Terms of Service
Draft for legal review — not yet in force. See legal/README.md.
Last updated 2026-08-24 · Operator [LEGAL ENTITY] · Service: finalverse.org and the Song applications
1. What Song is
Song is a music platform. You can search and read scores, hear them played, analyse them, compose
new music, and — if you choose — publish your own work so other people and software agents can find
it.
Two properties are worth knowing before you use it, because they shape everything below:
- Most of Song runs in your browser. Analysis, engraving and playback happen on your own device.
When you open a file locally, it is not uploaded to us.
- Publishing is a separate, deliberate act. Nothing you open, compose or edit becomes public
until you publish it.
2. Your account
You must be able to form a binding contract to hold an account. If you are under the age of digital
consent in your country, you need a parent or guardian to agree to these terms for you.
You are responsible for what happens under your account. Keep your credentials to yourself and tell
us promptly if you think someone else has them.
3. Your content stays yours
You keep ownership of everything you upload, compose, arrange, or edit. We claim no ownership
of your music.
To run the service we need your permission to handle it. By publishing content on Song you grant us
a **non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, transmit, display and
perform that content, and to make the format conversions the service requires** (for example
rendering notation to an image, or producing a MIDI or MusicXML export). That licence exists only so
Song can show your work to the people you published it to.
The licence is limited in three ways that matter:
- It ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies we must keep for a
reasonable period in backups or to meet a legal obligation.
- It does not include training machine-learning models on your content. Training is governed by
the separate per-work permission described in §5.
- It does not permit us to sell or sublicense your work to third parties, except as needed to
deliver Song itself (for example a content-delivery network transmitting the file).
If you publish under an open licence such as CC0 or a Creative Commons licence, that licence governs
what other people may do with your work. It does not change your ownership.
4. Your responsibility for what you publish
You are responsible for the rights in what you publish. By publishing, you represent that:
- you wrote it, or you have permission from whoever did, or the work is genuinely in the public
domain in the places it will be seen; and
- publishing it does not infringe anyone's copyright, moral rights, trade marks, privacy, or
contractual obligations.
Two points people get wrong often enough to state plainly:
- A public-domain work can have a copyrighted edition. Beethoven died in 1827, but a 1998
engraving of his sonata may still be protected. The composition and the edition are different
works with different rights.
- Public domain is territorial. A work out of copyright in one country may be protected in
another. If you rely on a work being public domain, say where.
**We do not pre-screen uploads and we make no representation that anything published by a user is
free of third-party rights.** As between you and us, infringement in content you publish is your
responsibility, and you agree to indemnify us against third-party claims arising from it, to the
extent permitted by law.
5. AI disclosure and training permission
Song is built for an era in which some music is made with models. It does not treat that as
shameful, and it does not permit it to be hidden.
- If a model materially shaped a work, you must say so when you publish it. Publishing
AI-assisted work while representing it as entirely human-made is a breach of these terms.
- Training permission is per work, and silence means no. Every work carries an explicit
ai_training permission. If you do not grant it, we do not permit your work to be used for model
training through Song, and we do not do so ourselves.
6. Copyright complaints, removal, and restriction
We operate a notice-and-takedown process. The full procedure, and the details of our designated
agent, are in the Copyright Policy.
In short:
- Tell us about infringing content and we will act expeditiously — typically by removing it or
restricting its circulation while we look.
- We may restrict rather than remove where that is the proportionate response: unlisting a work,
disabling its embed, blocking downloads, or limiting it to the uploader while a dispute is
resolved.
- The uploader will be told what happened and may file a counter-notice.
- Accounts that repeatedly infringe are terminated. This policy is real and we enforce it.
We may also remove or restrict content that breaches the Acceptable Use Policy,
and we may act without prior notice where there is a legal requirement or a risk of serious harm.
7. Software agents and the API
Software agents are first-class users of Song, subject to the same rules plus these:
- Identify yourself. Requests that ask a human to act — a proposal, a publication request — must
carry an operator identity.
- Respect per-work rights. Check the licence before acting. A use with no explicit grant is
ask_first, never "yes".
- An agent may not publish. Publication and pricing require a human decision, by design.
- Rate limits apply and may change.
8. Availability, and the absence of warranty
Song is provided "as is". To the fullest extent permitted by law we disclaim implied warranties
of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
We do not warrant that analysis, key detection, difficulty scoring, engraving, or playback are
correct. They are computed by software and software has bugs. **Do not rely on Song alone for a
decision that matters** — a performance, a publication, or a licensing judgement.
9. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, and except for liability that cannot lawfully be excluded
(including death or personal injury caused by negligence, and fraud):
- We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for
lost profits, revenue, data, or goodwill.
- Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to Song is limited to the greater of the
amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or [AMOUNT].
Some jurisdictions do not allow these exclusions, in which case they apply only as far as the law
permits, and nothing here affects the statutory rights of a consumer.
10. Ending things
You may stop using Song and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate an account
that breaches these terms, and we will say why unless a law or a serious safety risk prevents it.
On termination the licence in §3 ends, subject to the backup and legal-retention carve-out.
11. Changes
We may change these terms. For material changes we will give reasonable notice before they take
effect. Continuing to use Song afterwards means you accept the new version.
12. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], and the courts of [JURISDICTION]
have exclusive jurisdiction, without prejudice to any mandatory protection you have as a consumer in
your country of residence.
13. Contact
[LEGAL ENTITY], [ADDRESS] · legal@finalverse.org