Someone copied your work
Sending a DMCA takedown notice
A takedown notice is not a letter of complaint. It is a statutory document with six required parts, and a provider is allowed to ignore one that's missing any of them. Get the six right and almost every platform acts within a day or two.
The six things it must contain
They come from 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A). Plenty of templates floating around drop one or two, which is the most common reason a notice comes back rejected.
| Required element | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Signature | Physical or electronic, from the rights owner or someone authorised to act for them. Typing your name counts. |
| The work you own | Identify the copyrighted work. If many works on one site are involved, a representative list is enough. |
| The material to remove | Enough information to let the provider find it without hunting. In practice: the exact URL, not the homepage. |
| How to reach you | Address, phone, and email. This is the part people regret; see below. |
| Good faith statement | That you believe the use isn't authorised by you, your agent, or the law. That last clause covers fair use, and courts have held you must actually consider it. |
| Accuracy statement | That your information is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that you're authorised to act for the rights owner. |
Your contact details usually become public
Many providers, Google among them, forward the notices they receive to the Lumen Database, where they are published and indexed. Your name, postal address and email can end up on a public page attached to the dispute. If you're an individual working from home, use a business address or a registered agent, and think about it before you file, not after.
Build the notice
Everything below stays in your browser. Nothing is submitted, stored or sent anywhere. This page has no server behind it. Fill it in, read the result, and send it yourself.
DMCA takedown notice · § 512(c)(3)(A)
Where to send it
Any site that hosts user uploads and wants the safe harbour must name an agent to receive notices, and register that agent with the US Copyright Office. The directory is public and searchable, and it is the authoritative source, more reliable than the contact page of the site itself.
Larger platforms also run their own web forms, which are usually faster than email because they drop straight into the review queue. Use the form when there is one. Keep a copy of what you submitted either way, because you may need to prove the date.
What happens after you send it
That last step is where most takedowns actually end. If the other side counter-notices and you aren't prepared to sue, the material returns and the process is over. Knowing that in advance changes which fights are worth starting.
What filing one costs you
A takedown notice is sworn under penalty of perjury, and § 512(f) makes a knowing material misrepresentation actionable. The person you targeted can recover damages and legal fees. The bar is knowledge, not mere error, but the good faith statement has teeth: you are expected to have genuinely considered whether the use might be lawful, fair use included, before you sign.
In plain terms: file on work you actually own, against a use you actually believe is unlicensed. Don't use it to remove a bad review, a competitor's price list, or criticism you dislike. Those cases are exactly the ones that end up in a courtroom with your name on the wrong side.