1. What this page covers

Use this process if you own the copyright in something posted here without your permission — a photo, a video, an audio recording, artwork, or text — or if you're authorized to act for the owner.

Three things go somewhere else:

• Intimate images of you, posted without your consent. Don't file a copyright notice for those, even if you took the photo yourself and own it outright. Our Content Removal page is the faster channel and those requests are handled first. Use it.
• Anything involving someone under 18. Don't wait on any process at all. Report it in the app with the Minor reason and email us. Nothing on this site moves faster, and Community Guidelines section 3.1 has the detail.
• Trademark, defamation, and privacy complaints. These aren't copyright claims and section 512 doesn't apply to them. Write to us and describe the problem in plain terms — we handle them under our Terms of Service and our Community Guidelines instead.

2. Where to send a notice

Copyright notices and counter-notifications go here, and nowhere else:

Email is the fastest route and the one we recommend. Mail reaches us, but a letter spends days in transit while the material stays up.

Our designation with the U.S. Copyright Office is being completed, and this block will carry the full registered agent details once it is. That registration doesn't change where you send a notice or what we do with it — everything on this page applies today.

3. Sending a takedown notice

A valid notice contains all six of the elements listed in section 512(c)(3)(A). This isn't paperwork for its own sake: a notice missing any of them isn't a valid notice, and removing someone's content on the strength of an incomplete claim exposes both of us to the person who posted it. Send all six the first time and the material comes down sooner.

The six elements

1. The work you own. Identify the copyrighted work you say has been infringed. If a single notice covers many works, a representative list of them is enough.
2. The material, and where to find it. Identify what you want removed, precisely enough that we can locate it without guessing. A username on its own isn't enough — accounts post continuously and nothing here is filed under a name. Give us the room it was posted in or whether it arrived in a private message, the direct link to the file if you have one, the username exactly as it appears, and the date and approximate time with your time zone.
3. How to reach you. Your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
4. A good-faith statement. A statement that you believe in good faith that the use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
5. A statement of accuracy, under penalty of perjury. A statement that the information in your notice is accurate, and that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on the owner's behalf. Read section 7 before you sign this one.
6. Your signature. Physical or electronic. Typing your full name at the end of the email is enough.

If something is missing

We write back and tell you what to add. We don't act on an incomplete notice and we don't guess at the parts you left out — the second element is where notices fail most often, and a claim we can't locate is a claim we can't answer.

4. What happens after a valid notice

• The material comes down expeditiously. That's the standard the statute sets and the one we hold ourselves to. We don't publish a fixed number of hours, because it would be a worse promise than the one we're making — a notice that arrives at 3 AM on a Sunday and one that arrives Monday morning don't get the same clock.
• We tell the user their content was removed following a copyright notice, rather than leaving them to discover a gap.
• We forward your notice to them. That's what lets them file a counter-notification if they believe you're wrong. It also means the contact details in your notice reach them — that's how the process works in both directions, and section 5 says the same about theirs.
• We keep a record of the claim and of what we did about it. Without it the count in section 6 would be impossible, and a repeat infringer would look like a first-time one every time.

We don't decide who owns what. We're not a court and we don't adjudicate ownership. We act on notices that meet the statute, we restore material when a counter-notification meets it too, and the dispute itself is between you and the other party.

5. Filing a counter-notification

If your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification — you own it, you're licensed to use it, or your use is fair use — you can send a counter-notification to the same address. Section 512(g) requires five elements:

1. Your signature, physical or electronic.
2. The material and where it was. Identify what was removed and where it appeared before the removal.
3. A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification.
4. Your name, address, and telephone number.
5. Consent to jurisdiction. A statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the district where you live — or, if you're outside the United States, the District of New Mexico, where we may be found — and that you'll accept service of process from the person who filed the notice, or from their agent.

What happens then

• We forward your counter-notification to the person who filed the notice, including your name and contact details. The statute requires it, and there's no anonymous version of this step. Most people don't know that before they file, so we're saying it plainly: if being reachable by that person is a problem, weigh it before you send.
• We restore the material in 10 to 14 business days unless they tell us first that they've filed a court action seeking to keep it down. The waiting period is theirs to use; when it passes, the content goes back up.
• If they do file suit, the material stays down and the rest of it is between the two of you.

6. Repeat infringers

Three valid notices against the same account within 12 months end that account permanently. Valid is the operative word: a notice we rejected as incomplete doesn't count, a notice the sender withdraws doesn't count, and neither does one answered by a counter-notification that put the material back up.

Some accounts don't get three rounds. Uploading a catalog of someone else's work, running an account that exists to redistribute paid content, or coming back to post the same infringing material after it was removed ends the account on the spot.

Closures here follow your email address and the device identifiers tied to the account, never your IP address — the same way every account closure works on this site, for the reason our Terms of Service section 6 gives. Signing up again from the same phone with a new address doesn't reset the count.

7. Knowingly false claims

It cuts both ways. It applies to a takedown notice sent against content the sender has no rights to, and to a counter-notification claiming ownership of something the sender doesn't own.

A takedown is not a tool for settling an argument, silencing someone, or getting at an ex. Used that way it's harassment under Community Guidelines section 3.5, and “I didn't really think about it” is a thin position to hold after signing a statement under penalty of perjury.

8. Content we don't host

Some of what you see on this site doesn't live on it, and a notice sent here can't reach it:

• YouTube links and their previews. The video plays from YouTube's servers and we never hold a copy. Send your notice to YouTube — taking the link down here leaves the video up everywhere else.
• Live cam. Cams are relayed between people in real time and we don't record them, so after a broadcast ends there is nothing left to remove. A recording someone made and then uploaded here is a different matter, and this process applies to it in full.
• Copies already downloaded. Anything delivered to someone else's device before the removal can't be recalled, here or anywhere else. Our Terms of Service section 5 says the same thing.
• Other sites. We control this one. If the same material is up elsewhere, each service runs its own process.

9. Changes to this page

We may update this page. When we do, we change the “Last updated” date at the top, and for material changes we give notice on the site before they take effect.