Terms of use

Last updated 13 August 2026

The short version

Use the app on your own Apple devices, for yourself. That is the whole licence.
The books are public-domain texts. The translations are machine-generated and will sometimes be wrong — this is a reading companion, not a teacher and not a dictionary.
Some books are only offered in some countries, because publishing rights differ by territory.
It is offered as it is, with no promise that it is fit for any particular purpose. Your statutory rights as a consumer are untouched by that.

These terms are an agreement between you and Andrew Laignel ("we", "us"), an individual based in the United Kingdom trading as InkShift, covering the InkShift application for iPhone and iPad and this website. By installing or using InkShift you accept them. If you do not, please do not use it.

1. Your licence to use InkShift

We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use InkShift on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as permitted by the App Store Usage Rules in Apple's Media Services Terms and Conditions. That is a licence to use the app, not a sale of it; we keep all rights not expressly granted.

You agree not to:

copy, sell, rent, sub-licence or redistribute the app;
reverse-engineer, decompile or disassemble it, except to the extent the law says you may regardless of what this document says;
extract the book files, dictionaries or audio in order to redistribute them as a dataset or as a competing product;
use it to break the law, or to infringe anyone's rights.

2. The books

The books offered in the app are works in the public domain, obtained from Project Gutenberg and Project Gutenberg Australia. Each book carries an attribution line inside the app naming its source and stating what has been done to it.

Translations are machine-generated. The words and phrases you are shown in Spanish, French, German or Italian were produced by language models and aligned automatically. They are good enough to read by and are not authoritative: they will contain mistakes, and they should not be relied upon for translation, for study you are assessed on, or for anything that matters legally, medically or financially. InkShift is a reading companion, not language tuition and not a dictionary.

Cover artwork is our own and is not part of the public-domain text. It remains our property.

3. Where books are offered

Copyright expires at different times in different countries. Where we are only entitled to distribute a text in some territories, the app offers that book only in those territories, based on your App Store country and device region.

This is how we meet our own obligation not to offer a book where we have no right to. It is a publishing rule, not a security measure, and we make no claim that it is unbypassable. You remain responsible for complying with the law that applies to you. The set of books available may change as rights change, and a book you have already installed may stop being offered to others.

4. Third-party material and its licences

InkShift is built on openly licensed data, and those licences travel with it:

Definitions are derived from English Wiktionary, via the Wiktextract project, and are used under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Word-frequency data comes from hermitdave/FrequencyWords, derived from the OpenSubtitles corpus, and is likewise used under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Those licences require attribution and share-alike treatment of the material itself, and we carry them accordingly. They apply to that data — not to the app, the artwork or these terms.

5. Books you add yourself

The app can install a book from a web address you provide. If you use that feature, what you install is your responsibility: you are asserting that you have the right to read it and that its source is one you trust. We do not host, review, endorse or vouch for anything obtained that way, and it is outside every promise made in these terms.

6. Availability and changes

We may add, change, or withdraw books and features, and may stop offering the app or the delivery service altogether. Reading a book already on your device does not depend on our servers; adding new ones does. We will not deliberately break what you have installed, but we cannot promise indefinite availability of any book or of the service as a whole.

7. What is and is not promised

InkShift is provided "as is" and "as available". So far as the law allows, we exclude all implied warranties and conditions, including fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the app will be uninterrupted or error-free, nor that any translation, definition or pronunciation is accurate.

8. Limits on liability

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are not affected by this agreement.

Subject to that, and so far as the law allows: we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of data, loss of profits, or loss arising from your reliance on a machine-generated translation; and our total liability arising out of or in connection with InkShift is limited to the amount you paid for it, or £50, whichever is greater.

9. Apple

Because InkShift is distributed through the App Store, the following apply and are required by Apple:

This agreement is between you and us only, and not with Apple. We, not Apple, are solely responsible for InkShift and its content.
Apple has no obligation whatsoever to furnish any maintenance or support services for InkShift.
If InkShift fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price (if any) to you. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation with respect to InkShift.
We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to InkShift or your possession and use of it, including product liability claims, any claim that it fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims arising under consumer protection or privacy legislation.
In the event of any third-party claim that InkShift or your use of it infringes that party's intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are solely responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement and discharge of that claim.
You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated as a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not listed on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
You must comply with any applicable third-party terms of agreement when using InkShift.
Apple and Apple's subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of this agreement, and upon your acceptance of it Apple will have the right (and will be deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce it against you as a third-party beneficiary.

10. Ending this agreement

You may end it at any time by deleting the app. We may end it if you materially breach these terms. On termination your licence ends and you should remove the app; sections that by their nature should survive — licences of our content, the disclaimers, the liability limits and the law that governs this — do so.

11. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top will change, and material changes will be noted in the app's release notes. Continuing to use InkShift after a change means you accept the revised terms.

12. Governing law

These terms and any dispute arising out of them are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere in the UK or in the EEA, you keep the benefit of any mandatory protections of your own country's law, and may bring proceedings there.

13. Contact

Andrew Laignel, trading as InkShift, United Kingdom — support@inkshift.app.

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