How to ask a website to remove your content

If you use the Internet to spread your works and share them with the rest of the world, it is possible that you will eventually come across someone else who is using them without your permission. Sometimes, they even pretend to be the original author! In such cases, the first thing you can do is send a Cease and Desist letter from your Safe Creative profile.

*Note: These letters, as other advanced features, are only available for professional and corporate accounts.

How do you send a Cease and Desist letter?

In order to send a formal email to the page where someone is sharing your content, you have to log in at Safe Creative and go to the corresponding work. On the work’s file, on the left-hand side, you will see a list of options. Select ‘Send Cease & Desist’.

A form will pop up.  These are the data you will need:

• The contact e-mail of the page or the person sharing your content.
• The main URL of the website where the misuse is taking place.
• The specific URLs hosting or displaying your works.

Safe Creative will generate the text for the email automatically using this information you provided. Before sending the letter you will be able to preview the email and modify whatever you consider necessary. If you select “Cancel” and decide to send it later, the draft will be saved. You can find it again on SERVICES > Cease & Desist letters.

It is a convenient and easy way to solve problems without having to take legal action. These warnings are usually enough to solve copyright infringements.

We would like to remind you of the importance of registering your works as soon as possible, before sharing them online, so you can have a strong proof against unfair uses.

Amongst the most recent cases that we can share with you, there is the one of Almudena Orellana, the Spanish writer and teacher behind “Bosque de las Fantasías”, a lovely website for kids. She found out some of her tales had been published on another website without her permission. The texts had been slightly modified, to make them more difficult to track, but they were still the same stories and the same illustrations.

By sending a Cease & Desist letter to the website, the tales were withdrawn in less than 24 hours. It is one of the many cases where we have witnessed how one formal warning call can be enough to solve the conflict.

In these situations we always recommend to obtain all necessary evidence and, if possible, ask a lawyer to contact the infringers. Taking legal action could be the next step depending on the development of the conflict. More often than not, infringers will withdraw the content after one or two warnings. Most websites don’t know the content was uploaded without permission from the original author.

However you may feel at first, it is better to stay calm and take sensible steps. If you can’t get assistance from a lawyer, most websites and platforms have systems to send copyright claims, and they will provide support services to help you solve the issue.

Learn more: What to do in case of plagiarism or other unlawful use of your content.

Another case of Safe Creative’s “Cease & Desist” notifications: Interview with OliPop.

Lastly, if you require legal assistance, feel free to contact one of our experts.

If you think this information was useful, share it with other artists so they know they can do when facing copyright infringement.