Copyright and DMCA notices

If something on this site infringes your copyright, here is exactly how to tell us and what happens next.

Effective: 2026-08-24  ·  Last updated: 2026-08-24

The short route

If you believe something on pilebase.io infringes your copyright, email mason@pilebase.io with the subject line "Copyright". Tell us what the work is and where on our site it appears. One person reads it and acts on it.

Everything below is the formal version, for anyone who needs it.

Our designated agent

What a takedown notice must contain

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, at 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3), sets out what makes a notice effective. A notice that leaves one of these out may not be one we can act on, so please include all six.

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner, or of somebody authorised to act for the owner.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed. If several works on one site are covered, a representative list is fine.
3. Identification of the material you say is infringing, with enough detail for us to find it. A URL is the most useful thing you can give us.
4. Your contact information: name, address, telephone number and email address.
5. A statement that you have a good faith belief that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorised to act for the owner.

What we do when we get one

We act expeditiously to remove the material or disable access to it. That is the legal standard and it is also just what happens: this is a small site and there is nobody to route it through.

We then tell the person who put the material there, if that is somebody other than us, and give them a copy of the notice and the chance to send a counter notice.

Most of the time there will be nobody else. Almost everything on this site was written or photographed by us, or is a fact about a business copied from that business's own page. User submitted material exists in two places: photographs a business uploads through its own portal, and reviews buyers write.

If your complaint is about a listing rather than a copyright, the listing policy is the faster route, and removal there is unconditional.

Counter notice

If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you can send a counter notice. Email the same address. Under 17 U.S.C. 512(g)(3) it must contain:

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 that 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 district where you live, or, if you are outside the United States, for any district where we may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice, or their agent.

What happens then. We forward your counter notice to whoever sent the original complaint. If they do not tell us within 10 business days that they have gone to court to stop the activity, we put the material back, between 10 and 14 business days after we received your counter notice. That window is set by the statute, not by us.

A warning that cuts both ways

17 U.S.C. 512(f) makes it unlawful to knowingly and materially misrepresent that material is infringing, or that material was removed by mistake. Somebody who does either can be made to pay the damages and legal costs their misrepresentation caused.

That applies to a takedown notice sent to silence a competitor, and it applies equally to a counter notice filed in bad faith. Please be sure before you send either.

Repeat infringers

We have a repeat infringer policy, and this paragraph is it. In appropriate circumstances we will terminate the account of a business or a buyer who repeatedly infringes copyright, including their ability to upload photographs, to have a claimed listing, or to hold an account here at all. We decide what is appropriate case by case, and we take account of whether a complaint was ever answered by a counter notice.

We also do not interfere with standard technical measures that copyright owners use to identify or protect their work.

What we already do so this comes up less

• We copy only facts from a business's published pages: the material name, the unit and the price. Never a photograph, never a description, never a page layout.
• A photograph on a business's website is that business's copyright, and we do not publish it unless that business has claimed its listing or told us yes.
• Every image we publish carries a recorded licence, and an image with no licence on file stops the site build rather than quietly appearing.
• Our reader honours robots.txt and never reads anything behind a login.

Contact

Email info@pilebase.io.

Related: listing policy and removal · how these listings are built

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