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DMCA Takedown Notice Guide

What is a DMCA Notice?

DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A DMCA notice informs a company, web host, search engine, or internet service provider that they are hosting to material that infringes on a copyright. The party that receives the notice should take down the material in question as soon as possible.

What are the minimum requirements for a DMCA notice?

  1. A physical or electronic signature (i.e., /s/NAME) of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright that is allegedly infringed.
  2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed.
  3. Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.
  4. Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.
  5. A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner.
  6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright that is allegedly infringed.

DMCA Notice Example

Example

My name is INSERT NAME and I am the INSERT TITLE of INSERT COMPANY NAME. A website that your company hosts (according to WHOIS information) is infringing on at least one copyright owned by my company.

An article was copied onto your servers without permission. The original ARTICLE/PHOTO, to which we own the exclusive copyrights, can be found at:

PROVIDE WEBSITE URL

The unauthorized and infringing copy can be found at:

PROVIDE WEBSITE URL

This letter is official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future.

Please also be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to remove or disable access to the infringing materials upon receiving this notice. Under US law a service provider, such as yourself, enjoys immunity from a copyright lawsuit provided that you act with deliberate speed to investigate and rectify ongoing copyright infringement. If service providers do not investigate and remove or disable the infringing material this immunity is lost. Therefore, in order for you to remain immune from a copyright infringement action you will need to investigate and ultimately remove or otherwise disable the infringing material from your servers with all due speed should the direct infringer, your client, not comply immediately.

I am providing this notice in good faith and with the reasonable belief that rights my company owns are being infringed. Under penalty of perjury I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright(s) involved.

Should you wish to discuss this with me please contact me directly.

Thank you.

/s/YOUR NAME

Address City, State Zip Phone E-mail

What if You Receive a DMCA Notice?

  1. The first question you need to ask yourself is to see if your usage of the copyrighted material within the boundaries of fair use. If so you might be able to sort the issue by contacting the copyright holder and discuss the issue directly.

  2. If you believe the content is not copyrighted or if you are the true copyright holder of the content you will need to provide a counter notice (see the next section)

  3. Otherwise you should remove the disputed content from your website.

DMCA Counter Notices

A DMCA Counterclaim or Counter Notice is submitted in response to a valid DMCA Takedown by the accused infringing website owner (ISP subscriber client). It is submitted to the service provider (OSP/ISP) after the DMCA Takedown has been submitted and after the content has been removed.

When you provide a counter notice the copyright holder has 10-14 days to start a legal action. If no action is taken within that timeframe the content then can go back online again.

How Long Does It Take For Us To Remove The Content?

We usually act on all proper DMCA notices within 2 business days. We do not take any action on any requests from anonymous sources or any request that does not comply with the legal requirements of a proper DMCA notice.