My post was removed due to DMCA Takedown Notice — what can I do?

Question

We've (Stack Exchange Inc.) recently received a DMCA takedown notice for several posts from this community. As a result of that, I'm taking down around 15 posts at this very moment (got a script running), but many more might need to be removed over the coming week. This means some reputation is probably gonna be lost, and also that some good content is gonna vanish. The DMCA process tells us we must notify the author of the content, which means the author of the questions will get a comment notifying them of the occurrence — however, whoever answered any of the deleted questions is just gonna be left wondering why they lost rep, and why the post was even deleted in the first place. So here I am, preemptively notifying the community as a whole as a courtesy.

So what can I do if my question was deleted due to this?

If you own one of the posts that were removed, you will have a comment left on it by me notifying you of why the post was deleted. You can then, if you believe you are the wrongful subject of a copyright takedown notice, file a DMCA counter-notice through the proper channels — and hopefully we'll be able to restore the content!

You can find the DMCA notice here, at Lumen database (or here, since Lumen lost the original one for some reason, and are trying to make this new one point to the older link).

Given that most of the posts are over 60 days old, they won't show up in your profiles at all — so feel free to reach out to the Community Team using /contact if you require any assistance.

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Disclaimer: none of this is official legal guidance; it's just provided as a courtesy :)

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Update: concerns & questions

BIG thanks to everyone who responded here - as you can probably tell, this isn't something we've had a lot of experience dealing with, so identifying areas for improvement is extremely helpful.

We're not done working on this. As you noticed, only 17 of the 190+ links have been removed as of this time, and we're hoping this whole thing will have a happy outcome. Hopefully, we'll be able to resolve this in a way that's acceptable to both the folks sending this take-down notice and the authors who've donated their time and knowledge here; as with most legal things, this isn't likely to be fast, but we'll do our best to keep you updated.

Here are the open questions you've asked that we're gonna try & figure out answers to. Again, no guarantees on when (or even if) we'll actually be able to do that - but, we're gonna try:

• Who is responsible for DMCA takedown counterclaims on authorless / disassociated / CW posts?
• Given that a lot of our content is collaborative, it’s not obvious who can legally challenge DMCA notices, so:
  • Who "owns" the content, and can file counter-notices?
  • A question author only?
  • Or is an answerer or editor entitled to that too?
• Can the posts on which no action was taken (yet) be edited to try to minimize this (by editing out links or properly attributing images)?
• Can the post owner edit their deleted post before filing the counter-claim to aid its validity?
• Given the shared ownership of the content (asker, answerers, editors) who are we (SE) required to notify?
• Are users who file a counter-notice required to give out details like their real name, or can they use their online pseudonym?
  • And how much of the information provided in the counter-notice will be made public vs how much of it will just be used internally to assess validity of the counter-notice?

Again, thank you all for your patience and insights.

Answer 1

Is StackExchange going to offer any assistance with this?

I don't appreciate SE rolling over to Aniplex, etc and just deleting my content rather than standing up for its users and its content - which are both the very being of Stack Exchange. How are our users, who are individuals supposed to individually contest against giant conglomerates who have entire legal teams?

Why is StackExchange running scripts for automatic copyright flag and removal, when it should be up to the copyright holders to point out why each post is infringing?
(Redacted due to an incorrect assumption of the script's purpose)

This is setting an ugly precedent, personally I believe the majority of the posts that I have seen should fall under fair use - will Movies & TV, Literature, etc also be burden to over-reaching 3rd party companies?

Why not offer a nicer alternative and edit out any infringing material?

Also, many of our users are non-US residents, like myself - It says in the link provided that filing a counter-notice for people like me is actually something that I probably don't want to do. How can I fight this then?

Please can StackExchange offer more than a token post and offer some real support?

Answer 2

A couple important problems here regarding the effectiveness of this post in notifying authors of their counterclaim options (TL;DR: A meta post alone might not be enough). I pulled info about all the reported posts:

• Info script and list of posts
• A messy SEDE query

In general, here is the breakdown of Anime meta access activity (see also):

Total Users:                16043 [a]
Accessed Last 30 Days:       1537 [b]
Also on meta last 30 days:     97     (0.60% of [a], 6.31% of [b])
On meta, ever:               1858
Never accessed meta, ever:  14185

It's pretty low, but, more importantly, here are those stats for the authors of those posts (original authors of questions and answers, plus original authors and all editors for tag wikis):

Total Authors:                148 [a]
Accessed Last 30 Days:         52     (35.1% of [a])
Also on meta last 30 days:     20     (13.5% of [a]) 
On meta, ever:                 79     (54.5% of [a])
Never accessed meta, ever:     69     (46.6% of [a])

So this raises a few concerns:

• Issue #1: Given that about 65% of the involved authors have not accessed the main site in the past month, it seems unlikely to expect them to contest. What should be done about this?

  • Suggestion: Notify all authors via email about their options.

• Issue #2: Given that only about 14% of the involved authors have accessed meta in the past month, it seems unlikely to expect them to read this post. That is, this post may not be an effective way to spread this information (also consider low % of total users that visit meta). Additionally, any given user has no direct way of knowing that their post is part of the claim without cross checking the rather large list against all their own posts, by ID. What should be done about this?

  • Suggestion: Post an automated comment on each of these posts (not just ones that have been deleted) linking to this meta post (not applicable to tag wikis) and stating the issue.

This should maximize communication effectiveness, by providing both an inbox notification for active authors, as well as an email notification for inactive ones (that's the best effort that can be made, I think).

Note: The claim lists /questions/id links. It is unclear if they're referring to just the question, or the entire collection of questions with answers. Of course removing a question implies removing the answer but from the context of the claim it's unclear what is being claimed so it's probably best to assume that everything visible on each post (questions and answers) are subject. In that case it may also make sense to do the email and comment notifications on each answer on each of those posts as well. If the claim includes the answers it seems you'd be obligated to notify the authors of the answers, too, as they are content authors.

A similar concern may be valid for tags (do they mean the tag entry, or do they mean all posts containing that tag?).

Also, there's another bit of vagueness:

• Issue #3: There are two posts whose authors no longer have accounts. Both are well-received and are definitely, imho, contestable. Who can contest these?
  • How much time has passed in-universe in Detective Conan?
  • What's the tune that Noel is humming in Sora no Method?
  • Suggestion: Unknown. Does SE owns this content now? Should SE file the counterclaims for these two posts? The copyright counterclaims section of the TOS does not cover this scenario.

Given the unfortunate fact that:

JNat: The content provider (SE) cannot contest the validity of the claim, and are required to take action unless the request is not properly formatted.

I believe it becomes philosophically and morally important to make sure a best effort is made to contact authors and a meta post alone unfortunately doesn't seem to have adequate visibility.

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List of Posts By Author

Along those lines, to make it easier to see if your posts are in this list (this is a list of all posts in the claim, it doesn't necessarily mean the posts were removed), here is:

• A list of all questions and tag wikis by author / editor, and
• A list of all answers by author/editor.

Look at both lists, find your user name, and your posts will be listed there. I'll certainly be filling out my counterclaim forms for my posts if they end up removed. If your username contains non-Latin characters, check the end of the lists, too.

Answer 3

I'm really not happy about this. Stack Exchange's hands are tied, and we're being forced to play along with the lawyers on this one.

I did look at the content that my name came up under, and I can't see why anyone would bother filing a claim on just words.

I digress; I didn't really come here to vent. But two things struck me as annoying throughout this process.

1. Stack Exchange isn't in a position to counter the validity of these claims. Does that imply that any non-infringing work is effectively stuck in the process until someone actually realizes they made a mistake? More pressingly, do any other sites in the network have some kind of established precedent for dealing with scenarios like this? It may comfort some of us to know how another network site handled it, and how successful they were at ameliorating the DMCA.

2. The process requires specific, pointed information (emphasis mine):

   • your physical or electronic signature;
   • your name, address, and phone number;
   • identification of the material and its location before it was removed; a statement under penalty of perjury that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification;
   • your consent to the jurisdiction of a federal court in the district where you live (if you are in the U.S.), or your consent to the jurisdiction of a federal court in the district where your service provider is located (if you are not in the U.S.); and
   • your consent to accept service of process from the party who submitted the takedown notice.

   I use a pseudonym online for a reason, and I don't think it's particularly fair to demand (for this process) that I remove that. This does raise the question, "is the pseudonym (and a burner phone number) okay to provide for the process", but I do feel like that would only further impact things.

It's just very discouraging, really. We do our best to keep the site free of pirated resources, and it doesn't seem like the industry really cares about our efforts. Definitely not making me feel very good about the whole thing.