Copyright notices, handled by procedure.
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a communications service provider can be held liable for what its customers do with copyrighted material. The protection is procedural: notify the subscriber, document the process, and act on repeat infringers. Subsentio runs that process on your behalf.
Safe harbor from copyright litigation, too.
Under the DMCA, communications service providers may be held liable when their customers use copyrighted material online without permission. Providers are required to follow strict procedures notifying customers of violations, and a failure to issue takedown notices to offenders can carry stiff financial penalties.
In December 2015 a major internet service provider was fined $25 million — in the court's words, because the company did not "reasonably implement" a policy to terminate repeat infringers. The exposure is not the individual claim. It is the absence of a process that can be shown to work.
A claim arrives. Here's what happens.
Six steps, the same six every time. Simple and straightforward is the point — a process only protects you if it is applied consistently enough to be evidenced later.
Claim received
A DMCA claim is received by the provider and forwarded to Subsentio by email.
Case opened
A corresponding case file is created in the work-management system, so the claim has a record from the moment it lands.
Subscriber identified
An analyst accesses your systems to retrieve the subscriber records the claim points to, and validates them.
Notice sent
The analyst prepares and sends a DMCA notification letter to your subscriber — from you, on your behalf.
Notified, not exposed.
Subsentio never releases subscriber information to a third party. The subscriber is notified of a potential copyright infringement and nothing more. If they are not actually infringing, they have the right to file a counter notice.
The subscriber faces no legal ramifications from the DMCA process itself — though they may of course face action from the claimant. That distinction is the whole reason to run this by procedure: the provider satisfies its obligation without becoming the party that hands over a customer.
The same analysts, a different statute.
DMCA handling is an extension of the records-production practice, not a separate company. Subsentio expanded its records-production services to include validating takedown notices and notifying subscribers because customers asked for it — the process, the systems and the people were already there.
Specialists in legal compliance
A team that does nothing else — analysts with years of experience validating and extracting customer records, supporting communications service providers across the country.
Privacy as the constraint
Responding to legal process while protecting customer privacy rights is necessary, and typically not a core competency for providers.
Trust as the real cost
Fines and lawsuits are the visible risk. Providers lose customers when they lose trust, and that damage is harder to undo.
Send us the notices.
Tell us the volume of DMCA claims you receive and how they arrive today. We will show you what the process looks like once it is off your desk.