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File your own DMCA notice, start to finish
This is the whole procedure, written so you can finish it without us. The first site takes an afternoon. Every one after that takes about ten minutes.
You need the work, the exact URLs, the right recipient, and the six elements the statute lists.
Step 1. Settle who owns the work
A notice under the US copyright takedown law (17 U.S.C. § 512(c)) is a sworn document about ownership.
If a collab partner held the camera, or a photographer shot the set, the copyright may not sit with you alone. A management agreement can assign it too.
We will not tell you what your agreement means. We are telling you it decides whether the notice is safe to send.
Step 2. Find the recipient
| Where to look | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| The agent directory at dmca.copyright.gov | The registered designated agent. Send here first. |
| A DNS or IP lookup | The origin host. Send here when no agent is registered. |
| Name servers pointing at Cloudflare | The host is hidden. Cloudflare removes nothing, but its abuse form names the host. |
| WHOIS on the domain | The registrar, and sometimes a self-published abuse address. |
No agent for this site appears in the US Copyright Office directory. What follows from that for this operator is not something we can tell you. Send the notice to the host instead.
Read this before you use the Cloudflare form. Its published abuse policy says your complaint, including your name and contact details, is forwarded to the site operator.
Step 3. The six elements, as a template
§ 512(c)(3)(A) lists six. All six, or a host can treat it as not a valid notification. Read step 4 before you touch the last two.
To: [designated agent, or the host's abuse contact]
Date: [yyyy-mm-dd]
(ii) The work: [what it is, and where your original is published]
(iii) The infringing material: [exact URLs, one per line, pointing
at the file or the post]
(iv) How to reach me: [name, street address, phone, email]
(v) [Your good-faith belief statement. You write this. We supply
no wording and no example.]
(vi) [Your accuracy and authority statement, made under penalty of
perjury. You write this. We supply no wording and no example.]
(i) Signed: [your typed name, as the electronic signature]On (iii), be exact. A category page gives the recipient a reason to close the ticket.
Step 4. The last two are yours, and we do not write them
Elements (v) and (vi) are not fields. They are assertions you swear to, and the penalty-of-perjury clause attaches to (vi). We publish no example wording for either one, here or anywhere else.
§ 512(f) creates liability for a knowing material misrepresentation in a notice. That is the statute's own wording. What it would mean in any particular case is a lawyer's question. It is why we screen every URL before we file, including for fair use: commentary, criticism and news reporting are not what a notice is for.
Step 5. Send it, then log it
Use the site's form if it publishes one. Otherwise email the designated agent. Keep the notice as sent, the timestamp, and every reply.
Re-check each URL on day 3, day 7 and day 14. A 404 means the page is gone. A 200 means it is still serving, whatever the reply said.
Step 6. Delist on both tracks
Delisting is a separate filing, and for most people it recovers more than the host notice does.
The copyright track. Google and Bing both take copyright removal requests. Google forwards those to the public record described below.
The personal explicit imagery track. Both also run a route for intimate imagery published without consent. Google's published description of this route says it asks for no proof of ownership and opens an opt-in that removes future duplicates from results VERIFY. Submit the URLs in a batch.
Where both apply, file the second one first. File at Bing separately. It does not inherit Google's decisions.
Removed and delisted are two results, not one. Removed means the URL returns 404 or 410, or is no longer served. Delisted means it stops appearing on Google and Bing for your name while the file keeps existing. Your report counts them in separate columns and so does your contract. We don't control anyone else's servers, so we never tell you a file has been deleted.
What happens next
| Outcome | What it looks like | Published or commonly reported window |
|---|---|---|
| The host complies | The URL stops being served | 3–10 days |
| The host stalls | A ticket number, then silence | No published window. Escalate at day 10. |
| The host never answers | Nothing at all | Upstream. 1–4 weeks. |
| An offshore host answers nobody | Nothing moves. The goal changes to suppression. | No published window. |
| Search delisting | The result stops returning for your name | About 3 days |
These windows are what hosts, search engines and platforms publish, or what the published procedure commonly takes. They are not our results, and they are not a commitment. We do not publish a removal rate or an average turnaround, and we will not quote you one.
Upstream has an order to it, and it is the order we work.
Six rungs. The host notice first, after a logged fair-use screen. Search delisting in parallel, because it is the fastest rung and needs nobody's cooperation. Then Cloudflare, which removes nothing but makes the origin host identify itself. Then upstream: the transit provider, the registrar, and the ad networks paying the site. Then the statutory routes, which reach places copyright cannot. Then a handoff to your own attorney, which we refer and never do in-house.
Every timeline lives on one page, so it can only be wrong in one place.
See the full ladder, with timelines →
On counter-notices. One under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) comes back to the contact address on your notice, on a short clock. We never answer one for a client. It routes to your own attorney.
Five ways this goes wrong
- Wrong owner. You file on a set your collab partner shot.
- Wrong recipient. You file with Cloudflare and wait. It hosts nothing and removes nothing.
- Wrong URLs. You point at a category page, and the ticket closes.
- Your home address on a public record. See below.
- You stop after one round. The copy reappears in week three and nothing is watching.
Before you file anything under your own name
A notice you file under your own name becomes a public record. Google forwards copyright removal notices to the Lumen Database, which is public, searchable, and Harvard-hosted. The record reads, in substance, "[legal name] asked Google to remove these URLs", with the URLs attached. That is a directory of your leaks with your real name on it.
We file under our name, never yours. How we keep your name out of public records →
If your list is short, do this yourself
One name, ten or so URLs, an afternoon. Work the six steps and don't buy anything. Pay someone when the weekly hours stop being worth what they cost you, not before.
When it stops being one afternoon
Two fields. No card, no legal name, no account. We'll tell you where we can find your content, every match verified by a person, and the report says which URLs we expect to remove, which we expect to delist, which we can only push down, and which have no route we can find. 48 hours.