurate and current. If you are accepting these Terms on behalf of an organisation, you represent that you have authority to bind that organisation.

2. Description of Service

Elephant is a study companion for learning Korean. It helps you practice writing sentences, translating, and reading numbers aloud — with instant feedback. Vocabulary is kept fresh using the FSRS spaced repetition algorithm (from the Anki community). The Service is meant to complement your courses, teachers, and other study tools, not replace them.

Elephant is a personal project built and maintained by a solo developer. Some features are available only with an active paid subscription to help cover operating costs.

3. Account Responsibilities

You are responsible for:

Keeping your login credentials confidential and not sharing your account with others.
All activity that occurs under your account.
Notifying us immediately at legal@elephant-project.net if you suspect unauthorised access to your account.
Providing accurate registration information and keeping it up to date.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that are shared, used by automated scripts, or otherwise used in violation of these Terms.

4. Permitted Use and Prohibited Conduct

The Service is intended for fair, personal study use by individual human learners. You may use assistive technologies (for example, screen readers, browser accessibility tools, and password managers), but you may not use the Service through fully automated, non-human, or deceptive activity.

You may use the Service only for lawful, personal, non-commercial language learning purposes.

Fair use policy

Fair use means using the Service as intended for normal learning activity. You must not overload, abuse, or extract disproportionate value from the Service in ways that harm availability, reliability, or cost for other learners.

Human-only use policy

Account actions and study activity must be initiated by a natural person. We do not permit bot-driven account creation, scripted interaction loops, synthetic engagement, or any automated behavior designed to simulate human learning activity.

You must not:

Use automated bots, scrapers, crawlers, scripts, or agent networks to access or interact with the Service without our prior written consent.
Attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile, or extract source code from the Service.
Bypass, probe, or attempt to circumvent rate limits, quotas, access controls, or subscription restrictions.
Interfere with or disrupt the integrity or performance of the Service or its infrastructure.
Create excessive or abusive request volume, including automated bulk extraction of outputs, vocabulary data, translations, or audio assets.
Attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the Service or its related systems.
Use the Service in a way that violates any applicable law or regulation.
Reproduce, redistribute, or resell any content or functionality of the Service without our written permission.
Use the Service to build, train, benchmark, or operate a competing product, model, or dataset without our written permission.

We may investigate suspected abuse and take proportionate enforcement action, including request throttling, feature restriction, temporary suspension, or account termination.

5. Subscriptions and Payments

Billing via Lemon Squeezy

Subscription payments are processed by Lemon Squeezy, who acts as the Merchant of Record for all transactions. When you subscribe, you enter into a purchase agreement with Lemon Squeezy, subject to their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Lemon Squeezy is responsible for collecting payment, remitting applicable taxes (VAT, GST, sales tax), and issuing receipts.

Subscription plans

We offer subscription plans on a monthly or annual basis. Current pricing is displayed on our pricing page. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period unless cancelled before the renewal date.

Cancellation

You may cancel your subscription at any time through your account settings or by contacting us. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; you retain access to paid features until that date. We do not prorate partial periods.

Refunds

Refund requests are handled by Lemon Squeezy in accordance with their refund policy. If you believe you are entitled to a refund, contact us at legal@elephant-project.net and we will assist you with the process.

Price changes

We may change subscription prices at any time. We will give you at least 30 days' notice of a price increase by email. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the new price.

6. Intellectual Property

All content on the Service — including vocabulary, sentence examples, audio recordings, software, and design — is owned by us or our licensors and protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. These Terms grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to access and use the Service for personal language learning purposes only.

You retain ownership of any content you submit (such as translation responses), but you grant us a licence to use that content solely to provide and improve the Service.

7. Third-Party Services

The Service integrates with third-party providers including Google Gemini API (translation evaluation), Murf.ai (audio synthesis), and Cloudflare R2 (storage). These services are provided by independent parties and are subject to their own terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for the availability, accuracy, or conduct of third-party services.

8. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS.

AI-generated translation feedback is provided for educational purposes only and may contain errors. It does not constitute professional language instruction.

9. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, WE SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNT YOU PAID TO US IN THE 12 MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM OR (B) €50.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain warranties or liability, so the above limitations may not apply to you in full.

10. Termination

By you: you may delete your account at any time from your account settings. Deletion is permanent and removes all your personal data from our systems within 30 days, except where retention is required by law.

By us: we may suspend or terminate your account immediately, without prior notice, if you breach these Terms or if we are required to do so by law. In the event of termination for reasons other than your breach, we will provide a pro-rated refund for any unused prepaid subscription period.

Sections 6 (Intellectual Property), 8 (Disclaimer of Warranties), 9 (Limitation of Liability), and 11 (Governing Law) survive termination.

11. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Germany.

If you are a consumer located in the EU, you may also use the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform.

12. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you by email at least 14 days before the changes take effect and update the "Last updated" date above. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to the changes, you must stop using the Service and may cancel your subscription before the changes take effect.

13. Contact

For questions about these Terms, please contact us at legal@elephant-project.net.