The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 ("DMCA", codified at 17 U.S.C. § 512) provides a process by which copyright owners can request the removal of allegedly infringing material hosted on online service providers, and by which Users can challenge those requests if they believe the takedown was made in error.
ShelfPic complies with the DMCA. We respond to properly-formed DMCA notices targeting content hosted on the Service, including User-Uploaded Content and Generated Content. We also process DMCA counter-notices from Users whose content has been removed in error.
This DMCA Policy describes:
This Policy is incorporated by reference into the Terms of Service. Capitalized terms have the meanings given in the Terms.
To file a valid DMCA takedown notice under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), you must submit a written notice that contains all of the following elements:
A description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed. If multiple copyrighted works are infringed by a single User or activity, you may provide a representative list. Include:
A description of the material on ShelfPic that you claim is infringing. The description must be specific enough for us to locate the material. Provide:
Provide:
We may need to contact you for clarification or to forward your notice to the User whose content was removed.
Include the following statement (or one substantially equivalent):
"I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law."
Include the following statement (or one substantially equivalent):
"I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
The notice must be signed:
Including any of the following will speed our processing of your notice:
Submit your notice in writing. Preferred format:
[email protected] (preferred; faster processing);When we receive a properly-formed notice:
If the notice is incomplete or facially deficient, we will reply with a list of the missing or unclear elements and ask you to resubmit.
Important: Submitting a knowingly false DMCA notice constitutes misrepresentation under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) and may subject you to damages, costs, and attorneys' fees incurred by the alleged infringer or ShelfPic. Filing a false DMCA notice may also constitute perjury.
Please consider in good faith whether the material is fair use, licensed, or otherwise legally posted before submitting a notice.
Send your notice to ShelfPic's Designated DMCA Agent at:
Email: [email protected] (preferred)
Mailing address: see Section 7 below.
Notices sent to other email addresses ([email protected], [email protected]) may be redirected to the DMCA inbox but may take longer to process.
If you are a User whose content was removed in response to a DMCA notice, and you believe the removal was made in error or as a result of misidentification, you may file a counter-notice under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g).
A valid counter-notice must contain:
"I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled."
"I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the statements in this counter-notice are true and correct."
Send your counter-notice to:
Email: [email protected]
Include "DMCA Counter-Notice" in the subject line.
If your counter-notice is complete:
Submitting a knowingly false counter-notice also constitutes misrepresentation under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) and may subject you to damages.
ShelfPic terminates the Accounts of Users who are repeat infringers under 17 U.S.C. § 512(i)(1)(A).
We apply a three-strike system for DMCA takedowns that result in content removal:
If you successfully file a counter-notice and the material is restored without a court order, the strike associated with that takedown is removed from your record.
A single takedown for egregious, large-scale, or commercial-scale infringement (e.g., uploading and using an entire copyrighted catalog of another brand) may bypass the strike system and result in immediate Account termination.
On a strike-three or severity-adjusted termination:
Account terminations under this Policy may be appealed by emailing [email protected] with the subject "DMCA Termination Appeal" and an explanation of the basis. Appeals are reviewed by a human and answered within ten (10) Business Days.
The DMCA's misrepresentation provision (17 U.S.C. § 512(f)) makes it unlawful to submit a takedown notice or counter-notice that you know to be materially false. Liability under § 512(f) can include:
ShelfPic may, in its discretion, refuse to process further DMCA notices from a person or organization that has submitted notices found to be materially false or made in bad faith. We may also report such patterns to law enforcement or to the U.S. Copyright Office.
We will process DMCA notices submitted via template or automated tooling, provided that each notice is individually accurate with respect to the material it targets. Boilerplate notices that target overbroad URL ranges or that misidentify the targeted material may be rejected or treated as facially deficient.
In accordance with 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(2), ShelfPic has designated the following agent to receive DMCA notices:
Important: ShelfPic intends to register its designated agent with the U.S. Copyright Office's Directory of Service Provider Agents Designated to Receive Notification of Claimed Infringement (https://www.copyright.gov/dmca-directory/) before commercial launch. Until the registration is completed, DMCA notices may be sent to [email protected] and we will process them in accordance with this Policy. The official registered designated agent contact will be updated in this Policy upon registration.
Updates to the designated agent are made by:
version and effective_date);ShelfPic generates outputs using AI Providers that have been trained on large image and text datasets. The legal landscape around AI-generated content and copyright is rapidly evolving.
If a piece of Generated Content is substantially similar to a copyrighted work and that similarity arises from your inputs (Uploaded Content, prompt text, model selection), the Generated Content is subject to DMCA takedown to the same extent as User-Uploaded Content. This includes Generated Content delivered through ShelfPic pages, Cloudflare R2 or S3-compatible storage URLs, proxy URLs, and provider-hosted fallback URLs that are associated with a ShelfPic task.
This means:
DMCA protects expressive content embedded in specific copyrighted works. It does not generally protect:
However, the line between style and specific copyrighted expression is sometimes unclear, particularly with named-artist style prompts (e.g., "in the style of [Living Artist X]"). If a Generated Content output is alleged to be substantially similar to a specific copyrighted work by that artist, we will process the DMCA notice.
DMCA covers copyright only. Allegations of trademark infringement, passing-off, right of publicity violations, or unfair competition are not within the DMCA framework. For non-copyright claims:
[email protected] with documentation of your trademark rights and the allegedly-infringing material.[email protected] or [email protected]. See also our Acceptable Use Policy Section 2.2.We process non-copyright IP claims under our internal process, which is informed by, but not strictly governed by, the DMCA structure.
For purposes of our repeat-infringer policy, strikes accumulate per User Account based on takedowns directed at that User's Generated Content or Uploaded Content. Strikes resulting from third-party Generated Content not connected to your Account do not affect your Account.
We may update this DMCA Policy from time to time. The current version is reflected in the effective_date and version fields in the document frontmatter at the top of this page.
For changes that materially affect the notice or counter-notice process, we will post the updated Policy at least fourteen (14) days before the new procedures take effect, except where the change is required to comply with new law or regulator guidance (in which case the change takes effect on the effective date of the underlying legal requirement).
Changes to the designated agent's name, email, or address are reflected promptly in both this Policy and the U.S. Copyright Office Directory.
For all DMCA-related inquiries:
This DMCA Policy is incorporated into the Terms of Service. By using ShelfPic, you acknowledge this Policy.