Acceptable Use Policy
Most of this reduces to two things: publish only music you have the right to publish, and do not attack the service. The rest is detail.
1. Scope
This policy forms part of our Terms of Service and applies to everything you upload, create, publish, share, or embed using QuickStave. It is kept as a separate document so we can update it when a new problem appears, without re-papering the whole agreement.
It applies to published content most of all. What you keep private is your business; we are not policing your drafts.
2. Rights in what you publish
Only publish or share music you wrote, music you have permission to distribute, or music that is genuinely in the public domain.
Two cases worth naming, because they catch people out honestly rather than maliciously:
- Scanning printed music. Scanning an edition you bought makes a copy of it. Doing that for your own use may well be fine where you live; publishing the result generally is not.
- Arrangements. An arrangement of a song still in copyright is a derivative work. Your arrangement may be your own creative labour and still require the rights holder's permission to distribute.
Also note that a modern typeset edition of an old work can carry its own copyright even where the underlying music is public domain.
If you are unsure, keep the score Private. Private scores are not published.
3. Content that is not allowed
Do not use QuickStave to publish or distribute:
- content that infringes copyright, trademarks, or other rights;
- material that is unlawful, harassing, defamatory, or that incites violence or hatred against people or groups;
- sexual content involving minors, in any form, ever;
- malware, or content designed to compromise the service or the people using it;
- spam, bulk unsolicited promotion, or content published purely to manipulate search rankings;
- impersonation of another person or organisation, including passing off someone else's work as your own;
- private information about another person published without their consent.
Lyrics, titles, and text you add to a score count as content for the purpose of this policy.
4. Using the service fairly
Do not:
- attempt to break, overload, or probe the service, other people's accounts, or our infrastructure;
- circumvent plan limits, billing, or access controls, or share an account to avoid paying for seats;
- scrape the service in bulk, or use automation that degrades it for others;
- resell or rent access to QuickStave, or present it as your own product;
- reverse-engineer the software except where the law expressly permits it.
5. Storage and fair use
Cloud storage is 50 MB on Free and 5 GB per user on Pro and Team. Scores are small, so those figures are generous for notation; they exist to stop a single account consuming shared capacity, not to catch normal use.
If you approach the limit we will tell you. We will not silently throttle you, and we will not delete anything to make room. If you have a legitimate reason to need more, ask — that is usually a conversation, not a refusal.
If a subscription ends while you are storing more than the free allowance, nothing is deleted. You can still open, edit, play, print and export every score you have. The only thing that pauses is saving new changes to the cloud, until you either free up space or subscribe again — and your work stays on your own device in the meantime. We are not willing to hold someone's music hostage to a storage figure.
Optical Music Recognition runs on your own device and costs us nothing per scan, so there is no scan limit and no per-page charge.
6. Reporting a problem
To report content that breaches this policy, email [email protected] with a link to the score and a short description of the problem. For copyright specifically, please follow the Copyright & Takedown Policy, which sets out what a notice needs to contain.
7. What we do about breaches
We aim to respond proportionately, and to tell you what the problem is before acting where it is reasonable to do so. Depending on severity we may:
- ask you to change or remove something;
- make a published score non-public;
- restrict your ability to publish or share;
- suspend the account;
- close the account, for serious or repeated breaches.
None of these delete your own work. Whatever restriction applies, you can still obtain a copy of your scores free of charge under Terms §12. We treat withholding someone's music as a penalty we are not willing to impose.
If you think we got it wrong, reply to us and say so. We would rather reverse a mistake than defend it.
8. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as new issues arise. Changes are recorded in the change history, and material ones are announced as described in Terms §18.
Questions about this document? [email protected]. See also our Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, Refund & Cancellation Policy, Copyright & Takedown Policy, Sub-processors, and Privacy Policy.