Answers · DMCA

Who can file a DMCA takedown?

Short answer: Only the owner of the copyright, or someone authorized to act for them, such as a lawyer, agent, publisher or takedown service, or an exclusive licensee for the rights they hold. The notice must be signed, identify the work and the infringing material, and include statements that you believe in good faith the use is not authorized and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act for the owner. Fans, friends and people who merely appear in a photo cannot file one for a copyright they don't hold, and someone who knowingly misrepresents infringement can be liable for damages.

Checklist

1. Confirm you own the copyright: usually the creator does; an employer owns work made by employees in their job; a client owns commissioned work only with a signed assignment or a qualifying written work-for-hire agreement. Being the subject of a photo does not make you its owner.
2. If you are not the owner, get the owner's authorization in writing before you file for them. A non-exclusive licensee cannot file.
3. Check whether the use is actually licensed: a Creative Commons, stock or platform license may allow it. A U.S. appeals court has held that you must consider fair use before sending a notice (Lenz v. Universal Music, 9th Cir. 2015).
4. Send the notice to the service's designated agent (the U.S. Copyright Office keeps a directory) or through the platform's copyright form.
5. Include every element of 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3): signature; the copyrighted work; the infringing material and where it is; your contact details; the good-faith statement; and the accuracy statement, under penalty of perjury that you are authorized.
6. Expect a possible counter-notice: the service can restore the material 10 to 14 business days later unless you tell it you have filed a court action. In the U.S. that generally requires registering the work first.
7. Not a copyright problem? Trademark, privacy, impersonation and non-consensual intimate imagery have their own platform processes and laws, including the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act for intimate images.

What happens after you file

• The service removes or disables the material promptly to keep its safe harbor, and notifies the person who posted it.
• That person can send a counter-notice stating, under penalty of perjury, that the removal was a mistake or misidentification. Your contact details go to them.
• Knowingly false notices or counter-notices can lead to liability for damages, costs and attorney's fees (17 U.S.C. § 512(f)).

Outside the U.S.

• The DMCA is U.S. law, but most large platforms apply a similar notice process worldwide. The EU's Digital Services Act sets its own notice-and-action rules, and other countries have their own regimes.

License checks (computed)

Yes means the license grants the use, on the duties listed. Duties such as source_disclosure, share_alike and network_source_offer are the ones that conflict with keeping a product closed-source.

Ask Rightshold (free, no key)

Add the MCP server https://www.rightshold.com/mcp to Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Grok or VS Code, then ask: “Someone used my CC BY 4.0 photo in an ad and credited me. Is that use licensed before I file a takedown?”

One-click setup

{
  "tool": "check_license",
  "arguments": {
    "license": "CC-BY-4.0",
    "intended_use": {
      "commercial_use": true,
      "redistribution": true,
      "attribution_planned": true
    }
  }
}

• Point source_url at the page where you published the work (GitHub, Wikimedia Commons, Unsplash, Pexels and others) and Rightshold checks the license that page declares.
• attribution_string shows what a proper credit line under that license looks like, so you can tell whether the credit given meets it.

Rightshold does not file takedown notices or decide ownership disputes. It tells you what a license allows, so you can tell a licensed use from an infringing one before you act.

Sources

• 17 U.S.C. § 512: notice and takedown, counter-notice and misrepresentation
• U.S. Copyright Office: Section 512 resources
• U.S. Copyright Office: DMCA designated agent directory
• 17 U.S.C. § 106: exclusive rights in copyrighted works

Related

• Does "no copyright infringement intended" protect you?
• Can I use CC BY 4.0 commercially?
• Can I use Wikimedia Commons images?

Not legal advice. Updated 2026-10-28. JSON · Markdown · All answers

curl -s -X POST https://www.rightshold.com/v1/accounts/signup -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"accept_terms":true}'
export RIGHTSHOLD_API_KEY=rs_...   # the api_key from the reply (shown once)
curl -s https://www.rightshold.com/v1/licenses/check -H "Authorization: Bearer $RIGHTSHOLD_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"license":"MIT","intended_use":{"commercial_use":true}}'