DMCA Takedown A Substitute For a Link Disavow Tool? | Tutorial

Circle of Legal Trust

By Jim Loxley of My Compensation:

This is the first of what I hope to be a regular contributor to the Legal Circle of Trust. In this document, I will be discussing a potential workaround if you are freaked out hoping for that Google Link Disavow Tool everyone is waiting for.

But first, I’m pleased to have been initiated into the Circle of Legal Trust. After all, I work as an editor for a legal reach company in the U.K. And it’s kind of cool to be among so many U.S. attorneys, the likes of which I am only accustomed to spending time watching L.A. Law… We are now international and growing!

I’m going to try and write a weekly article with useful information. I will provide key takeaways to save you guys time. Also, over the past few months, I’ve earned publishing rights to many legal sector authority sites.

Helpful Articles?

So if you have articles that are helpful to Googlers, and can help improve user online experience for injury victims, send them to me for consideration. Non-Circle of Legal Trust members need not apply. Let me know if you have a treatise, review, or editorial about an important legal issue in tort law.

I may even have some U.K. related stuff on common law issues that affect the U.S. and Canadian audiences. Please ‘+1’, ‘Tweet’ and ‘Like’ any material that you see me or any other members posting as it helps us all grow in the search engines. Spending 15 minutes a week on this over time will see you a good ROI for everyone.

On with business.

What Your DMCA Takedown Notice Needs to Contain

DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright act and it’s basically a piece of legislation which means that if anyone copies your work, you can invoke it by serving a notice and they have to take the content down.

I know that Mike Ehline has been a victim of such copyright infringement, much to the detriment of his SEO. If you have links with exact match anchor text in that content, then the replication of both the content and the anchor text links therein will pull you down quicker than a mob of Glaswegian football fans.

And this remains true even if you were one of those who engaged in article sharing on Ezines. As an example, what if re-shared articles pop up on low authority sites. Now imagine those sites are pulling you down.

Well, you can still argue that although it may be OK to share, it is not OK to exceed the license. For example, if the article has pictures, and extra links embedded in it. Or maybe it is attempting to make it look like you endorse a product or a service you don’t. So then you have a great argument for a takedown. And in fact, this is as close as a Google Link Disavow Tool you can get as of this date.

If you click here, there are some template forms which can be downloaded and modified with your name and the name of the offending party.

Here’s a checklist of items that must be filled out on the template.

  1. Either a physical or electronic signature of you or someone authorized to act on your behalf to request removal of the copyright infringement
  2. Identification (via the URL) of the work or works which you are claiming have been copyright infringed.
  3. A copy of your original work (via the URL) to demonstrate the fact that it is yours in the first place
  4. Your contact details to allow the offending party to get in touch with you should they need to
  5. A statement to say that you believe that the materials used is unauthorized by you, the content owner
  6. And a statement that information in the notification form is correct.
  7. Last, the offending party is obliged to take it down.

All hosting service providers must appoint and register a DMCA copyright agent. And the notice must be sent to this person. Upon receipt of the notice, the ISP must first ensure that it’s complete. Using the above checklist helps. And, if complete, they are obliged to disable access or remove the infringing work immediately.

The Takedown Process

  1. Grab a couple of screenshots of the offending site just in case a dispute arises later
  2. Download the stock template above ensuring that all the information discussed is filled in
  3. Using services such as whoishostingthis, or whoischeck to locate the hosting service providers of the website where the reference material is located.
  4. Now you know which hosting service providers. So go to its website. Next, get the contact information.
  5. If you can’t find the information here, go to US Copyright Office in order to see if the information is provided there
  6. If the two above steps leave you empty handed, send a notice to the hosting company’s abuse team
  7. Wait at least 72 hours to check again to see if the work has been removed
  8. If you’re unable to remove work via the hosting service providers, then consider filing a notice with each of the major search engines.
  9. This last principle is the same and templates on filing the DMCA notice with major search engines here. You can serve the notice to Google

Although it is not a link disavow tool, it certainly can get offending pages on infringing sites taken down. Try it, you may see a bounce back.

Related Articles