SlovoHub Terms of Service

DRAFT - NOT YET LEGALLY REVIEWED. This document is a working draft. Do not publish on slovohub.com until reviewed by a qualified Bulgarian/EU lawyer. The remaining placeholders in <ANGLE BRACKETS> - <LEGAL ENTITY NAME>, <LEGAL FORM>, <UIC>, <ADDRESS> - are all retained intentionally because the operating entity has not yet been registered. They MUST be filled in (and this document re-reviewed by counsel) before the document goes live on slovohub.com.

1. Agreement

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") form a binding agreement between you and <LEGAL ENTITY NAME> ("SlovoHub", "we", "us", or "our"), the operator of the SlovoHub Progressive Web App available at slovohub.com (the "Service").

By creating an account or otherwise using the Service, you confirm that you have read, understood, and accepted these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service.

2. Eligibility

You may use the Service only if you are 16 years old or older and legally able to enter into a binding contract under the laws of your country. If you are not yet 16, you may not use the Service.

You may not use the Service if we have previously suspended or terminated your account, or if you are barred from using it under applicable law.

3. Your account

When you create an account, you agree to:

• Provide accurate information and keep it up to date.
• Choose a strong password and keep it confidential.
• Use a real email address that you control.
• Be responsible for all activity under your account.
• Notify us promptly at security@slovohub.com if you suspect unauthorised access.

You may have only one account at a time, unless we expressly permit otherwise. Sharing accounts is not permitted.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings. Some content (such as posts in shared club discussions) may be retained in anonymised form to preserve continuity for other members.

4. The Service

SlovoHub provides:

• Virtual library - tools to digitize and catalog the physical books you own.
• Book clubs - tools to create or join groups of readers, schedule meetings, and discuss books.
• Lending - a system to facilitate the lending of physical books between users via a QR Handshake.
• Reading tracker - tools to log your reading progress.
• Discovery - recommendations of books to read or borrow.

We may add, change, or remove features. We will give reasonable notice for changes that materially reduce functionality.

The Service is provided as a Progressive Web App accessed through a web browser. We do not guarantee that the Service will work on every device or browser version; supported browsers are listed in our help documentation.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to:

• Do anything illegal under Bulgarian, EU, or your local law.
• Harass, threaten, defame, or impersonate any person.
• Post hateful content, including content that incites discrimination, hostility, or violence on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or any other protected characteristic.
• Post content that infringes another person's copyright, trademark, privacy, or other rights.
• Post sexually explicit content, content sexualizing minors, or other content prohibited by applicable law.
• Spam, scam, or send unsolicited commercial messages to other users.
• Misrepresent your identity, your affiliation with any person or organisation, or the books you own.
• Game, manipulate, or attempt to defraud the Karma system or the lending mechanic, including by colluding with another user to inflate Karma without genuine lending.
• Falsely report a book lost in order to extract a Restorative Justice donation from another user.
• Scrape, crawl, or systematically extract data from the Service without our written permission.
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to circumvent any security or rate-limiting mechanism.
• Upload malware, exploits, or any code intended to disrupt the Service or other users.
• Use the Service to train any AI or machine-learning model.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules. See §13.

6. Your content

You retain ownership of the content you create on SlovoHub (your shelf, your reviews, your messages, your photos). By posting content, you grant SlovoHub a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, modify (for technical purposes such as resizing), display, and distribute your content solely as needed to operate the Service and as you have configured (e.g. visible to your club).

This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except:

• Backups may retain copies for up to 30 days after deletion.
• Anonymised remnants in shared club discussions may persist (see §3).
• Copies that other users have legitimately saved (e.g. screenshots) are outside our control.

We do not claim ownership of your content. We will not use your content to train AI models. We will not sell your content to third parties.

You are responsible for the legality of the content you post. You warrant that you have the rights necessary to grant the licence above.

7. Other users' content

The Service contains content created by other users. We do not endorse it. We are not responsible for it. Use your own judgement.

If you encounter content that violates these Terms, please report it using the in-app report function. Reports are reviewed by our moderation team and we will act under our community guidelines and in accordance with the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), where applicable.

8. Lending - important disclaimers

Lending is the most distinctive feature of SlovoHub. Read this section carefully.

• SlovoHub facilitates, but is not party to, the loan. When you lend or borrow a book on SlovoHub, the loan is a private agreement between you and the other user. SlovoHub provides the tools to record and manage the loan but is not a party to it.
• You are responsible for the books you lend. Decide for yourself whether a borrower is trustworthy. The Karma score is a guide, not a guarantee.
• You are responsible for the books you borrow. Return them on time and in the condition you received them.
• Meet in safe, public places. Do not give out your home address through SlovoHub.
• SlovoHub does not insure books. If a book is lost, damaged, or not returned, the Restorative Justice donation system (§10) is the only remedy provided through the Service. It is not a guarantee of compensation and may not match the value of the book.
• Disputes between users. If a dispute arises that you and the other user cannot resolve, you may escalate it to our moderation team via the in-app report function. We will mediate in good faith but our decision is not binding on either party and does not preclude either of you from pursuing other remedies under the law.

9. Karma

Karma is a reputation score we calculate from your lending activity. It is not money. It has no cash value. We may adjust the Karma calculation, recalculate scores, or remove Karma we believe was earned through manipulation or fraud, at our sole discretion. We will explain material changes to the Karma system in advance.

10. Restorative Justice donations

If you lose a book you have borrowed, you may clear the resulting Karma strike by making a "Restorative Justice donation" to a partner library (Chitalishte) or community institution.

• Donations are processed by Stripe or EasyPay. We do not handle your card or bank details directly.
• Donations are non-refundable once paid.
• The donation amount is calculated by the Service. You may dispute the amount before paying; if a dispute is unresolved, our moderation team may set it.
• 100% of the donation amount goes to the receiving partner. SlovoHub does not take a platform fee. (Payment processor fees may apply to the gross amount.)
• A receipt will be emailed to you and is also accessible from your account.

11. Patreon and creator features

If you sign in with Patreon or join a Patreon-gated club, your access depends on your active Patreon pledge to the relevant creator at the relevant tier. If your pledge lapses, your access to the gated content may be removed without further notice. Refunds for Patreon pledges, if any, are handled by Patreon and not by SlovoHub.

Creators using SlovoHub are independent and are not employed by, agents of, or partners of SlovoHub unless we explicitly say so.

12. Intellectual property

The SlovoHub name, logo, "Networked Spine" mark, Library Green / Paper Cream / Action Amber visual identity, and the Service itself are owned by <LEGAL ENTITY NAME> and protected by intellectual property law. You may not use them without our prior written permission, except for fair, descriptive references (e.g. naming SlovoHub in a review or article).

13. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your account, or restrict your access to part of the Service, if:

• You materially breach these Terms.
• Your account is involved in fraud, harassment, or other behaviour that harms the community.
• We are required to do so by law.
• We discontinue the Service.

Where reasonable and lawful, we will give you notice and an opportunity to remedy the breach before suspension. Where the breach is serious (e.g. illegal content, child-safety concerns, repeated harassment), we may suspend immediately.

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. Some obligations survive termination - see §16.

14. Changes to the Service or these Terms

We may change these Terms. When we do:

• For non-material changes, we will update the version and date at the top of this page.
• For material changes, we will notify you in-app and by email at least 30 days before the change takes effect.
• If you do not agree with the change, you may delete your account before the effective date. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

15. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by applicable law:

• The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
• We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure against all attacks, or that any defect will be corrected.
• We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or quality of any content posted by users, including book metadata, recommendations, AI-generated discussion prompts, or Karma scores.
• We are not liable for losses arising from peer-to-peer lending arrangements between users (see §8).
• Our total aggregate liability arising from or relating to these Terms or the Service, however caused, shall not exceed EUR 100 or the total amount you have paid us in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, whichever is greater. The Service is currently free to use, so the cap is typically EUR 100.
• Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for: (a) death or personal injury caused by our negligence; (b) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; or (c) any other liability that cannot be excluded under Bulgarian or EU consumer law.

If you are a consumer based in the European Union, your statutory rights are not affected by these Terms.

16. Survival

The provisions of §6 (only with respect to licences in content already posted), §8 (Lending disclaimers), §12 (Intellectual property), §15 (Liability), §17 (Governing law), and §18 (Disputes) survive termination of your account.

17. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Bulgaria, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. If you are a consumer resident in another EU Member State, the mandatory consumer-protection rules of your country of residence also apply where they offer you greater protection.

18. Disputes

We encourage you to contact us first at support@slovohub.com to try to resolve any dispute informally.

If we cannot resolve a dispute informally:

• If you are a consumer resident in the EU, you may use the EU Online Dispute Resolution platform: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/
• Otherwise, the courts of Sofia, Bulgaria have exclusive jurisdiction, subject to any mandatory rules of your country of residence.

19. Miscellaneous

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and SlovoHub regarding the Service.
• Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce a right does not waive that right.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Notices. We will notify you by email or in-app. You may notify us at legal@slovohub.com.

20. Contact

<LEGAL ENTITY NAME> <ADDRESS> Email: legal@slovohub.com Support: support@slovohub.com

Changes to these Terms

• 0.2 (2026-05-11) - §15 liability cap committed at EUR 100 (placeholder formatting removed). Top-banner note narrowed to identify which placeholders remain (<LEGAL ENTITY NAME>, <LEGAL FORM>, <UIC>, <ADDRESS>) and why (entity not yet registered).
• 0.1 (2026-05-09) - Initial draft.