Legal instruments

DMCA notice

A copyright takedown notice under US law that obliges a qualifying service provider to remove the material or lose its liability shield.

Also known as DMCA takedown · section 512 notice

The DMCA covers copyright, and only copyright. It is the right instrument when an infringing page has copied a brand's photographs, code, or written content, which phishing clones almost always have. It is the wrong instrument for a trademark complaint, and filing it as one is a common reason a notice is rejected.

A valid notice has required elements: identification of the copyrighted work, identification of the infringing material and where it sits, contact details, a good-faith statement that the use is unauthorised, and a statement of accuracy made under penalty of perjury. The last one is why a DMCA notice is signed by a person, not generated by a tool.

Its force comes from the safe-harbour bargain. A qualifying provider that removes the material expeditiously keeps its protection from liability; one that ignores a valid notice risks losing it. That is what turns a request into something a provider acts on.

The recipient may forward a counter-notice from the person who posted the material, which can restore it unless court proceedings follow. In practice fraudulent operators rarely counter-notice, because doing so means identifying themselves and accepting jurisdiction.

How Fraudox handles it

Fake page takedown

See the service

Related terms

Seen this on your brand?

Send us the URL or account. We file, escalate and verify. You only pay when the content actually comes down.