DMCA & Notice-and-Takedown

1. Important: book files are not hosted by us

Book files you add to Readence stay on your device and are never uploaded to our servers. What we keep about an upload is its title and author, its language and format, the cover image where the file contains one, and a SHA-256 hash of the file that lets us recognise the same book on your other device. A takedown notice therefore cannot reach a book file: we do not have it. It can reach the user-generated content we do host, and that is a short list — an account’s handle, its display name, the avatar image it links to, and the title, author and stored cover of an upload. Readence has no reviews, comments, messages or posts of any kind; what your friends see about you is written by the app out of your reading, not by you.

2. How to submit a takedown notice

If you believe content available through Readence infringes a copyright you own or control, send a written notice to hello@gerelajos.hu with the subject line “Copyright Takedown Notice”. Your notice must include:

1. your physical or electronic signature (typing your full legal name counts as an electronic signature);
2. identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed;
3. identification of the material you claim is infringing, with enough detail for us to locate it (for example, the username, a link, or the exact item);
4. your name, address, telephone number, and email address;
5. a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
6. a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner’s behalf.

Incomplete notices may delay our response. Please do not submit false or abusive notices, you may be liable for damages if you knowingly misrepresent that material is infringing.

3. What we do when we receive a valid notice

When we receive a notice that substantially meets the requirements above, we remove what we actually hold, and we tell the person who provided it. What we can remove is the list in section 1: we can blank a handle, a display name or an avatar link, and we can reset an upload’s title and author and delete the cover image stored for it. We cannot remove the book file, because it never reached us.

The person affected is emailed at the address on their account, told which items were removed, and given our reason in the words we wrote it in, with this address to reply to. A guest account carries no email address and so cannot be written to; the removal still happens. Where the conduct warrants more than a removal, we can suspend the account, which hides it from everybody and blocks its use of Readence until we lift the suspension — and we do lift it if it turns out we were wrong (section 8).

4. Counter-notice

If you believe your content was removed by mistake or misidentification, you may send a counter-notice to hello@gerelajos.hu that includes:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. identification of the material that was removed and the location where it appeared before removal;
3. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification;
4. your name, address, telephone number, and email address, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the competent courts and will accept service of process from the party who filed the original notice.

If we receive a valid counter-notice, we may restore the removed material unless the original complainant pursues legal action.

5. Repeat-infringer policy

We will, in appropriate circumstances, restrict, suspend, or terminate the accounts of users who are repeat infringers of copyright.

6. Contact

Send all copyright notices and counter-notices to hello@gerelajos.hu. Operator: Gere Lajos e.v., Hungary, EU. The same address takes any other kind of complaint (section 7) and any appeal against a decision of ours (section 8).

7. Complaints that are not about copyright

Sections 2 to 5 are the copyright process, and it is deliberately formal because US law attaches consequences to those exact statements. Most complaints are not copyright complaints, and they should not have to look like one.

If something on Readence is illegal, abusive, impersonates somebody, or is simply something we should not be hosting — a handle, a display name, an avatar, or the title of an upload — email hello@gerelajos.hu and tell us what you saw and where you saw it. There is no form and no required wording. You do not need a Readence account to use this route, which is the point of it: the report button inside the app is open only to signed-up accounts, so this is the way in for everybody else.

We confirm that your message arrived, and once we have decided what to do we tell you what that was.

8. If you disagree with a decision we made

If we removed something of yours or suspended your account and you think we got it wrong, say so: email hello@gerelajos.hu, name the decision you want looked at, and tell us why it was mistaken. Every removal we make is recorded — what was taken down, why, when, and whether we managed to tell you — and that record is what your appeal is read against. Readence is run by one person, so your message reaches whoever made the decision, and you get an answer either way.

Most of this is reversible. A suspension can be lifted, and once the account works again the profile details we blanked are yours to set again. What we cannot undo is a deleted cover image: our copy is gone, and the only other one is inside the book file on your own device. If your material was removed on a copyright notice, the counter-notice in section 4 is open to you as well as this route: that one is a legal step, with statements under penalty of perjury and consent to a court’s jurisdiction attached, and this one is the ordinary route for the ordinary case.