How To Request A Removal Of Your Copyrighted material

It can be one of the worst things to happen do a developer or designer; your project that you have been working on for months has been published without your consent and is being distributed and used freely!

Getting your Script, WordPress Theme, Plugin, App Template or Design removed can very difficult and frustrating. Most authors do not know where to start.

If the copyrighted material is published on Codester, you can simply report copyright infringement by submitted a support ticket through our help center. If it happens on other websites it require a few extra steps to get it removed.

1. Find the contact information of site owner

First think you have to do is to find the contact information of the owner of the website. If you lucky the website has a contact form or email address listed. If not you can take some extra steps to be able to contact the owner.

If no contact information can be found on the website itself, there is a good chance you can obtain contact information through the Domain register. For this you can use ICANN. This will give information about how to contact the owner and often also information about the company hosting the website.

2. Submit a DMCA takedown request

Once you have found where to sent your request for removal it is now time to get the request itself ready. To start you search for “DMCA takedown form template” on Google and you will receive many hits. You can also use this great tool to generate a DMCA takedown request. Once the DMCA takedown request is ready you submit it using the obtained contact information of the site owner.

3. Getting material removed form a “Nulled” website

If the website has no bad intensions the owner should remove your work from their website within 48 hours after receiving the takedown request. Unfortunately there are many websites out that know your work is copyrighted and share this on purpose also known as “Nulled” or “Warex” sites. If the owner is bad willing it can be more difficult to get the material removed.

First try to contact the owner and submit DMCA takedown request. If the website owner does not respond to the request, it’s time to contact their hosting company. Using ICANN you can often also obtain the name of the hosting company that hosts the website. Go to their website and explain the situation and include a DMCA takedown. They should be able to help you remove the material. Experience speaks that this can take longer, but most often the hosting company willing help.

4. Conclusion

Getting your work distributed without your consent is a horrible experience! Although most people who download “nulled” items wouldn’t buy your work anyway and the damage is more limited then most think, it can be very frustrating and difficult to get your work removed from a website. We hope these tips will help you to get on your way.