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DMCA Tutorial

published by t0ast on Thu, 01/24/2008 - 10:00am
Guides & Tutorials: 
Copyright

This DMCA tutorial is a guide on how to utilize the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to get unauthorized uses of your images taken down from web sites.

What Is The DMCA?

It is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

What Is It Good For?

You can use a DMCA letter to forcefully make people remove your photographs from their web sites if they do not have permission to use them.

How To Write A DMCA Letter

This is what a basic DMCA notice requires in the letter:

  1. Identify the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed. If multiple copyrighted works are covered by this notice, you may provide a representative list of the copyrighted works that you claim have been infringed.

  2. Identify the material or link you claim is infringing (or the subject of infringing activity) and that access to which is to be disabled, including at a minimum, if applicable, the URL of the link shown on the Photobucket website where such material may be found.

  3. Provide your mailing address, telephone number, and, if available, email address.

  4. Include both of the following statements in the body of the Notice:

    • "I hereby state that I have a good faith belief that the disputed use of the copyrighted material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law (e.g., as a fair use)."
    • "I hereby state that the information in this Notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that I am the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the copyright or of an exclusive right under the copyright that is allegedly infringed."

  5. Provide your full legal name and your electronic or physical signature.

That last number sometimes confuses people with the signature part. An electronic signature can simply be your name typed out.

A DMCA Letter Template

Here is a basic template of what I (T0ast) normally send out. Everything that is underlined means you have to fill it in:

Quote:
Hello, I am the owner of YOUR WEBSITE/ETC.

A user of your site has posted my copyrighted images on your server, please remove them as soon as possible and any other images that are from my website if there are any, as they are infringing on my copyright.

This is my DMCA notice

I would like to inform you that one of your clients is using my copyrighted photos without permission and I wish for them to be removed immediately.

Links to the images that violate my copyright:

Link to where the image was stolen from:

They do not have any permission to use any of my photos. Please remove them from the server ASAP.

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the infringing web pages is not authorized by my registered copyright and by the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner of an exclusive right that is infringed.
-Your Full Name (Digital Signature)
Your Name

Please feel free contact me if you have any questions

Thanks For Your Time
cell: 555-555-5555

eval(unescape('%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%22%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%59%4f%55%52%45%4d%41%49%4c%40%45%4d%41%49%4c%2e%43%4f%4d%22%3e%59%4f%55%52%45%4d%41%49%4c%40%45%4d%41%49%4c%2e%43%4f%4d%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29%3b'))

5555 YOURROAD Dr.
Tampa Florida, 33618
USA

Who To Send It To

This can be the harder part. First, you have to find out where the image is hosted.

Joe Blow may not be hosting the infringing image on his site www.copyrightinfringer.com. He could be using a photo hosting service such as PhotoBucket.

To find out where it is hosted, right click it and look at its property's, or open it in a new window and look in the toolbar. You are looking for the image's url, ie. "http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v667/natecape/infringing_photo.jpg"

You can clearly see that this photo is being hosted on PhotoBucket. The person you are going to send your DMCA notice to in this case will be a contact at PhotoBucket, not at www.copyrightinfringer.com.

Most photo hosting sites have a specific email to send copyright notices to, as they get them all the time and are normally good about handling it fast. Normally its in the FAQ/Contact US/or ABUSE sections of the website. Just look around and you will normally find it.

What If The Site Has No Email Listed

If a website is using your photos and it has no where to send a email to complain what do you do? Easy, find it with a simple WHOIS. Domains have an ADMIN contact listed, although this contact occasionally may just be a "NOSPAM" email address. This can be found by doing a 'whois' on the domain name.

Here is one of the many sites you can run a 'whois' from: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp

Enter the domain name on that website and it will return the registered contact information.

If this works to no avail, you may want to try contacting the following addresses:

Additional DMCA Resources

Here are additional DMCA resources:

Hopefully this clears up some of the mystery around how to use the DMCA to have unauthorized uses of your photographs taken down from web sites when the site owners are uncooperative.

Original document by t0ast
Document edited by Will Hawkins
Document formatted by Walter Rowe