Copyright and Takedown

1. The arrangements

Every playable piece on Pianify is a piano arrangement made by Atlantic Notes. They are that creator's work. We did not write them, and this site would have nothing to play without them.

The operator of this site obtained the files as a paying subscriber to that creator.

A subscription is a licence to the subscriber. It is not permission to republish. Paying for access to a creator's files entitles the subscriber to use them; it does not, by itself, allow those files to be served to the public from another website. Separate, express permission from the creator is required for that.

[DECISION NEEDED: written permission from Atlantic Notes to publish their arrangements on pianify.net must be obtained and kept on file before this site is made public. Until then, the catalogue should not be served to anyone but the operator.]

2. The songs underneath

Many of the arrangements are of commercially released popular music. The arrangement is one work; the song it is an arrangement of is another, and the second remains in copyright.

Rights in those underlying musical works are normally administered by music publishers and by collecting societies — in Hungary, Artisjus. Making a work available to the public, which is what a website does, is a restricted act under Article 3 of Directive 2001/29/EC and its Hungarian implementation. It normally requires a licence, and the arranger's permission does not supply it: an arranger cannot license rights they do not hold.

This is not a technicality that a disclaimer removes. There is no "for educational use" exception that covers publishing a catalogue of arrangements of current pop songs on the open internet.

[DECISION NEEDED: a licensing route for the underlying works must be settled before the catalogue is public. Realistic options are (a) obtain the appropriate licence from Artisjus and/or the relevant publishers, (b) restrict the public catalogue to works in the public domain and originals licensed for the purpose, or (c) keep the full catalogue private to the operator. Legal advice should be taken; this document is not it.]

3. The instrument

The piano is recorded, not synthesised: Salamander Grand Piano V3 by Alexander Holm, used under CC BY 3.0. That licence permits use, including commercially, on condition of attribution — which is why the credit appears here, in the app, and in the source.

4. The site itself

The code, design, artwork and text of Pianify belong to a private individual resident in Hungary. You may not copy the site, scrape its catalogue, or redistribute anything obtained from it.

Accounts that download pieces in bulk are rate limited and may be closed. Copies of the arrangements delivered to an account carry a marker identifying that account, so a leaked set can be traced back to where it came from.

5. Reporting content — notice and action

If you hold rights in something published here, or believe something here is unlawful, tell us and we will act. This is our notice-and-action mechanism under Article 16 of the Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065).

Send notices to info@pianify.net. For us to act without having to come back to you, a notice needs:

1. A sufficiently substantiated explanation of why the content is unlawful.
2. A clear indication of exactly where it is — the precise URL or the exact title as it appears here.
3. Your name and email address, unless the notice concerns an offence against a child, where you may report anonymously.
4. A statement, made in good faith, that the information in the notice is accurate and complete.

What happens next. We confirm receipt without undue delay. We decide in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary and objective manner. We tell you what we decided and why, and we tell the person whose content it was, giving them the same reasons. If we remove or restrict something, that statement of reasons says which ground we relied on and whether the decision was automated — it was not; a person makes it.

6. Disagreeing with a decision

If your content was removed or your account restricted, and you think we were wrong, reply to the decision within six months at info@pianify.net. We will look at it again, and a person — not an automated process — will make that second decision too. If we were wrong, we reverse it.

You are also entitled to bring the dispute to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body under Article 21 of the Digital Services Act, or to go to court. Using our internal route does not take either of those away.

7. Repeat infringement

We suspend, for a reasonable period and after warning, accounts that frequently provide manifestly illegal content, and we suspend the handling of notices from anyone who frequently submits notices that are manifestly unfounded.