Copyright complaints
If you host content for others, copyright notices will arrive. Handling them is routine work, provided you have built the ability to do it.
How it reaches you
A rights holder sends a notice to our abuse desk identifying material on an address assigned to you. We forward it to you with the detail and a deadline. We do not look inside your server and we do not remove things ourselves if you deal with it.
That is the whole mechanism, and it works as long as you respond.
What you have to do
- Acknowledge it within the deadline. Even a line saying received and investigating changes the situation entirely.
- Look at the specific item. Notices name a URL or a file.
- Act on that item — remove it, or explain why it should stay.
- Tell us what you did. We close the loop with the complainant.
Note step three: the correct response is removing one file, not taking the service down. If your architecture does not allow that, fix the architecture — see streaming and high-bandwidth delivery.
If the notice is wrong
They sometimes are: automated systems match badly, and some notices are sent in bad faith. Say so, with reasons — you hold the licence, it is your own work, it is quotation or parody, or the URL does not identify anything of theirs.
Do not simply ignore it. A documented disagreement is a normal part of the process; silence looks like consent to the complaint.
Repeat notices
One notice is routine. A pattern is a business problem: it means your users are uploading infringing material faster than you are removing it.
At that point you need measures of your own — terms your users accept, a working takedown route, a record of who uploaded what, and a policy for repeat infringers. Without those, you are the one carrying the risk, and a stream of notices will eventually end the service.
The legal shape, briefly
Under EU law a hosting provider is generally not liable for what users store, provided it acts expeditiously once it has actual knowledge. That word is the operative one, and the clock starts when the notice arrives.
The Digital Services Act adds obligations for services of a certain size: a contact point, a statement of reasons when you remove something, and a complaint route for the person whose content it was. If you host for third parties, work out which of those apply to you.
What we do not do
We do not monitor your content, and we have no general obligation to. We do not hand over your customer's details to a rights holder on request — that needs a lawful order, as when authorities ask for data explains.
And we will not suspend you for a single notice you are dealing with. The time that changes is when notices go unanswered, or when the content is manifestly illegal rather than disputed — see the AUP in plain English.
Still stuck? Mail support@novogara.com — an engineer answers, at any hour. Back to the knowledge base