Removals

Notice and takedown

This site responds to removal notices from rights holders and their authorised agents. A notice that identifies the material and the rights involved is acted on promptly and without argument.

Who can send a notice

The owner of an exclusive right in the material, or a person authorised to act on that owner's behalf. If you are acting as an agent, say so in the notice and state who you act for. Notices from people with no connection to the rights in question cannot be processed, and neither can general complaints that do not identify anything specific.

What a notice has to contain

• Identification of the work claimed to have been infringed, specifically enough that it can be told apart from anything else.
• The exact address of every page on this site that the notice covers. A notice that says the site generally cannot be acted on, because there is nothing definite in it to remove.
• Your name, postal address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you.
• A statement that you believe in good faith that the use complained of is not authorised by the rights holder, its agent or the law.
• A statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and that under penalty of perjury you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.
• Your physical or electronic signature.

Where to send it

Use the contact form and choose the rights and removals subject. That routes the notice straight to the person who handles them rather than into the general queue. Put the whole notice in the message field, including the addresses, so nothing has to be asked for afterwards.

What happens next

A complete notice is processed on receipt. The material identified in it is taken down, the entry stops being reachable, and the address is removed from the sitemap so it stops being indexed. You are told when it is done. An incomplete notice comes back with a note about which of the items above is missing, and nothing is held against you for having to send it twice.

Counter notice

If material was taken down and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you can send a counter notice through the same route. It has to identify the material and where it appeared, include your name, address, telephone number and email, and include a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith the removal was the result of a mistake or misidentification. Counter notices are passed to the party who sent the original notice.

Repeat notices

Where the same rights holder sends repeated notices about a title, that title is removed from the library entirely rather than page by page, and it is not added again through the requests page.