Step 3 Who gets what
Determining Who Gets What!
We’ve mentioned the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 a few times, in order to protect your rights under this act you must provide several key pieces of information. This one can be a little tricky because not every website that is displaying your content deserves a cease and desist letter. Some sites should actually receive a DMCA Takedown Notice.
A site that publishes it’s own content (supposedly) should receive a Cease & Desist Letter. This essentially means that a site that is maintained by the owner of the site or employees, like a personal blog.
A site that has members that share content, such as Pinterest, Facebook, KeyIngredient, etc would receive a DMCA Takedown Notice, because they are actually hosting third-party content. If this is the case, you need to determine if the site has a registered DMCA agent. That agent would be listed here in this database: US Copyright Directory Service Provider Agents List. If this is the case, and the offender is a registered 3rd Party Service Provider, you would instead send a DMCA Takedown Notice.
Who are you dealing with?
Before you can send a notice, you have to find out WHO is behind the offending site. You can use the WHOIS Service to find out the following information:
- Web Hosting Company’s Name, Address, Email
- Website Registrars Name, Address, Email
Next Locate their Hosting Company:
- Visit Kloth.net and Enter the infringing domain name, it will list that domains IP address(es)
- Write down the IP address(es) that the Domain resolves to
- Visit ARIN.net to obtain the relevant hosting company information, you’ll need to enter the IP addresses here in the top right hand corner of the page where is says, “search whois” Occasionally this will list Ripe.net – particularly with UK sites. That means you need to continue searching to find the correct place to file your complaint.
- If it returns RIPE.NET visit their Abuse Finder to enter the details to locate the correct party to send your request.
Locate the owners information of the Infringing Site, then search the US Copyright office to see if there’s a DMCA Designated Agent.
If there IS A Designated Agent, Send them a DMCA Takedown Notice.
If there is NOT a Designated Agent, Send them a Cease & Desist Letter.