Question

What is a DMCA takedown notice?

Answer

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a mechanism for individuals to protect their creative content from copyright infringement. If your work or content appears on someone’s blog, Instagram, or other website, and you didn’t give permission to the user who posted the content to use it, you can remove the infringing content by going through the DMCA takedown process.

To issue a DMCA takedown notice, go to the host website or platform’s Terms of Service (sometimes this will be in the Privacy Policy as well). In the Terms of Service, there’s always a portion that contains some version of an infringement notice, takedown request, or something you can follow to provide information about the infringing content, your ownership, and lack of permission.

Because of the wording of the DMCA, if there’s infringing content on a host of user generated content’s platform, and the host does nothing, the host can be held liable for infringement. For that reason, every host has this procedure and will automatically take down the user’s infringing content. At that point, the user will receive a notification from the host.

Unfortunately, the infringing party can dispute the host’s action and repost the content, at which point the host is relieved of any potential liability under the DMCA. At that point, the dispute is between you and the infringing party. If the infringing party does put it back up, you probably need to take further steps and contact an attorney who can help you step up the process.

It’s also important to note that if your copyright is registered, this DMCA takedown process is often a big win for you, which underscores the importance of making sure your creative content is protected and registered.