Copyright Takedowns Explained

If you’ve ever seen YouTube videos getting removed or web search results getting omitted, this is probably what happened. Also known as the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) “safe harbours”.

Some technical things to note: In the comic below, the blue person tries to sue a website. You can’t do that in real life—you need to sue the person behind the website. For example, you can’t sue the YouTube website; you need to sue the company running the YouTube website, which is… well, YouTube Inc. That person/company is usually called something like a “network service provider” or “internet service provider”, and asking them to take down your stuff is called a “takedown request”.