DMCA Copyright Notice 101

As almost every webmaster knows, copyright infringement occurs online far too often – especially with written content such as blog posts and articles. When many people find out that their content has been stolen they feel helpless and usually reach the conclusion that there is nothing that can do about it, but this is wrong! Thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which became effective in the United States back in 1998, you now have legal protection and the ability to stop anyone who infringes upon your copyrights. Today, I will tell you a little more about what this means and how to begin taking action.

The first step in filing a DMCA Copyright Notice is to find out where you need to send it – which is the web-hosting company of the offending site (the one that is using your content). I recommend using the Domain Name WHOIS Program at DomainTools. Once you run the query you will see a list of ‘nameservers,’ and these will tell you where the site is hosted. For example, ‘ns1.dreamhost.com’ clearly shows you that the site is hosted with DreamHost. You can see an example picture of what the nameservers look like to the left.

Now, you’ll need a DMCA Copyright Notice Template, which I have included below, to send to the web-hosting company. Make sure you customize it and fill in all the necessary information so that you have a solid case against the content thieves. When the host receives your DMCA Notice, and you have included everything to prove your case sufficiently, they will have a legal obligation to remove the stolen content or suspend the offender’s website. I recommend that you always file a DMCA Notice against any stolen content or media, even if you don’t think it matters, because content thieves are a danger to us all and they must be taken care of.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notice Template:
Attn: [Host Name] Legal Department
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notification

Hello. The purpose of this letter is to address a very urgent matter regarding a case of copyright infringement and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I am the owner of [yourURLhere.com] and the purpose of this notification is to report that the owner of [URLofthief.com] – hereinafter referred to as ‘offender’ – has lifted verbatim some (or all) of my content from my website.

Please find below the DMCA Notice against [URLofthief.com]

Section 1) The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on:
[Mention all YOUR links]

Evidence to Prove Copyright Infringement:
[Give some examples like Google’s cache, archive.org’s cache, etc.]

Below is a brief comparison of my site and the offender’s site:
My Site: [yourURLhere.com]
1) Started in [Date]
2) Page Rank:
3) Alexa Rank:
4) RSS Subscribers:
Offender’s Site: [URLofthief.com]
1) Started in [Date]
2) Page Rank:
3) Alexa Rank:
4) RSS Subscribers:

Section 2) The posts/pages where my copyrighted work is published on are:
[Mention all THIEF’s links.]

Section 3) Personal Information: (Yours!)
Name:
Address:
Phone Number:
E-Mail:

Section 4) I, in good faith, believe that use of the copyrighted material described above on the allegedly infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

Section 5) I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Section 6)
[Name]
[Date]