DMCA – Takedown Notice – Copyright Policy
DMCA - takedown noticeIf you believe that material available on our sites, including those hosted on our servers, infringes on your copyright(s), please notify us by submitting a DMCA notice. After we receive a valid and complete notice, we will remove the material and make a good-faith attempt to contact the user who uploaded the material by email.
Please note that we are unable to process DMCA notices that refer to sites hosted on third-party servers that use self-hosted software.
Intelligent Customer Zone provides, among many services, publishing platforms where bloggers often use copyrighted materials in commentary or journalism or transform the materials into something original. As such, before submitting a DMCA notice, it’s important to consider if the manner in which the material is used falls under fair use. If you are not sure(**) whether material located on our websites infringes your copyright, or if it is subject to fair use protections, you should first consider seeking legal advice.
**You may be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) if you materially misrepresent that material or activity infringes your copyright.
**We have and will highlight such abuses and seek to collect those damages. In addition, you are required to consider the possible fair use implications, as a result of Lenz v. Universal. We reserve the right to challenge abuses of the DMCA process, and your use of this form does not waive that right.
Your DMCA notice will be forwarded to the party that made the material available, and also may be sent to third parties such as LumenDatabase.org. A note will also be placed on the site in question detailing the name of the copyright owner who submitted the takedown notice.
Please follow these steps to file a notice:
- Verify that the blog in question is hosted by Intelligent Customer Zone. We have no control over blogs that say “Powered by Intelligent Customer Zone”. Those blogs use our software or services and might not be hosted by us. Please contact the appropriate web host with complaints.
- Contact the blogger directly. Go to the blog post in question and leave a comment with your complaint to see if the matter can be resolved directly between you and the blogger.
- Send your complaint to our designated agent via the form at https://www.intelligentcustomerzone.com/contact if the issue cannot be resolved directly with the blogger.
As required by the DMCA, we have the policy to terminate users and/or sites that we consider to be repeated infringers. Although we won’t share the specifics of our repeat infringer policy (we don’t want anyone to game the system, after all), we believe that it strikes the right balance: it protects the rights of copyright owners and protects legitimate users from wrongful termination. Please note that notices that are successfully countered, rejected on fair use grounds, or deemed to be fraudulent are not counted against a user or site.
If you want to send your complaint, you must include the following:
- A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf;
- An identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;
- A description of the nature and exact location of the material that you claim to infringe your copyright, in sufficient detail to permit Intelligent Customer Zone to find and positively identify that material. For example we require a link to the specific blog post (not just the name of the blog) that contains the material and a description of which specific portion of the blog post – an image, a link, the text, etc. your complaint refers to;
- Your name, address, telephone number, and email address;
- A statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
- A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
Taking all the above into account, include in your complaint below statements which are mandatory:
- I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
(Please note that you may be liable for damages if you “knowingly materially misrepresent” your copyrights – and we may seek to collect those damages. Fair use should also be taken into consideration.) - I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the 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.
- I acknowledge that a copy of this infringement notice and any correspondence related to it, including any contact information I provided above (address, telephone number, and email address), will be forwarded to the user who uploaded the content at issue. I also acknowledge that a note may be placed on the site in question detailing the name of the copyright owner who submitted the takedown notice.
- Signature (typing your full name will act as your digital signature, which is legally binding)