Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a counter notification is a legal means to state your objection to a DMCA/copyright warning that you’ve received from Flickr regarding a report of allegedly infringing copyrighted material on your account.
If you have received such a DMCA/copyright warning from Flickr and believe your posting of the material was a mistake or that your use of the material constitutes “fair use” and does not infringe the copyright holder’s rights, you may file a counter notification.
If you are unclear if your situation falls into one of these areas, you may want to contact the copyright holder directly (in most circumstances, we will provide you with contact information). Alternatively, you may want to seek legal guidance, as Flickr is not in the position to act in this capacity for you.
Once an effective counter notification is provided to Flickr, we will forward a copy of it with all your provided contact information (this is needed for the legal process) to the copyright holder, advising them that Flickr intends to replace or re-enable access to the material in question in ten to fourteen (10–14) business days following the date of the counter notification.
Flickr is committed to replacing or re-enabling access to the material in question; although, in some circumstances, you may need to repost the material—for example, if it no longer exists on our servers. If we receive a counter notification from you and Flickr does not receive notice that a court action has been filed as described above, we will no longer accept notices from the same copyright holder regarding the same material in question on the reported pages.
To be effective within the meaning of the DMCA, a counter notification shall be in writing and include the following (which is excerpted from 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3)):
- Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled, including the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled;
- A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification;
- Your name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the judicial district in which the address provided by you is located (or if the address provided by you is outside the United States, you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for any judicial district in which Flickr may be found), and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided the notice or an agent of such person; and
- Your physical or electronic signature* on the counter notification.
*To satisfy the signature requirement, please designate the electronic signature by typing a forward slash before and after your name (e.g., /Jane Doe/). This format is intended to represent a signature and typed name as is customarily found within the signature block of business correspondence transmitted in hard copy.
Any counter notification shall be submitted to Flickr’s copyright agent in accordance with the contact information provided on the Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy page.
To submit a counter-notification, please use the counter-notification form:
- Select Trust & Safety.
- Choose I would like to file a counter-notification.