Animated Creativity respects the intellectual property rights of others, and we expect our readers and contributors to do the same. If you believe that material on this site infringes a copyright you hold, this page tells you exactly how to ask us to take it down — and what we will and will not do in response.
We aim to act on every well-formed complaint within 72 hours of receiving it, and usually much sooner. We do not require a lawyer to be involved on your end. We do require that the complaint contain enough information for us to find the content and verify your claim.
How to send a complaint
Send your complaint through our Contact form. Use the subject line Copyright complaint — [your work] so it routes to the right inbox. If the form is not working for you, any other public contact channel listed in the footer of this site is acceptable.
For an effective complaint, please include all of the following. We will reach out for clarification on missing items rather than reject the notice outright, but the more of these you provide up front, the faster we can act.
- Identification of the copyrighted work. If it is one work, name it and provide a public URL where the original lives. If it is many works (e.g. a photo collection or a body of articles), describe the body of work as a whole and link to a representative example.
- Identification of the infringing material on this site. A direct URL to the page or post is best. If it is an embedded image, also tell us which image — small thumbnails or excerpts in a long post can be hard to find from a top-level URL.
- Your contact details. Full name, email, and (optional) phone or postal address. If you are filing on behalf of someone else, name them and describe the relationship.
- A statement of good faith. One line stating that you believe the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, the owner’s agent, or the law. Plain English is fine; you do not need to copy legal boilerplate.
- A statement of accuracy. One line stating that the information in the notice is accurate, and that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
- Your signature. A typed name at the bottom of the email is sufficient.
What happens after you send it
- Acknowledgement. You will receive a confirmation email within one business day, with a reference number for your complaint.
- Initial review. We will look at the URL you flagged, compare it against the work you identified, and decide whether the claim is on its face well-founded. If it is, we move to step 3 immediately. If we have questions, we will email you.
- Action. If the complaint is well-founded, we will either remove the content entirely or replace the specific element (e.g. swap an image for a properly-licensed alternative). We will notify you of the action taken.
- Notification to the original author. Where the content was contributed by someone other than the site owner, we will pass your complaint along (with your contact details unless you ask us to redact them) so they can respond directly or file a counter-notice.
Counter-notices
If your content was removed in response to a complaint and you believe the removal was a mistake or misidentification, you can file a counter-notice through the same Contact form. Use the subject line Counter-notice — [reference number].
A counter-notice should include:
- Identification of the removed material and where it appeared.
- A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the removal was the result of mistake or misidentification.
- Your name, email, and physical address.
- Your consent to be contacted by the original complainant for resolution purposes.
We will pass the counter-notice to the original complainant. If they do not respond with evidence of legal action within 10–14 business days, we will restore the content.
What we will not do
- We will not remove content based on anonymous or unsigned complaints. Bad-faith takedown requests are common; we owe our authors and readers a name on the request before we act.
- We will not act on takedown demands for fair-use criticism, commentary, or factual reporting. If a post discusses your work in the context of a tutorial, news commentary, or review and uses a small portion of it for that purpose, we will weigh the fair-use argument on its merits before removing anything.
- We will not act on disputes that are really about reputation or accuracy rather than copyright. If a post says something about you or your business that you believe is wrong, please use the regular Contact form and explain the factual issue. Copyright law is the wrong tool for that conversation.
- We will not share your complaint publicly. Your name, contact details, and the substance of your notice are kept private to the people involved. We may publish aggregate statistics about volume of complaints, but never identifying details.
Repeat infringers
Authors who upload content to this site agree, as part of contributing, that their accounts may be terminated if they post infringing material on more than one occasion. We track repeat complaints by author, not by post.
Other resources
If you are unsure whether your situation is a copyright matter, our Editorial Standards, Terms of Use & Disclaimers page covers what we publish, what licenses apply to our own content, and what licenses apply to embedded third-party material. Reading that page first will often answer the question without needing a formal complaint.
Thank you for taking the time to reach out. A site that respects creators’ work depends on creators being willing to flag misuse — we appreciate it.