Terms of Use & Privacy Policy
Terms of Use Agreement
You may download, view, copy, and print documents and graphics incorporated in these documents (the "Documents") from Piano Public Domain's website (Site) subject to the following: (a) the Documents that are included in the directory labeled "Library" are PDF files and are licensed for public use under public domain copyright law; you may download, print, distribute, and alter these files as you see fit under the protection of public domain law; you assume liability and responsibility for reporting any files that you find to be outside the limitations of public domain law and in such cases as you illegally distribute said files, you assume liability and indemnify Piano Public Domain.com and its site adminsitrators and owners from any wrongdoing in such circumstances and (b) any other documents on this site not contained under the "Library" directory or label are copyright Piano Public Domain and may not be copied, distributed, or altered in any way for any use, personal or commercial.
This site makes use of credits. You may purchase download credits by using the "Purchase Credits" screen. Piano Public Domain guarantees that the files you select for download will be provided you, except for the following conditions: (a) you have not appropriately purchased the credits necessary to download said file; (b) you have illegally accessed the file; (c) you have attempted to download the file and decided upon another file for download using the same credit(s); (d) you have experienced errors out of the purview of Piano Public Domain related to typical internet browsing experience.
Privacy Policy
Users on this site (Piano Public Domain.com) are required to enter email information to access downloads. This is for security purposes for the site to have the ability to trace user activity. In the event of illegal access to files on this site, the site administrators will use the email addresses. When users make purchases, it is necessary to store the email address in third-party payment gateway systems such as PayPal to process the transaction. In this case, users accept the use of their email address in this fashion to process transactions. Periodically, the site may need to contact users about changes on the site that directly affect them. In no way will the site sell, distribute, or use for personal exploitation any email addresses provided by the user. This privacy is guaranteed by the site. In the event that the user feels this privacy or right to privacy has been infringed by the site, he or she may contact the site administrators by using the Contact Us form.
A Note on Scanned Files
The PDFs on this site have been compiled from various sources. Some have claimed that proliferating scanned documents of public domain material is in violation of copyright law. After dicussing this matter with lawyers, we cite the case of Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service in which the United States Supreme Court "reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals holding that Rural's white pages did not meet the constitutional or statutory requirements for copyright protection, stating that, originality, not 'sweat of the brow,' is the touchstone of copyright protection in directories and other fact-based works. Raw data are uncopyrightable facts, and the way in which Rural selected, coordinated, and arranged those facts was not original in any way. Copyright rewards originality, not effort." (See Stanford's Review of Primary Materials.) Making a scan of a public domain document is not an original work and has not been considered in the legal system as such.
Therefore, copyright protection does not extend to "the uniqueness of a scan" or photo reproduction of a work. (In other words, want to copyright a Xerox of something in the public domain? Unless you've rearranged the type itself and rendered your own edition of the work, you can't claim copyright protection--you haven't created anything! Reproduced, yes; created, no.)
