Terms of Service

Effective date: September 29, 2026.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of Kohana — the app, kohana.live, and related services (together, the "Service") — operated by Jose Felipe Ballestas Bermudez ("we," "us," "Kohana," or the "Owner"). By creating an account or otherwise using the Service, you accept these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the Service.

Some sections below contain bracketed placeholders where a fact is still being confirmed, or depends on a decision we haven't finalized. We'd rather say so than guess.

What Kohana Is

Kohana is a platform for creating, publishing, and reading visual novels. Creators can write and publish their own interactive stories; readers can browse, download, and play them, and interact through comments, likes, and follows.

Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use Kohana. If you're in a country where the applicable age for consenting to this kind of service is higher than 13 (this varies in the EEA), you confirm you have a parent or guardian's permission. By using the Service, you confirm you meet these requirements. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 13, we'll close it.

Your Account

To publish, comment, like, or follow, you'll need an account. You agree to provide accurate information, keep your login credentials confidential, and notify us promptly ([email protected]) if you believe your account has been compromised. You're responsible for activity that happens under your account.

Each person should register only one account. Accounts may not be created using bots or other automated means, and may not be shared with others.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings, or by emailing us if you're unable to log in (for example, if your account has been banned). See our Privacy Policy for exactly what does and doesn't happen to your data — and to content you've published — when you do; in particular, your personal information is permanently deleted, but published novels, comments, and likes stay up by default, no longer tied to your identity, unless you specifically ask us to remove them too.

Deleting your Kohana account does not cancel an active App Store or Google Play subscription. You must cancel your subscription separately through your Apple ID or Google Play account settings — see "Premium Subscriptions" below.

We may suspend or terminate your account, at our discretion, if we believe you've violated these Terms or our Community Guidelines. See "Content Moderation" below for how this actually works.

Content You Publish

You retain ownership of the novels, comments, and other content you create and publish on Kohana. By publishing content, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, and distribute that content through the Service — including any technical processing needed to deliver it (such as format conversion, thumbnail generation, or serving it through our infrastructure or content-delivery providers) — for as long as it remains published. This license lets us operate the Service; it does not give us the right to use your content for unrelated purposes such as advertising it outside the Service or training AI models, and we don't do either.

This license ends when you unpublish or delete the content, except for copies that may remain for a limited time in backups or that other users have already downloaded before removal — we can stop distributing your content going forward, but we can't reach into a reader's device and delete a copy they already downloaded.

You're solely responsible for the content you publish. By publishing, you confirm that you have the rights to do so (including rights to any characters, art, music, fonts, or other assets you include — even ones you didn't create yourself) and that your content doesn't infringe anyone else's rights or violate the law.

Novels you download for reading are for your personal use. Downloading a novel doesn't give you any right to redistribute, resell, or otherwise reuse another creator's work beyond what that creator has explicitly permitted.

Other than content published by users, everything else that makes up Kohana — the app, the website, our branding, and our software — is owned by us or our licensors, as described under "Intellectual Property" below.

Community Guidelines

All content on Kohana, and all interactions between users, must follow our Community Guidelines, which are incorporated into these Terms by reference and are the authoritative source for what is and isn't allowed — please read them rather than relying on any summary.

Copyright Complaints

If you believe content on Kohana infringes your copyright, email [email protected] with (a) a description of the copyrighted work, (b) the location of the allegedly infringing content on Kohana, (c) your contact information, and (d) a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is unauthorized. We will review and respond to valid complaints, which may include removing content and/or taking action against the uploading account.

[PLACEHOLDER — we intend to register a designated DMCA agent with the U.S. Copyright Office to formalize safe-harbor protection under 17 U.S.C. § 512; until that's complete, use the contact above.] We may terminate the accounts of users found to be repeat infringers.

Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery Removal Requests

If intimate imagery of you — including an image that's been digitally altered or AI-generated to depict you — has been published on Kohana without your consent, you can request its removal here, no account required. We aim to review and remove valid reports within 48 hours.

Content Moderation

We rely on user reports and our own review to enforce these Terms and our Community Guidelines. Depending on the severity of a violation, we may remove specific content, issue a warning, or suspend or ban an account — these are independent actions, not steps of a single process, so a ban doesn't automatically mean nothing was removed, and content being removed doesn't necessarily mean the account was banned.

If your account is banned: you will not be able to log in, comment, like content, or publish/upload novels, effective immediately even if you have an active session. This does not, by itself, remove your already-published novels — but content that violates our Community Guidelines or the law can still be removed independently of, and regardless of, your account's ban status.

You can report content or another user's behavior from within the app. You can appeal a moderation decision by contacting us at [email protected].

Kohana does not have a user-to-user blocking feature, and we don't plan to build one: the app has no direct user-to-user interaction (messaging, following someone's activity feed, etc.) for a block to apply to in the first place — comments and likes are visible to everyone, not directed at a specific user in a way blocking would meaningfully restrict. If you want to stop seeing a particular user's content or behavior, report it to us using the tools above.

Other Applicable Laws

As Kohana grows and is formalized as a registered business, we'll review what additional content-regulation and consumer-protection laws apply in the countries where we have users, and update these Terms accordingly.

Premium Subscriptions

Kohana offers optional paid subscription tiers — currently Good Ending and True Ending, each available on a monthly or annual billing cycle — that unlock additional features. Subscriptions are purchased and billed through the Apple App Store or Google Play, and are auto-renewing unless cancelled before the renewal date.

On iOS: subscriptions are managed and cancelled through your Apple ID account settings; refunds are handled entirely by Apple under its own policies, and we cannot issue them directly. On Android: subscriptions are managed and cancelled through your Google Play account settings; Google Play may make certain refund options available to us as the developer within a limited window after purchase, and outside that window refunds are subject to Google's own policies. In neither case do we receive or store your payment card details.

As of this policy's effective date, US pricing is: Good Ending $3.99/month or $39.99/year; True Ending $5.99/month or $59.99/year. Pricing outside the US varies by region and isn't reproduced here. There is currently no free trial or introductory offer for any tier. Exact pricing, including any regional variation, is set directly in the App Store/Play Store listings — the price shown at checkout always controls.

Advertising

If you don't have an active subscription, the Service may display ads through Google AdMob. See our Privacy Policy for details on the data involved and your choices.

Intellectual Property

Other than content you or other users publish, everything else that makes up Kohana — the app, the website, our branding, and our software — is owned by us or our licensors. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the app for its intended purpose. Except to the extent applicable law gives you a non-waivable right to do so (for example, certain interoperability rights under EU law), you may not copy, modify, reverse-engineer, or redistribute the app or its underlying code.

Disclaimers

Kohana is provided "as is," without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent permitted by law. We don't guarantee the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at all times, and we're not responsible for content published by other users. Nothing in this section limits any warranty that can't be excluded under the law that applies to you.

Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we won't be liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the Service. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the amount you've paid directly to us (as opposed to Apple or Google) for the Service in the 12 months before the claim arose, or $50 if you haven't paid us anything directly.

Nothing in these Terms limits any right you have under law that can't legally be limited or excluded — including statutory consumer protections that may apply if you live in the EEA, UK, or Brazil.

Indemnification

You agree to defend and hold us harmless from any claims arising from your use of the Service, your content, or your violation of these Terms or applicable law, except to the extent caused by our own violation of these Terms or the law.

Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law principles, and any dispute will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Florida — except that if you're a consumer in the EEA, UK, or another jurisdiction whose law guarantees you the right to bring a claim in your own local courts or under your own country's consumer-protection law, that right is not affected by this section.

This reflects Kohana's current status as an individually-operated service based in Florida; this section will be revisited if and when Kohana is operated through a registered business entity.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we'll try to notify you through the app or by email before they take effect. Continuing to use the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms; if you don't agree, you should stop using the Service and may delete your account.

General

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest remain in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision isn't a waiver of it. You may not assign your rights under these Terms without our consent; we may assign ours in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and Community Guidelines, are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email us at [email protected].