DRAFT — ATTORNEY REVIEW REQUIRED BEFORE PUBLISHING
This page is the strongest § 512(f) mitigation on the site. Counsel to confirm: the 5-business-day and 2-business-day commitments are operationally deliverable at our current staffing before they are published, the description of § 512(g)(3) is accurate and non-advisory, and the retraction procedure is reflected in the internal SOP.
If we filed a notice against your material, tell us. We answer in 5 business days.
Sending takedown notices is what this company does, and sending them means we will sometimes be wrong. A URL gets misidentified, a client turns out not to hold the rights she believed she held, a mirror carries commentary we should have screened out.
This page exists so that being wrong is cheap to fix. There are two routes and they are not the same. Read both before you pick.
§1 — Route one: tell us directly
This is the faster route and it costs you nothing.
Write to FOUNDER: disputes email. Tell us which URL was removed and why you believe the notice was wrong. Attach whatever supports it. You do not need a lawyer to send this message and you do not need to reveal your home address to send it.
What we commit to:
| Commitment | Clock |
|---|---|
| Written acknowledgement, from a person, with a reference number | 1 business day |
| A substantive answer, either a retraction or our reasons for declining | 5 business days |
| Where a dispute is substantiated, a written retraction sent to the host, the search engine, and every party that received the original notice | 2 business days from substantiation |
| A copy of the retraction, sent to you | Same day it is sent |
| The dispute and its outcome logged in our own record, kept for as long as this company exists | At closure |
If we retract, we say so in writing to everyone we told the first time. We do not quietly stop mentioning it.
If we decline, you get the reasons in writing, and route two is still open to you.
This route does not affect any deadline or right you may have. Talking to us is not a substitute for advice about your own position, and we are not qualified to give you that.
§2 — Route two: the statutory counter-notification
The US copyright takedown law contains a formal route at 17 U.S.C. § 512(g). It runs through the service provider that removed the material, not through us.
We are telling you what the statute says. We are not telling you whether to use it. That decision has consequences we are not permitted to walk you through.
The statute at § 512(g)(3) describes a counter-notification as containing:
- Your physical or electronic signature.
- Identification of the material that was removed, and the location where it appeared before it was removed.
- A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification.
- Your name, address, and telephone number, a statement consenting to the jurisdiction of a federal district court, and a statement that you will accept service of process from the party who filed the notice.
A counter-notification puts your name, your physical address and your telephone number into the hands of the party who filed the notice, and it requires you to consent to the jurisdiction of a federal district court. The statute also contemplates that a service provider may restore the material after a waiting period, unless the party who filed the notice informs the provider that it has filed an action seeking a court order.
We are not going to tell you whether that is the right move for you. If you are considering a counter-notification, that is the point at which to talk to an attorney, today, before you send anything.
§3 — Why we publish this at all
Publishing a dispute route is against our short-term commercial interest. It advertises that our notices can be wrong, it invites contact from people whose material we removed, and it creates work with no revenue attached.
We publish it because the alternative is worse. A takedown operation with no correction mechanism is one bad week away from being the thing it claims to remove.
§4 — The dispute form
If the bot check fails, email FOUNDER: disputes email and we'll open the dispute manually.
§5 — What we do with what you send us
We keep the dispute, our determination, and the retraction if there was one, for 7 years. That record is our own defence file and it is the reason this route exists.
We do not pass your contact details to the client whose notice you are disputing unless you tell us to in writing. If resolving the dispute requires it, we ask you first and you can say no.
What we store and for how long →
Last updated LAST_UPDATED.