How To Write A DMCA Notice

How to Write a Proper DMCA Notice

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)1 was signed into law by President Clinton on October 28, 1998. The legislation implements two 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties: the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. The DMCA also addresses a number of other significant copyright-related issues.

You can read and download a .pdf file provided by Copyright.gov that tells you more about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act here.

A Proper DMCA Notice will notify a domain (hereafter refered to as xyzdomain) that is illegally posting your content of the particular facts in a document signed under penalty of perjury. We refer to this as a “Proper DMCA Notice.” To write a proper DMCA notice you should provide the following information:

1. Identify yourself as either:
a. The owner of a copyrighted work(s), or
b. A person “authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

2. State your contact information, including your TRUE NAME, street address, telephone number, and email address.

3. Identify the copyrighted work that you believe is being infringed, or if a large number of works are appearing at a single website, a representative list of the works.

4. Identify the material that you claim is infringing your copyrighted work, to which you are requesting that xyzdomain disable access over the World Wide Web.

5. Identify the location of the material on the World Wide Web by providing “information reasonably sufficient to permit the xyzdomain to locate the material.”

6. State that you have “a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agents, or the law.”

7. State that the information in the notice is accurate, under penalty of perjury.

Sign the notice with an electronic signature and email it, and be sure to send a copy to yourself, and to your lawyer.

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