Copyright and published songs

Last updated 10 November 2026

Anyone with an ILLEST account can publish songs they made. Every artist promises, each time they publish, that they wrote and recorded the song or hold a licence for every part of it. This page is how a rights holder tells us a published song infringes their copyright, how the artist can answer, and what happens to accounts that infringe again.

Sending a notice

Use the form below, or write to legal@illest.one. A notice needs, as 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3) and the EU's Digital Services Act ask:

1. your name and how to reach you, and, if you act for someone else, who;
2. the work you say is infringed;
3. the link to the song on ILLEST;
4. a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised by the rights holder, its agent or the law;
5. a statement that the notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the rights holder or allowed to act for them;
6. your signature (typing your full name is enough).

A person reads every notice. If it is complete and well founded we take the song down everywhere, tell the artist why, and tell you. Sending a notice you know to be false can make you liable for the damages it causes (17 U.S.C. 512(f)); a sender whose notices are repeatedly found false is no longer heard.

If your song was taken down

You are told in the app, under Settings, Your songs, what was taken down and why. If you believe it was a mistake or a misidentification, send a counter-notice from there. A person reads it; if it is complete we send it, with your name and contact details, to the person who sent the notice, and the song comes back ten business days later unless they tell us they have gone to court.

Repeat infringers

Each song taken down after a notice that was upheld is a strike on the account that published it, and a strike lasts a year. An account with three strikes at once can no longer publish songs. A recording that was taken down is remembered by its fingerprint, and the same recording published again is kept back for a person to look at before it plays.

Who to write to

Notices and counter-notices go to VERAKS, at legal@illest.one. VERAKS has no postal address yet; one will be given here with our designated agent's registration.