(1) Register as a New User [FREE]
(2) Sign in and Register a New Project [FREE]
(3) Activate your Project [$20 per 30-day cycle subscriptions (hint: here is where you enter your promo code, if you have one)]

Watch the quick “How-to” videos in the Help > Video Tutorials Page.

Then jump right in and do your own search and enter infinite infringing URLs on the Takedown Tool page.

To register a new project (ie. start tracking down those DMCA violations and doing something about it), go to “Project Central” and click on “Click HERE to register new/additional projects”. Fill in all the details, pay for the first 30 days, and you are all set to go [Read the “MUST READ” above, first].

Now go to Project Central and select the “Takedown Tool”. Our main tool is the “Takedown tool” … you copy the URL of a website that is stealing your work, paste it into the Takedown Tool page, hit “Submit” and we take care of the rest. (Remember to paste in the full URL before submitting the infringement). Again, we take care of the rest.

Rinse and repeat, as many times as you’d like. Unlimited violation notice submissions delivered.

Copyright Slap makes it easier for independent producers of intellectual property (starting with film and literary works) to fight online piracy. This site is the brainchild of a film producer who had his first big project ripped and put online, cutting dramatically into many VOD revenue streams. Once pirated, this producer spent 2 hours a day compiling infringing URLs, finding who to send to, and preparing DMCA violation notices trying to get illegal postings of his film taken down, and after a month and a half this producer realized that it was a losing battle with the current tools at hand.

Enter Copyright Slap — this site is designed to help you fight online piracy.

Copyright Slap allows you to search for infringements and then simply copy-and-paste the URLs into a simple form, WITHIN A MATTER OF MINUTES, and we handle the rest. We have additional proprietary measures which we utilize to help further convince stubborn site holders to remove pages. Essentially, we want to create an environment in which these piracy sites stop putting up pages on your project because they will get a takedown request the same day.  We are continually expanding our capabilities and evolving our approaches to meet the needs of the independent creator both in efficiency and in keeping our price low enough to make it a viable option for even the backyard hobbyist. We aren’t here for the big companies, we are here for you, the small producer that needs a little help laying down the copyright … slap!

Upon receiving a notice, a site owner has “a reasonable” amount of time to respond or take down the infringing URL. You can always go to the “Review Takedowns” Page [under Project Central] and check the URLs of each takedown to ensure that the infringing link has been removed; if it is removed, you can mark it “Complete”. Some site owners are stubborn and ignore DMCA violation notices; if a reasonable amount of time has passed (most courts have deemed this to be about 72 hours) and you have not marked a takedown “completed”, our system automatically escalates it. An escalation goes above the head of the site owner and we contact those higher up the food chain, and those higher up those higher up the food chain, noting that removal was not complied with in a reasonable amount of time, and action must be taken.

Some infringing sites don’t give us the option of being nice; if a site hides the ability to contact them directly, we jump directly to going over their heads, and thus a takedown is automatically escalated.

The DMCA states that a specific user must be given “a reasonable amount of time” to respond to all Takedown requests they receive. It is common practice for that “reasonable amount of time” to be considered anywhere from 2-4 days. We splifference (split the difference) with it and escalate a takedown 72 hours after the original takedown is sent, if it has not been marked completed.

We know that independent artists don’t have endless financial resources and protecting your work is hard because you don’t have an IP protection team at your disposal. So we are here. Our goal is to keep costs as low as we possibly can and still provide you top-notch results from our end. We want to make protecting your work affordable to EVERY producer out there. Because it should be.

Yes. Set up your project and select “documentary” as the format, and away we go! Make sure to name your wedding video as specifically as you can so that the DMCAs can be as accurately formatted as possible.

INFRINGEMENT is when someone, not the copyright holder, uses a copyright holder’s intellectual property for their own gain, without permission. Their is one EXCEPTION though: FAIR USE.

FAIR USE is “any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and ‘transformative’ purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work”¹. The key aspects of Fair Use is that any clips are short (the whole film or large parts untouched is infringement) and must transform the piece (like a meme, dubbing over words for parody, as part of a review, etc.).

What is most important is to RESPECT Fair Use and not claim it as infringement. The line is easy to see the difference and Fair Use can help spread the word of your project, AND is within legal rights of individuals. Everything else, let us take them down for you.

Another great resource is this blog post by George Thuronyi on identifying Fair Use.

¹https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/

Click on the “Forgot Password” link on the Home page or, if logged in, you can click the “Account” menu tab and reset from there.

“No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work.” (Source: copyright.gov) Thus, you can issue copyright infringement claims but if you decide to take legal action for damages you may need a copyright certificate. We always recommend contacting a copyright attorney if you ever have specific copyright questions. To copyright a film you can refer to the following US Government Copyright document, in addition to talking with an attorney.

No. Copyright Slap specializes in alerting and documenting (and has a high success rate of immediate infringement removal) on behalf of copyright owners. We are not attorneys. Lawyers and Copyright Slap are not a zero sum — If you wish to take legal action against a specific infringer you will need the services of a copyright lawyer. We are your Internet Army, not your legal team. Copyright Slap is strictly a takedown site that aids in getting copyrighted materials removed from websites.

No. The United States has copyright relations with countries all around the world. How many? This many. Copyright Slap works to provide international copyright protection services on your behalf by not only requesting takedown from the specific site hosting the infringing materials, but also in escalating ways all the way up to and through international ISPs/OSPs. In addition, there are numerous International Copyright Agreements and Treaties (The Berne Convention, The WIPO Copyright Treaty, TRIPS Agreement, The Paris Convention, The Doha Declaration, to name a few) that apply to countries outside of the United States that we utilize to help protect your work.

For Copyright Slap to send takedowns and send requests on behalf of your property, we need both your permission, and also proof that the intellectual property is rightfully being sold and the “contact information” for the property (in the form of the right’s holder/representative’s [your] name and address [email, in this case] — a requirement of a DMCA Violation Notice). The information on your project that we request allows us to take the work off of your shoulders and to have all we need to do our jobs.

We recommend at the onset of a new project being initiated that you check the site every day and review the found results. You are the best eye for what is a friendly site and thus daily review is the best way to help us work for you as hard as we can. If you review half of the results, the next day you will have the remaining unreviewed half plus new results that replaced the ones you already reviewed.

If you request, and we send on your behalf, a DMCA Violation Notice and the receiver believes it has been sent in error, they can file a “Counter-Claim” (essentially saying they believe the violation was sent in error). All counter-claims will be forwarded directly to the copyright owner (or site User acting on behalf of the copyright owner), if not directly sent from the counter-claimer. It is the responsibility of the copyright owner to respond and resolve the counter-claim, with or without the help of an attorney. As always, with any escalation into legal action we recommend consulting an attorney.

You may retract your initial takedown claim by clicking the “Retract” button in the Takedowns Review Page. A message will be sent to each email address that takedown was sent to stating that you retract your previous takedown sent for that infringement.

First and foremost, you contact a copyright attorney.

Second, you go the the infringing page and take a screenshot of the page for your records.

Third, you have ALL DMCA documentation available through CopyrightSlap (Watch our “Documentation” tutorial for easy steps or …) Click through the following:
“Project Central” > “Review” under Takedowns > “End-of-Cycle” > Go to the site takedown you want info on and click on the number under “Takedown ID(s)” [if more than one takedown was sent on your behalf, there will be a number for each takedown sent] > Click on the PDF icon [or download the file using “Save As”]. The PDF contains date and time, source, original DMCA wording, and all other information you may need in court.

In December 2020, the U.S. Congress passed a bill that set to create a “Copyright Small Claims Court” that makes it easier for creators to go after copyright infringement at a much lower financial cost. Each claim must be for no more than $15,000 and for a total of $30,000.

The Copyright Small Claims Court has not yet been setup, but it should be a great resource for content creators to go after infringement of their work.

To read more, here is a great Summary Article of the Copyright Small Claims Court.

We will, of course, update this page as more information becomes available.

Click on the menu item “Account” and change what needs changing and click the “Update Account” button in the page and you are updated!

Click on “Project Central” and you get all the details of the projects you have in the system and if the projects are currently active or inactive, and can click “‘Edit Project” at any time to update or change and details.

To cancel Copyright Slap’s services on one of your projects, go to “Project Central” and then click the “Edit Project” link. Click on the “Deactivate Project” button and then “Submit Changes”. Your project will still remain active until the end of your current billing cycle and then will not automatically renew and will cease to show results or be able to send takedowns afterwards. You always have the ability to re-activate a project and start back up where you left off.

For user data privacy purposes, if an account has been deactivated and has been deactivated for 6 months, we will remove all data related to that account from our system. If you would like a copy of your data before that expiration time, please reach out to us directly and we will do our best to accommodate your requests.

The Original Source Link is the link to where you are legitimately selling your project. If it is an iTunes link, or Amazon, or on your own home page, and you decide to no longer sell it on that site, you would then need to switch the “Original Source Link” to wherever it is newly being sold/offered. You can sell your film/video/song/etc. on many sites legitimately, you only need to put ONE of those legitimate links for the Original Source Link.

If you did not mean to process a payment, we will reimburse your payment if you contact us within 24 hrs of payment AND you have NOT reviewed and submitted any violation results (via Search Results or Manual Takedown) on the project that payment was applied to. If you wish to cancel service mid-30-day-cycle, recurring charges for that project will be stopped and the project will continue service until the end of that current 30-day cycle.

At present, no, you must initiate each project individually and start payment for each. As you, and we, do not know if you will want to pause service on any one project, having them linked in a bulk package would cause issues. That said, we are actively working on creating package deals that will offer you the ability to initiate multiple projects, individually, but at a packaged initial deal pricing.

The short answer: No, you just need one legitimate URL for Original Source. [When entering on the form, only put one original source — multiple will cause a form error.]

It does not matter which is your original source URL, it just needs to be ONE legitimate link of either selling or legitimate representation (maybe you are just in pre-order or in festivals, so a link to your website would suffice). This Original Source is part of the DMCA/Takedown that justifies the legitimacy of the takedown request.

Nota Bene: Make sure your “Original Source” is:
(1) An actual URL (just “Amazon” is not a URL);
(2) Is the direct URL link (on Amazon they often add +’s and other search terms in a URL, those are not needed);
(3) NOT a bit.ly shortened URL (those aren’t direct URLs).

This is simple, you go to PROJECT CENTRAL, click to EDIT Your Project, and then go through the activation of your project again. You will have to enter your payment information again, via Stripe, but you will not be charged until the beginning of the next subscription cycle. And that is it!