Copyright and Takedown Policy

1. Our policy

Everything published on The Chart Maker is uploaded by a user, not by us. We respect copyright, we act on valid notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and equivalent laws elsewhere, and we terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

Uploading material you do not have the rights to breaks our Terms of Service, whether or not anyone complains.

2. Before you send a notice

A takedown notice is a legal statement made under penalty of perjury. Please check these first:

• Do you own the copyright, or are you authorised to act for the owner? A fan of a work cannot file for its author.
• Is the use actually infringing? Commentary, criticism, parody, and other fair use or fair dealing may be lawful. Ranking or arranging images can be transformative in some jurisdictions and not in others.
• Are you complaining about the right thing? If your issue is a trademark, your likeness, a privacy problem, defamation, or harassment, use section 8 instead.
• Would asking work better? Many charts are made by people who would simply swap an image out if asked.

3. How to send a takedown notice

Send your notice to the designated agent in section 10. To be effective under 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3), it must include all of the following:

1. your physical or electronic signature (typing your full name at the end of an email counts as an electronic signature);
2. identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed, or, if several works are covered by one notice, a representative list of them;
3. identification of the material you say is infringing, with enough detail for us to find it. Please give the full address of each chart page (for example https://thechartmaker.com/c/abc123xyz0) and, where a chart contains many images, say which image or images are yours;
4. your contact details: name, postal address, telephone number, and email address;
5. a statement that you have a good faith belief that the use of the material in the way complained of is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
6. a statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the copyright owner or are authorised to act on the owner's behalf.

Incomplete notices slow everything down, and we may have to ask you to resend. A notice about content that is clearly not on our site (a screenshot posted elsewhere, for example) cannot be actioned by us.

4. What happens after we receive a notice

1. We acknowledge the notice and check that it contains the elements in section 3.
2. If it does, we expeditiously remove or disable access to the identified material. In practice that usually means unpublishing the chart, or removing the specific image and leaving the rest of the chart in place.
3. We notify the person who published it, tell them what was removed and why, and send them a copy of the notice, including the identity and contact details you provided. The DMCA requires this, so file only with information you are willing to have passed on.
4. We record the removal against that user's history for the purposes of section 6.

Charts remixed from the removed chart may contain the same material. Tell us in your notice if you want us to look at the remix chain, and we will review the copies we can identify.

5. Counter-notices

If your chart was removed and you believe that was a mistake, or that the material was misidentified, you can send a counter-notice to the agent in section 10. Under 17 U.S.C. 512(g)(3), it must include:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. identification of the material that was removed and the address at which it appeared before removal;
3. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification;
4. your name, postal address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district in which your address is located, or, if your address is outside the United States, of any judicial district in which we may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice or their agent.

We forward valid counter-notices to the person who filed the original notice, including your contact details. If they do not tell us within 10 to 14 business days that they have filed a court action seeking to restrain you from the activity in question, we may restore the material.

A counter-notice is also a sworn statement. Do not file one for content you know you do not have the rights to.

6. Repeat infringers

We keep a record of takedowns that were not successfully countered. An account or a visitor that accumulates repeated valid notices will lose access: we terminate the account, remove its charts, and block the browser or device identifier associated with the uploads. What counts as repeated depends on how serious and how deliberate the infringement was, and a single case of large-scale or commercial infringement can be enough on its own.

A notice that is successfully countered, or that we determine to be invalid, does not count against the user.

7. False claims

Under 17 U.S.C. 512(f), anyone who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing, or that it was removed by mistake, can be liable for damages, including costs and legal fees. We refuse notices that are plainly abusive, for example notices used to remove criticism or to attack a competitor, and we may publish the fact that we did.

8. Trademark and other complaints

For anything that is not a copyright question, use the Report button on the chart itself or write to [email protected]. That covers trademark claims, use of your name or likeness, private information published about you, impersonation, harassment, and any content you believe is illegal. Tell us the address of the chart, what the problem is, and how it affects you. You do not need to own anything to report content.

What we do about reports, including automated image scanning and hiding charts pending review, is described in Terms section 6.

9. Rights holders outside the United States

You do not have to be in the United States to use this process, and we act on well-founded notices under other copyright regimes too, including the EU Copyright Directive and the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Use the same details in section 3: what you own, what infringes it, where it is, who you are, and a statement that you believe the use is not authorised. Notices sent under other laws still reach the agent below.

10. Designated agent

Send copyright notices and counter-notices to:

Email is the fastest route and is our preferred channel. Notices sent to any other address may be delayed.

Related pages

• Terms of Service, including the license users grant for templates and remixes.
• Privacy Policy.
• The US Copyright Office directory of designated agents: dmca.copyright.gov/osp.