DMCA / copyright policy

DRAFT — pending counsel review

Working skeleton, not reviewed by counsel, not in force. The designated agent has not been registered yet and the contact details below are placeholders. Do not send a notice against this page expecting it to be processed.

Last updated: 2026-07-24 · Status: draft, not effective

1NKY hosts photographs and text posted by its users. We don't create that content and we don't review it before it's published. We respond to valid notices of claimed copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512).

Designated agent

📋 TODO — registration pending. DMCA agent registration with the U.S. Copyright Office ($6, copyright.gov) is on the pre-launch checklist. Until it is complete and the details below are filled in, this page is informational only.

DMCA Designated Agent — 1NKY
Name:      TODO
Entity:    TODO (pending entity formation)
Address:   TODO
Email:     TODO
Phone:     TODO

Notices sent through the security or feedback channels will be redirected here and may be delayed. Use the agent address once it exists.

Filing a takedown notice

To be effective under § 512(c)(3), your notice must include all of the following:

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed (or a representative list, if multiple works are covered by one notice).
3. Identification of the material you claim is infringing, with enough detail for us to locate it. Give us the post URL. Ideally also give us the media URL, which contains the content hash — content-addressed URLs let us find every copy of identical bytes at once, which usually means a faster and more complete removal for you.
4. Your contact information — address, telephone number, and email.
5. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized 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 authorized to act on behalf of the owner.

Incomplete notices cannot be processed. If yours is missing an element we'll tell you which one rather than ignoring it.

Misrepresentation has teeth

Under § 512(f), knowingly materially misrepresenting that material is infringing can make you liable for damages, including costs and attorneys' fees. Consider whether the use is fair use before filing. We do read notices; we don't rubber-stamp them.

What happens next

1. Receipt & review. We check the notice against the statutory requirements.
2. Removal. If the notice is valid, we remove or disable access to the material expeditiously — from the relay, from the index, and from the CDN cache.
3. Notice to the poster. We attempt to notify the writer whose tag posted the material. Note the hard limit: we have no email address for anyone. In practice notification means an in-app notice to that tag and a public record of the removal. If the tag is abandoned, nobody may ever see it.
4. Public record. Removals are counted in the annual transparency note.

Counter-notice

If your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you can file a counter-notice under § 512(g)(3). It must include:

1. Your signature (physical or electronic).
2. Identification of the removed material and the location where it appeared before removal.
3. A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification.
4. Your name, address and telephone number, and a statement consenting to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for your address (or, if outside the U.S., any district in which we may be found), and that you will accept service of process from the complaining party or their agent.

If we receive a valid counter-notice, we forward it to the original complainant. If they don't file a court action seeking to restrain the activity within 10–14 business days, we may restore the material.

Counter-notices are not anonymous

This is important and easy to miss. A counter-notice requires your real name, physical address and phone number, and that information is forwarded to the person who filed the takedown. It also consents to a specific court's jurisdiction.

If your anonymity matters — and on this platform it probably does — understand that filing a counter-notice trades it away to the complaining party. Statute requires it; we can't process an anonymous counter-notice, and we won't pretend we can. There is no workaround. Weigh the photo against the exposure carefully, and get advice before you file.

Repeat infringers

We terminate the tags of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances, as § 512(i) requires. In practice a tag accumulating valid takedowns against it gets banned at the relay.

Because tags are free and unlimited, a determined infringer can make a new one. That's inherent to a platform with no accounts, and we're not going to pretend otherwise — the answer is ongoing moderation, not an identity system we refuse to build.

A note on graffiti and copyright

Worth stating plainly, because it comes up constantly and cuts both ways here.

Graffiti is original artwork, and courts have repeatedly recognized that its creators hold copyright in it even where the work was placed unlawfully. That means the writer who painted the piece may hold rights in the artwork, and the photographer who shot it may hold rights in the photograph. Those are two different sets of rights in one image, and either party can have a legitimate claim.

We're not the venue to resolve that. We process notices that meet the statutory requirements. If you're the writer and someone posted a flick of your piece, or you're the photographer and someone reposted your shot, the DMCA process is available to you — and so, frequently, is just working it out on the board like adults.

Other claims

Trademark, defamation, right of publicity, doxxing, harassment: not DMCA matters. Use Flag it in the app, or the contacts on the feedback page. Content that publishes someone's private personal information violates the terms regardless of copyright status and gets removed as a moderation matter, not a legal one.

Illegal content, especially CSAM: see the zero-tolerance clause. It is handled immediately and reported, and it does not go through this process.