Counter Notification

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 Yahoo regarding a report of allegedly infringing copyrighted material on your account.

If you have received a DMCA/copyright warning from Yahoo regarding a report of allegedly infringing copyrighted material on your Yahoo account, or have been otherwise advised by Yahoo that your account was subject of a DMCA/copyright notice, and believe that your posting of material was a mistake or misidentification or that your use of the material in question constitutes “fair use” and that you have not infringed the copyright holder’s copyright, 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 speak with a legal advisor or attorney regarding your specific situation, as Yahoo is not in the position to act in this capacity for you.

Once an effective counter notification is provided to Yahoo, we will forward a copy of it with all of your provided contact information (this is needed for legal process) to the copyright holder, advising them that Yahoo 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, unless Yahoo’s Copyright Agent receives notice that the copyright holder has filed a court action (lawsuit, etc.) against you to restrain you from reposting the material.

Yahoo 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 Yahoo does not receive notice that a court action has been filed as described above, we will exclude the counter-noticed works from our recidivist policy and 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 following (which is excerpted from 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3)):

  1. 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;
  2. A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification;
  3. 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 Yahoo 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

  4. 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 Yahoo's Copyright Agent in accordance with the contact information provided at: policies.yahoo.com/us/en/yahoo/ip/index.html.

If you have any question regarding this process, we would be happy to further discuss with you.