Copyright Complaints

Comment Coach respects copyright and responds to notices of claimed infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This page tells you how to send us a notice, what we do when we receive one, and how to respond if your material was removed.

Designated agent

Email is the fastest way to reach us, and the way we would rather receive a notice. The phone number is an international line and may not be answered promptly. Anything sent to dmca@comment.coach reaches a person.

This agent is registered with the United States Copyright Office under registration number DMCA-1079411.

Sending a notice

If you believe material accessible through Comment Coach infringes your copyright, send our designated agent a written notice containing all of the following. A notice missing any of these may not be effective under the statute, and we may have to come back to you for it before we can act.

1. Your physical or electronic signature, as the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed. If one notice covers several works, a representative list of them.
3. Identification of the material you claim is infringing, with enough information for us to find it. A URL is best.
4. Your address, telephone number, and email address.
5. A statement that you have a good faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement that the information in your notice is accurate, and — under penalty of perjury — that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on their behalf.

Send it to dmca@comment.coach. Email is always accepted.

Before you send it: the law requires you to consider whether the use is a fair use. Knowingly misrepresenting that material is infringing can make you liable for damages and attorney's fees under 17 U.S.C. §512(f).

What happens next

When we receive a complete notice, we disable access to the identified material promptly and notify the person who posted it. We tell them what was removed, what work was identified, and how to respond.

We do not make a judgment about whether a notice is correct. We are not in a position to decide who owns what, and we do not try to.

Counter-notice

If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you can send us a counter-notice containing all of the following:

1. Your physical or electronic signature.
2. Identification of the material that was removed, and where it appeared before it was removed.
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 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, any judicial district in which Comment Coach may be found — and that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice.

Understand what this involves before you send one

A counter-notice has to include your name, address, and telephone number, and the law requires us to forward all of it to the person who sent the original notice. It also requires you to consent to being sued in federal court and to accept legal papers from them.

That is a real decision, not a form. If you are not sure, talk to a lawyer first. We cannot advise you, and we will not pretend otherwise.

If you do send one, we will forward it and then restore your material in 10 to 14 business days — unless the person who sent the original notice tells us they have filed a court action to stop you from using it.

Misrepresentation in a counter-notice carries the same §512(f) liability as misrepresentation in a notice.

Repeat infringers

We record a strike against an account each time we remove material in response to a valid infringement notice that is not successfully counter-noticed. We terminate accounts that reach three strikes. If a counter-notice succeeds, the strike that went with it is cleared.

We apply this consistently. The full policy is in our Terms of Service.

A note on imported publications

Most of what people read in Comment Coach are files they downloaded themselves and imported — Bibles, magazines, articles. We do not host those files, offer them for download, or redistribute them. What you share from Comment Coach is your own comment and the reference it answers — the citation, not the publisher's text.

If you publish material that people import this way and you would like to talk to us about how it works, write to us at dmca@comment.coach. We would rather have the conversation than the notice. Content & Copyright explains the design in full.