(Sigh)

We understand that sometimes our users are going to put up something that was created by someone else. Candidly, we’d prefer you contact the user directly and work it out but, because the law (United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act) requires us, we will consider your request to take down material you allege is a copyright infringement. Yes, we might even disable or terminate a user’s account if they continue to post infringing materials. But we’d prefer you all to just leave us out of it – we’re not in business to get in the middle of your legal disagreements. To be quite candid, we’re not happy at all that you’re dragging us into it. We also know there’s quite a bit of DMCA abuse intended to stifle or silence free speech.

Be that as it may, to let us know of an alleged copyright infringement, you must provide a written communication only by email or fax. If you materially misrepresent that content is infringing upon your copyright, we may ask attorneys to go after damages. You must include the following in your written communication for us to consider your infringement claim:

1 The specific URL that contains the copyrighted work you believe has been infringed. If it’s a comment of a post, the URL must also include the comment ID. You can get the comment ID by clicking on the Flag It link of the comment and putting your mouse pointer over any of the reasons for flagging. If you copy that link, it will include /comment_id/##, which is the comment ID.

2 The exact content you allege is infringing upon the copyrighted work. You must let us know specifically which part (so we know what you want taken down). For example, don’t tell us it’s the full content of a three-page article when it really only is an image displayed in that article.

3 The username who posted the material

4 Your contact information, which must include the following:

• Your full name
• The full name of the alleged copyright owner (if you are representing the owner)
• Your physical mailing address
• Your email address
• Your phone number

5 The following two statements:

• "I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, or its agent, or the law."
• "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner, or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

6 Your physical or electronic signature

If available online, please provide a link to the alleged original, copyrighted content. It will greatly increase the speed of our research to attempt verification of your claim. (Yes, believe it or not, there are lots of legally bogus DMCA claims.)

Additionally, your notice must meet the current statutory requirements imposed by the DMCA (see http://www.copyright.gov for details).

Be aware that, if we do remove the alleged infringing content, we will forward your takedown notification to the alleged infringing user. We will also post your takedown notice (sans your personal contact information, but which will include your company name if provided) to /DMCA. Finally, we may include a link to your takedown notice in place of the removed content, thus letting our community know why the content was censored.

Send your email notice to copyright@valme.io or written notification via fax to:

valME

Attn: DMCA takedown

Fax: (202) 919-4832