At this point you’ve found out that somebody has stolen your copyrighted property and has illegally posted it on the web. You should have also gathered up as much information about the infringing website and its hosting company. Now you are ready to take action and have your content taken down from the infringing website’s server. The way that you can go about having the content removed is by providing the hosting service provider with a notice of the infringing content. This is often referred to as a DMCA takedown notice or letter.
Thankfully, the requirements for sending a DMCA takedown notice are clearly defined in the DMCA and will not require you to get a lawyer to draft the notice for you. Just about anyone can create this notice on their own and I’ve even included a few sample DMCA takedown notices later on in this post.
While there is no exact format or form that a DMCA letter must take, it is critical that all of the required pieces of information are included in order for the notice to be valid. There are six items that the DMCA requires in any valid takedown notice (plain English translations below):
- A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
- Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.
- Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.
- 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.
- 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, its agent, or the law.
- 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 an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
…or in plain English
- Your physical (if faxing or mailing notice) or electronic (if emailing notice) signature
- Identification and description of the work (article, software, blog post, etc.) that you are claiming as being used illegally
- Identification of the website (including specific URLs) that contains the infringing content which you are trying to have removed
- Your contact information
- A statement that you really believe the content in question is infringing upon your copyright protections
- A statement, under penalty of perjury, that you either own the copyright for this work or you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner
As long as those six items are included in your takedown notice, it will be considered valid notification under the DMCA and the service provider must take action in order to remain protected by the safe harbor provisions.
Who should I sent notice to?
Many times you will be able to get the infringing content removed by simply sending the appropriate notice to the service provider that is hosting the content. If the stolen content in question is member’s only content or otherwise not publicly available on your website or blog, there are a few additional steps you should take to protect yourself. In addition to sending a DMCA notice to the service provider that is hosting the content, it is also a good idea to send copies of the notification to the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. I have included sample letters including address information for each below.
By notifying the search engines of the illegal content, you will be able to have any search results linking to the content removed from each site. This will ensure that anyone searching for your work will be directed to only to your website or other legitimately posted information.
If you’d like to see examples of takedown notices, check out the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse for thousands of searchable examples of real notices either sent or received by others. You can find some interesting stats and analysis of the DMCA and its effects on that site as well.
Hopefully you have found this short series on online copyright protection and the DMCA to be useful. Please keep in mind that I am not an attorney and am not attempting to provide any legal advice with this series. While I have so far been able to deal with any of my own copyright issues under this method, it is always important to seek legal advice from an attorney if the infringement is causing you substantial financial damages. Regardless of which route you take, being vigilant and acting quickly is likely the best defense you have to help keep your content protected online.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
My question is if the site only scrapes a bit of your content then sends people to your site to read the rest of it, does that still constitute as their stealing your content, which would still allow you to send a cease and desist letter?
Mitch´s last blog ..Bloggers Can’t Hide Behind Fake Names Anymore And Defame Others
Good question, Mitch. I’m not an attorney, so I can’t tell you the answer for sure, but here’s my understanding of this sort of situation. It can actually be fairly complicated because techinically it is copyright infringement if they steal even a portion of your copyrighted work. The complication that comes in is that US Law also contains something called the Fair Use Doctrine which allows for certain uses of copyrighted material without penalty. Since this is a really good point you brought up, I’m actually going to add a post on the Fair Use Doctrine either today or tomorrow with more details. Thanks for the comment!
No problem; it’s what I do.
Mitch´s last blog ..Poker Tournament, The Follow Up