Copyright Claims
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) – Take Down Notices


General Take Down Information – Please Read:

We respect the intellectual property of others and ask our users to do the same.

In accordance with the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), we will respond expeditiously to properly completed claims of copyright infringement that are delivered to our Designated Copyright Agent, identified below.

This page describes the process of submitting a DMCA claim to us. It is designed to make alleged infringement notices to us as straightforward as possible and, at the same time, minimize the number of notices we receive that are spurious or difficult to verify.

 

We will take whatever action, in our sole discretion, we deem appropriate, including removing or disabling access to challenged material and/or in appropriate circumstances and at our discretion, terminating the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe or are repeatedly charged with infringing. If we remove or disable access in response to such a notice, we will attempt to notify the owner or administrator of the affected content so that he or she can make a counter notification.

We may send a copy of a received notice to an alleged infringer, to identified rights holders, and/or to one or more third parties (such as Chilling Effects, example) and we and/or third parties may make it, and/or information compiled from it, available to the public. Such publication may redact part of the notice, most likely the submitter’s personal electronic contact information (ie: phone number and e-mail address).

IMPORTANT: Misrepresentations made in your notice regarding whether material or activity is infringing may expose you to liability for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees). Courts have found that you must consider copyright defenses, limitations or exceptions before sending a notice. In one case involving online content, a company paid more than $100,000 in costs and attorney fees after targeting content protected by the U.S. fair use doctrine. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether material available online infringes your copyright, we suggest that you first contact an attorney.

 

* FAILURE TO PROPERLY INCLUDE ALL OF THE FOLLOWING REQUESTED INFORMATION WILL RESULT IN A REJECTION OF OR A DELAY IN PROCESSING OF YOUR NOTICE, AND/OR A REQUEST FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.

Notice Requirements – Contact Information and Authority*

 

  • First and last name of the individual preparing the notice
  • Company Name
  • Copyright holder you represent (specify self or refer to a specific other person or entity)
  • Phone Number, an if available, an Email Address
  • Mailing Address
  • Sworn Statement: “I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, or its agent, or the law.”
  • Sworn Statement: “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”
  • Signature and Date

Notice Requirements – Your Copyrighted Work*

 

  • Identify and describe the copyrighted work. For example, “The photograph of Lady Gaga playing an Atari Asteroids game at the N.Y. Make-A-Wish Foundation Fundraiser of December 25, 2010 which can be viewed at the URL below” or “My published book, ‘Separating the Red Wire From the Black Wire’, is infringed by the text excerpted on the site, beginning with the text ‘It all started when I opened up the power supply.'”
  • If applicable, where can we see an authorized example of the work? Please provide URL(s) where an authorized example of the copyrighted work can be viewed. This will be used by our team to verify that the work appears on the pages you are asking us to remove.)
  • Location of infringing material: URL Please provide the URL(s) of the allegedly infringing material that you are asking us to remove.
  • Identification of infringing material: Title, Poster Name & Post Date (as applicable) Please note that many pages may contain content from multiple users, and as such, you need to further identify which elements you are referring to. Additionally, differences in page view pagination may make simple URL identification insufficient. For example, a message forum thread page may contain a variable amount of individual posts dependent on the method used to view the page and the individual settings of the browser viewing the page. Whenever possible, identity any references to real name or username associated with the infringing material along with, whenever possible, any identifying date and time stamps associated with it. Please describe what part of the post or page is objectionable. For example, if it is an external link, please specify the link.

Notices – Suggestions on Wording to Avoid

Much of the content on our sites is created by others. Occasionally notices may be prepared by the uninitiated that threaten us, the online service provider, and accuse us directly of specific or vague allegations by a preparer unhappy with the actions of one of our users. Even though the DMCA and the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) is intended to protect online service providers and discourage such frivoulous claims, notices may arrive that make such claims anyway. Besides challenging your credibility, any such letters received will likely be referred to our outside counsel, complicating the process of resolution and increasing the time required to respond to your concerns.

Sending Notice – DMCA: Designated Agent:

 

  • You may send DMCA notices to ‘dmcaagent@webmagic.com’ or written notification via regular mail (postal mail, FedEx, or UPS) to the following address. Please note that, due to security concerns, attachments cannot be accepted. Accordingly, any notification of infringement submitted electronically with an attachment will not be received or processed. Please note that due to spam filters and other flaws in email, it would be improper to assume we have received your email unless you have received a confirmation from us. It is our goal to confirm the receipt of such email within 72 hours of arrival. If you do not receive such a confirmation, please email us again or contact us at the address below:
WebMagic, Inc. – DMCA Department
Attn: Copyright Manager
530 S. Lake Ave. Ste. 450
Pasadena, CA 91101

Counter-Notification Policy

To be effective, a Counter-Notification must be a written communication by the subscriber or user provided to our Designated Agent (as set forth above) that includes substantially the following:

  • Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.
  • A statement under penalty of perjury that the Subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
  • The Subscriber’s name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the Subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district of California, or if the Subscriber’s address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which WebMagic may be found, and that the Subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification or an agent of such person.
  • A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber.

Upon receipt of a Counter-Notification containing the information as outlined in 1 through 4 above:

  • We shall promptly provide the Complaining Part with a copy of the Counter Notification.
  • We shall inform the Complaining Party that it will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to it within ten (10) business days.
  • We shall replace the removed material or cease disabling access to the material within ten (10) to fourteen (14) business days following receipt of the Counter Notification, provided our Designated Agent has not received notice from the Complaining Party that an action has been filed seeking a court order to restrain Subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on our system.

Notices and Counter-Notices with respect to this website must meet then current statutory requirements imposed by the DMCA; see http://www.copyright.gov for details. If you need help filing or creating a Counter-Notice, there are plenty of resources online. Chilling Effect’s Counter-Notice Generator is a well-known resource. Another is the Scribd DMCA Counter Notification Template.

If the notice was in error or malicious, file a counter-notice as promptly as possible, even if you do not wish to have the work restored.

It is important to file a counter-notice if the takedown was sent in error, even if you view the takedown as not being a big deal because hosts are required to ban and delete accounts of repeat infringers. If you receive too many DMCA notices, you may find your entire account disabled, even if the takedown notices were invalid. As such, it is important to file counter-notices to prevent such an action from happening.

Finally, in extreme cases where the notice was false and filed knowingly so, the subscriber/user can file suit against the filer for damages including attorney’s fees and court costs.

Repeat Infringers

Infringement of the copyrights of others violates our Terms of Services. Additionally, the DMCA requires service providers to terminate the access of ‘repeat infringers’. It is our policy to ban or terminate accounts after 3 to 5 uncontested DMCA notices or determinations by a court of competent jurisdiction in a two (2) year period, only counting determinations that refer to alleged infringement that occurred after a previous notice or determination had been delivered to an alleged infringer. Additionally, we reserve the right to terminate an account earlier than that, and to take other actions including temporarily locking or banning an account for a specified period of time (i.e.: a month or a year). It is exceedingly rare for us to receive a complaint about one of our users, and we don’t recall ever receiving a second one on a user. As such, much of this policy is likely to be only theoretical.

Our policies are inspired by the DMCA law itself, the policies of other services providers, and proposals posted on the web site of The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which encourages a fair use policy giving plenty of notice to alleged infringers, information on preparing counter-notices, “no instant termination” and a system geared around “trust.” It proposes “additional protections for ‘trusted users’, such as users who have not posted any infringing material for a specific amount of time, or for whom noticed content represents only a small percentage of their total posts. Such protections could include additional ‘strikes’ before termination (say, five rather than three), and a fast-tracked appeal procedure.”

Cautions

The DMCA process, whether on the filing or receiving end, should never be taken lightly as missteps could, and often do, have very serious legal implications. If in doubt, consult an attorney.

Additionally, many disputes may be quickly resolved and misunderstandings easily avoided by simply contacting the originator of content you find objectionable, informing them that you feel your rights are being infringed, and requesting that such content be immediately changed or removed or other accomodation made.

 

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