Reporting copyright infringement or plagiarism (DMCA)

Overview

If someone has posted your creative work on GS Poetry without your permission — your poem reproduced under another name, or copied closely enough to be plainly yours — you can ask us to take it down. We follow the notice-and-takedown process set out in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. § 512. This guide explains when to use it, what a request needs, and what happens next.

This route is for copyright — work someone made being used without permission. It is different from a couple of other things, so it’s worth pointing them out:

• If a private, intimate image or video of you was shared without your consent, that is not a copyright matter — use Requesting removal of an intimate image instead.
• If the issue is harassment, spam, or other content that breaks the rules, use the Report tool on the content.

Copyright and plagiarism aren’t quite the same

Plagiarism is passing someone else’s work off as your own — an honesty problem. Copyright infringement is using the actual expression of a work without permission — a legal one. The two often overlap, but the DMCA process below is specifically for copyright: it protects the particular words and arrangement of a poem, not a general theme, a title, or a short phrase. For a fuller explanation of what copyright covers and how to protect your own poems, see Copyrights & Plagiarism.

Who can file

A takedown notice can be sent by the copyright owner or by someone authorized to act on the owner’s behalf. You don’t need to have registered the poem with the Copyright Office to send a notice — though registration carries real legal advantages, which the Copyrights & Plagiarism guide covers.

What a takedown notice must include

For a notice to be valid under § 512(c)(3), the law requires a few specific things. Our DMCA Copyright Policy page lists them in full; in plain terms, a complete notice includes:

• Your signature (physical or electronic) as the owner or an authorized agent.
• Identification of the work being infringed — the poem or piece that’s yours.
• Identification of the infringing material, with enough detail (such as the link) for us to find it.
• Your contact information — name, mailing address, phone, and email.
• A good-faith statement that the use isn’t authorized by you, your agent, or the law.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or are authorized to act for them.

Once we receive a valid notice, we remove or disable access to the material and make a good-faith effort to let the member who posted it know.

If your work was removed by mistake

If something of yours was taken down and you believe it was a misidentification — it was your own original poem, or you had the right to post it — you can send a counter-notice. If it’s valid, we forward it to the person who filed the original complaint and may restore the material in 10 to 14 business days, unless they first go to court to stop it. The required elements of a counter-notice are on the DMCA Copyright Policy page.

Repeat infringers

GS Poetry disables or terminates the accounts of members found to be repeat infringers, in appropriate circumstances. Respecting other poets’ work is part of the community standard here.

Where to go next

Ready to file? The formal process, the required notice and counter-notice details, and where to send them live on the DMCA Copyright Policy page. To understand what copyright covers and how to register your own poems, see Copyrights & Plagiarism. For a non-consensual intimate image, use Image Removal. Still unsure which route fits? Contact support and we’ll point you the right way.