We take copyright violation very seriously, and strongly encourage users of The Clacks to respect the copyright rights held by third parties. Repeat infringers will be denied access to The Clacks.
The Clacks is a "hosting" service provider as defined in 17 USC § 512(c). As such, The Clacks complies with the requirements of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and specifically the notice-and-takedown provisions located at 17 USC § 512.
This is a complicated process, and the law surrounding it is unclear in many situations. We've tried to make this as readable as possible. If you have any questions that aren't covered here, please contact us with your questions.
None of this material should be construed as legal advice. We cannot advise you on how to protect your rights online, either your rights as a copyright holder or your rights as someone accused of copyright infringement. If you are in need of legal advice, contact a lawyer who is licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.
If you believe that someone on The Clacks has violated your copyright, you may send us a written Notification of Copyright Infringement. For us to process such a notification, it must comply with the requirements set forth in United States law, and therefore must substantially include the following:
Notifications may be submitted to The Clacks' Registered Agent in one of two ways. You may send it via email (no attachments, please) to dmca@clacks.link, or you may send it via physical mail to 17539 S Skyridge Drive, Mount Vernon WA 98274. We prefer to receive notification via email.
Your notification will be forwarded, in its entirety, to the owner of the account posting the allegedly-infringing content. We reserve the right to make copies available to third parties, such as the Lumen Database, as we see fit, for purposes of academic study and legal review.
The Clacks notes that under 17 CFR § 512(f), any person who knowingly materially misrepresents in a takedown notice (1) that material or activity is infringing, or (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by The Clacks, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of The Clacks relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.
When we receive an effective notice of copyright infringement under 17 USC § 512(c)(3), we will take prompt action. In this regard, we will forward the notice to the accused account owner and provide a limited amount of time to remove the allegedly-infringing content.
The account owner can remove the content by deleting the post in question. Changing a post's visibility setting is not sufficient to qualify as 'disabling access' under the law. If we do not hear back from the account owner, or the post is not removed, within the length of time we provide for action (usually between 24-48 hours), we will be forced - by limitations of the moderation controls available to us - to suspend the account of the account owner.
The account owner then has one of three choices:
If an account owner has received a notice of alleged infringement, they may not re-upload or re-post the allegedly-infringing material, unless they have gone through the counter-notification process.
A counter-notification is a statement, under the provisions of 17 USC § 512(g)(3), that the account owner does not believe the accused content infringes on another person's rights, or that their use of another person's copyrighted material falls into one of the protected categories under law.
By filing a counter-notification, the account owner is indicating that they are willing to defend their use of the material in court, if the copyright owner chooses to bring a lawsuit against the account owner for their use of the material. This may involve civil and/or criminal penalties. We strongly suggest the account owner contact an intellectual property lawyer licensed to practice law in their jurisdiction before filing a counter-notification, so that they are aware of their rights and obligations under the law.
There are groups that may help account owners understand their rights and obligations, including Lumen, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Organization for Transformative Works. We are not affiliated with any of these organizations, and they may not be able to help in any specific circumstance, but their mission and mandate involves educating people about their rights and obligations under intellectual property law.
A counter-notification must be provided in writing to The Clack’s designated agent, and must substantially contain the following items:
Your counter-notification will be provided, in its entirety, to the person who provided notification of alleged infringement.
When we receive a counter-notification, we will forward it to the person who made the original notification of alleged infringement. From that point, the original notifier has 10 business days after receiving the counter-notification to file an action in court, seeking an injunction against the use of that material.
If you have provided us with a notification of infringement, and the user of our service has chosen to file counter-notification, you must inform us that you have filed court action no more than 14 days after we forward the counter-notification to you. If you do not, we will permit re-posting of the allegedly-infringing material no less than 10 days, and no more than 14 days, after we forward the counter-notification.
If an account owner has filed a counter-notification, they can not re-upload or re-post the allegedly-infringing material until we notify them that the waiting period has expired. If you do, we will be forced to entirely disable the account.
US law requires us to disable the accounts of repeat offenders of others' copyright. What constitutes a repeat offender is not defined by law.
We currently define a repeat offender as anyone who has received three valid notifications of copyright infringement. Instances where you have filed a counter-notification, or instances where you have indicated that you do not accept the allegation of copyright infringement but do not wish to file a counter-notification, may not count against your account for purposes of determining 'repeat offender' status, in our sole discretion. We reserve the right to alter this definition in the future, also at our sole discretion.
This privacy policy is based on one developed by Dreamwidth Studios (https://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/dmca) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.