I've had a few different people approach me in the last couple months because their sites have been removed by Google based on the filing of a DMCA Complaint. The notification in Google's webmaster tools looks something like this:
In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org...
Their sites are gone from the SERPS and people want to know SEO and legal strategies for getting around this problem. Today I'm going to share the best legal response to this problem.
Your best bet for getting content restored is to file a counter-notification in accordance with the DMCA. I'll give you some background information and then some sites with more detailed information and examples below.
Important Note: Only fight an allegation of copyright infringement if you honestly believe that you're innocent of the accusation. Be honest and don't abuse the law. That goes for both complaining about and responding to copyright violations. If you don't know whether you're infringing someone's copyright, consult an attorney before sending a counter-notification.
If you already know what the DMCA is and how take-down notices work, skip this section. It will just be review.
The DMCA is a US federal law entitled the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was designed to provide quick and cheap remedies for people who've been victims of copyright infringement. Basically, if someone steals your content and posts it online, you can send a Take-Down Notice to the owner of the infringing website, the hosting company, and the search engines to request that the infringing material be taken down. Most people find that it is much easier to send a take-down notice to Google rather than deal with everyone else. After all, if you've got the infringing content off Google, no one is likely to find the infringing content anyway. This is why I am focusing on Google in this article. It's not because Google is somehow bad or more aggressive about the DMCA than other search engines; It just receives more take-down notices because of its market dominance. Anything I write about Google here can be equally applied to any other search engine or online service provider.
Once someone sends a DMCA take-down notice to a search engine, the SE will remove the allegedly infringing content from its results pages. Unfortunately, people send bogus DMCA complaints regularly. Thus, this could happen to one of your clients some day!
Remember, the search engine doesn't make the complaint. A third-party sends a complaint to Google about your website. Google then must quickly remove the content or face potential liability for copyright infringement. Google responds because the DMCA is designed to give it incentive to quickly remove the content without conducting any independent investigation. It's not personal. It's just how the law was set up.
What To Do If Google Removes Your Content Because of A Bogus DMCA Complaint
The US congress made it very easy to ask search engines (and other Online Service Providers) to remove allegedly infringing content. However, congress also created a simple way for you to fight back.
All you have to do is send a counter-notification to the company that removed the content, usually Google. The Counter-Notification is just a letter that informs Google that the copyright infringement allegations are false and demands that the removed content be restored. A counter-notification is often called a "put-back notice."
After you send your counter-notification, Google will notify the original party who complained against you. Then Google will wait no more than 14 days to restore your content, UNLESS the original complainer files a lawsuit against you. If the original complainer (the third party who sent the take-down notice) files a lawsuit against you, then Google will refuse to restore the content. If the original complainer doesn't file a lawsuit, then Google will restore your content within 14 days.
So basically, if your site was removed because of a DMCA Complaint, the ball is in your court now. You've got to inform Google that it made a mistake by filing a counter-notification. It will restore your site, unless you get sued.
You'll see in the links to samples I provide that there are certain things that your put-back notice must include. Required information includes things such as
- a denial of the allegations against your site
- your name
- your address
- your consent to jurisdiction
- your oath that everything you've stated in your counter-notification is true
Please visit the following sites for information and samples of counter-notifications:
Google's Instructions on Filing Counter-Notifications (scroll down a bit, it's after notifications. You'll find a fax number, an address, and specific instructions on the information to include)
Sample Put-Back Notice to Google by Neoteric (this is a great example of a classic and simple put-back notice)
Future Quest Sample Put-Back Notice
Do It Yourself Counter-Notification (very detailed article with great sample language! May be a bit overkill)
Chilling Effects Frequently Asked Questions on Put-Back Notices
Special Jurisdiction Issues for Foreign Websites
Before I close, I want to cover one important topic: consent to jurisdiction. This is mostly important for foreign website owners.
When filing a counter notification, you must consent to jurisdiction of the US federal district court (see samples in the links above).
If you're based in the US, then you would be consenting to the US federal District Court where you live. Because U.S. citizens and businesses can always be sued in the district where they live, the consent-to-jurisdiction-requirement doesn't have an impact for U.S. citizens and businesses.
However, if you're a foreign owned and operated website, you must consent to jurisdiction either where Google is located (Santa Clara, CA) or where the original complainer is located. Consenting to jurisdiction can increase your risk of being sued. It is more difficult to serve people in foreign countries with a lawsuit, unless they consent to jurisdiction in the US. Thus, before a foreign owned and operated site issues a put-back notice, it should seriously consider the risk of suit.
If the original complainer doesn't really have a good case and he was abusing the DMCA for censorship or business reasons, then your risk of getting sued was probably slim in the first place. Thus, consenting to jurisdiction wouldn't increase your risk that much. However, if the original complainer is very serious and thinks it is worth filing a lawsuit against you, then your foreign residence may be helping to protect you from a U.S. lawsuit. In this case, you wouldn't want to consent to U.S. jurisdiction. It may be better to start a new website with new, non-infringing content.
Thus, before a foreign entity sends a put-back notice, it is very important to step back and make sure that you're not at serious risk of a lawsuit or that you don't mind potentially defending against a lawsuit in the U.S.
This post should give you the tools and information you need to get your content restored after a bogus DMCA complaint. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about DMCA put-back notices. I look forward to hearing from you.
Respectfully,
Sarah
Nice summary, Sarah. You give the short answer "Your best bet for getting content restored is to file a counter-notification in accordance with the DMCA" but also lots of helpful context and example notices. Good stuff.
I agree with you and Sarah that this process seems to work pretty well for US companies. I am concerned, however, that the "take it down unless you hear otherwise" approach only really works if it is easy, cheap and a no-brainer to file the counter-argument. For non-US companies, the "no-brainer" bit doesn't appear to apply and so this would appear to place them at something of a disadvantage.
For example, supposing someone issued a fake take-down notice about a poker site based outside the US, they would presumably be *very* wary about submitting to US jurisdiction, so would their content stay down? (I'm not thinking of trying this, just FYI!).
Another excellent question from the Willster.
I have to go back re-read the statute, but I asssume that you're only consenting to jurisdiction for purposes of a copyright infringement suit, not for any other claims.
I would be surprised if it was a broad and general consent to all claims. As far as I know, there haven't been any cases on this issue either.
Let me dig around and see if I can find a more definitive answer.
Great question Will!
I'm sure you're right, but at the very least, a foreign entity is going to have to think hard about any juridictional change (as you note, US entities are already under that jurisdiction, so there is no decision to make).
Even though it most likely doesn't cover other claims, if you had to defend it, and your executives can't travel to the US..... Seems to me like that might have an impact on how it's viewed by legal teams at e.g. poker sites.
you're only consenting to jurisdiction for purposes of a copyright infringement suit
Would that be for any copyright infringement suit, or just related to the particular DMCA take-down notice?
Hi Sarah,
The Google Team doesn't respect the rules of put-back (10-14 days) if no law suit against you. I followed all your steps, i received anwear after one month for my counter-notice with the following message:
"At this time, Google has decided not to take action based on our policies concerning content removal and reinstatement. We encourage you to review https://www.educause.edu/library/digital-millennium... for more information about the DMCA." . My website respect all dmca rules and i'm still banned on my homepage.
This is bad, very bad, my all traffic has gone.
What should i do?
Damn, I just got an email from Google to wait 10-14 days if there's a lawsuit against me. Now my chance is slim. My homepage is banned as well. :(
I remember someone telling me a few years ago that they filed DMCA requests to Google in order to get competitors delisted. Not my cup of tea personally.
I think Ayima needs a Sarah in the office, there's loads of lawsuits I'd like to file.
Love the formal letter style blogging by the way ;)
First of all forgive me for my english, but i am from
Greece (oh God!) i would like to ask a question about DMCA
i dont know if its illigul or not but i m using torrentscan to watch all the series i've lost on tv,
one day and all of a sudden i tryied to get btjunkie and nothing, i just couldn't but i did notice a message down at google page from DMCA is someone blocking my access to this certain webpage due to a sue?
What do they mean? I really don't care about btjunkie because lets be honest there are hundrends of sites like this one, but it gets my nerves i want to be able to have access from my pc to any webpage i want, whenever i want.
Is any way to make DMCA "unblock"me ?
There has been in interesting development about DMCA's. As a result of the verdict in Lenz v Universal content owners have to consider fair use before sending out a DMCA.
Check out the article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/judge-rules-content-owners-must-consider-fair-use-
This reminded me about something I have been watching for a while. Someone contacted us about a post someone had made on our site which contained copyright material. We took it down. They didn't have the decency to acknowledge this and they had referred to making DMCA complaints, then I found this
https://www.google.es/search?q=%22When+it's+quality+copy%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
I kept an eye on it as I thought they might have DMCA'd us even though we took action to remove the material. 4 months later and the notice still isn't available on Chilling Effects. Net result: Google is censoring its results without making the reason why transparent. I don't think this is Google's intention, but something in the chain is breaking down. If Chilling Effects is not going to publish the notice, fine, but Google should not be displaying this for 4 months, "In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org." as this doesn't make sense.
so who is the infringer..
creechcreative or divine write?
p.s. i've never had google remove anything.. (yet), for people that infringe on my copyright, i contact the server of the content, they have 48 hours per the DMCA to remove the content.
The 'alleged' infringer is not visible as they have been DMCA'd out of the SERPs.
I had something very similar happen to one of my sites, except I gave up after 15 months of futile efforts and rebranded the site. Now two years later my new URL is beginning to gain traction but is a pale shadow of what my old site was doing in terms of traffic and revenue.
My site was a popular pop culture website specializing in celeb news, gossip and film news. My page views were on the order of 200K views PER DAY. With around 35K uniques from Google searches alone. I had adnsense and several rev-share and ad networks runnin gand revenue was pretty nice.
Then...I recieved a"takedown notice" from a popular "men's magazine" for content that they deemd in violation of copyright. I happen to be anaffiliate for that magazine and the affiliate ID's were plain as day in the links and images I used. I went back and forth with myhosting company and the the complaining company till we resolved it. I ended up just deleting the particular set of images just to wash my hands of the situation. However...
One month later my Google traffic dropped from 35K uniques per day to ZERO. When I did a site colon to check if I was banned my pages were there,BUT...the ominous "1 or more results was removed..." message was there. I clicked the chilling effects site and they had no record of the compalint. What to do? Google forsake me and I had no way of telling who complained against me and for what content. (of course I knew, but the content was deleted)
The wild thing is that my Yahoo and MSN traffic went to almost zero too. I wrote Google every week for 15 months without one single response. So I gave up and changed the URL and host. Imported all the old posts into the new "new" URL (it was a placeholder that was about 2 years old) and started from scratch. Now Google has indexed my whole site and I am beginning to show up in the the serps again, but not like before.
The system is in place to protect content owners, but there is definitely a breakdown in the execution. Ugh.
So what happens to these bogus DMCA abusers if the action is ultimately reversed? It's great to know that it's fairly easy to get your site back to healthy status, but what about the offender jeopardizing your business?
Great post btw.
Thanks for your question TTAM.
If you send a counter-notification, nothing happens. At the notice-counter-notice stage the process is really quick and informal. No judge. No penalties. Just letters with direction to either take-down or put-back.
However, if a lawsuit is started (by you or the original complainer) there are severe financial penalties for filing a bogus DMCA take-down notice. Thus, if you're willing/have to go to court over the matter, the judge can penalize the bogus complainer.
Also, many Online Service Providers keep track of who is filing DMCA take-down notices and whether there are repeated put-back notices against a particular complainer. If the OSP sees a consistent pattern of abuse by a particular person, many of them will disregard all future complaints by that person. It is a little risky for the OSP to do that because it increases their risk of liability. Thus, the abuse usually has to blatant, serious, and consistent before an OSP would take that step.
I hope this helps answer your question.
Best,
Sarah
Yes, thanks for taking the time to answer my question specifically. Appreciate it!
Dear Sarah, thank you very much for your informative and useful post.
Could you please advice, what is the best way to struggle with a trolling by a huge amount of DMCA Take-Down notices from one company? For example, we have a web-resource which includes many projects (services) with their own web-pages. DMCA complainer provides notices in relation to almost all our projects and repeats it after "put-back" notice becomes effective. Of course, we can send counter-notifications, but it is not very efficient with such a big amount of notices. It is an example of abusing rights by DMCA complainer and looks like patent trolling (but in relation to copyright objects).
I had a DMCA complaint filed against me in May 2013 and I have recently taken down the old website and got a new one with the same website address but legit content. Will Google restore my website anytime soon or will I need to wait a while?
Ps. I wasn't aware of copyright rules then but I've definitely learned from it and will never use other people's content without permission!
Hello All,
Any one help me how to remove this in google for my website...?
--------------------------------- below ---- message
In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.
---------------------------------------------------
I am very confuse how can i remove or resolve notification...
Please every one help me...
Thank you
Hi there! Just a heads-up, you may have a better chance of getting a response if you post your question in our Q&A forum. We've got experts in there who'd be happy to help. :)
Great post Sarah, thanks.
My website is hosted in the states because bandwidth is stupidly expensive (not uncommon to see $30 per GB outbound). So this is good for me, not that I am hosting anything that doesnt belong to me - at least i hope so, thats the beauty of hosting community based sites.
Hi, I have site Name as "HDBabu.com". Where I am receiving many DMCA Takedown notices. I am not hosting any things or files yet I having only content that is taken from wikipedia and also I have included the Do-Follow Backlink to the WikiPedia.
Means to say I have follow all the right and Legal things but DMCA blocked posts from search engines.
When you are removed from the serps due to a DMCA... does it remove your site entirely, or just for search terms? My wager is deindexing completely..
Can anyone confirm?
I think I’ve found a way around this that would not require my foreign based (by foreign based I mean offshore server using website) to file a counter notice. It wouldn’t get the original URL back in, but it would do next best thing by getting the same content back in with a 301 redirect to keep the link juice.
I recently found out that an anonymous user generated complaint with no images or videos and little text had been removed from Google for unknown reasons with no notice given. Whenever I see this happen I will just add a new value to a field in the posts table of the database. If that field has a value then the page will redirect to a nearly identical form in a different directory. Then Google bot should eventually find the new URL and index it. To protect against new take down notices the data field will use an integer value included in rewrite rules for the new directory. The integer value will be used for canonical link tags and a 301 redirection script that compares the database value to the querystring value. Once implemented all I should have to do is add a new number to the database each time I identify a page with a Chilling Effects notice.
Great post.
I'm in a dilemma related to this on the other foot - I am afraid that I may possibly be misinterpreted as being the sender of a bogus DMCA to a recipient in the eyes of Google, because of an unclear counter-notice and improper followup.
Sarah would you have any advice about what to do in this situation which happened to us recently:
We instigated a DMCA against a website that had copied the entire original and years old content of our whole website as an exact replica for a huge part of their site. (They were being indexed higher in Google for our copied content as a new site having more link power than us).
After submitting the DMCA notice, Google subsequently removed the offending site's copied pages from the search index. The website owners immediately removed all the copied content and replaced it with their own new content (which is fine - problem resolved). They rang us to apologise and then submitted a standard copy and paste counter-notification - however it was just with the very general disclaimer which said something similar to 'Our site was falsely identified in this case OR we have since removed the offending content'.
Here my dilemma lies with the 'OR' part of their counter notice.
We never replied to Google to say that they had now removed all offending content so that everything is fine. Instead we just let the period for lawsuit 10 days expire, which is fine as there was no longer any problem and the other site became relisted.
I am now worried the 'OR' counter notice statement with no followup from us to say 'hey it's ok they removed and changed the offending content', means it may look to Google like we initiated a bogus DMCA complaint to start with.
Therefore do you think it would be wise to append a note to Googles case notes (probably closed case as it was about 3 months ago) that the offending site did comply and remove all offending copied content - just so that it's on record?
I'd really appreciate any advice Sarah and Seomozzers!Thanks
Nice post... i was always in fear being a victim of content plagiarism and thn the process of filelawsuit etc but now i know the correct procedure.
Though this is for US but I figured out more or less the process is same in India too..
Very very good post. It's been a great help to me in dealing with a bogus complaint that's been used against my website. The claim is costing my family's income for as long as it takes for Google to put our listing back up and without resources like this it would have forced me to give up everything I’ve built. The person who made the claim is a nasty piece of work and I'm glad I didn't help their business even if it's costing me now.
The bogus claim seems to have been made by a company who I declined to do business with (as my website was taken down within 24 hours of the deal being turned down after a couple of weeks of negotiation) however when they made the complaint, they used another company’s name (who I’m sure would not target me). How difficult would it be to take legal action on the bogus claimant? There is no proof that this company did make the claim but all indicators point towards it being them. Also, is there anything to stop them making another bogus claim against my site?
Great post Sarah!
What I am curious about is why would Google be responsible for DMCA's on other sites? If that makes Google liable, that opens a whole can of worms i'd imagine about the legal implications of running a search engine.
I remember an option on google about saying "Hey, this site is violating my trademark, can you strip them" but nothing about DMCA's. Seems like a dangerous position.
Google's risk of liability comes from listing the offending site in its SERPs. Google doesn't have any control over taking down or putting up a site, but it does have control over what it lists in its results pages.
The legal argument is that Google is contributory liable for copyright infringement if it directs people to pages that infringe copyright. The DMCA actually protects services like Google from claims of copyright infringement by making it so they can't be sued for contributory infringement if they follow the DMCA's take-down procedures.
The DMCA is supposed to make it easier to run a search engine, while still protecting people's copyright.
Thanks for your comment!
A fantastic article. Thanks so much for this research and solid advice, Sarah!
Can you tell us more about how and what Google takes down when receiving complaints? Our site allows users to post and generate content and one of them in response to a question posted a reply that was found to be infringing on someone else’s copyrighted material. The notification we received from Google specifically cited the page and localized versions of the same page in the complaint notification (We received 5 separate notices in our webmaster message center - one for each subdomain). We simply removed the content and thought that was all we needed to do. We are experiencing some weird behavior from googlebot (it no longer visits or caches our home page) and wondered if the two are related. Would Google penalize an entire site for one instance of user generated copyright infringement? We did not reply as apparently our user posted infringed materials so we simply removed them - should we do something else?Thanks DrewZ