Legal and compliance
What is DMCA takedown?
A formal notice asking a host, platform or search engine to remove material that infringes your copyright. It requires identifying the work, identifying the infringing location, and a good-faith statement — and it is the practical remedy when your content is copied wholesale.
Also called: copyright takedown · infringement notice
What a valid notice contains
- Identification of the copyrighted work, with a link to your original
- Identification of the infringing material, with the specific URL
- Your contact details
- A statement of good-faith belief that the use is not authorised
- A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate
- A physical or electronic signature
Where to send it
The host is usually more effective than the site owner, and Google’s removal process handles the search result separately from the page itself. Doing both matters: removing a page from search does not remove it from the web, and removing it from the web can leave a cached result for a while.
What it does not solve
Someone rewriting your content rather than copying it. Copyright protects expression, not facts or ideas, so a paraphrase is generally lawful however irritating it is. Publishing first, with a date and a citable source, is the more durable defence.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. The 35 types of SEO, explained without the padding covers this properly — 6 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.