What do you have to do to enforce your copyright?

[trinko]

I found that someone had taken one of my photos and made an icon out of it and posted it at the deviantArt site. I notified the site and they require a bunch of data in order to remove the stolen work. I'd assumed that showing the original art at PBase with the copyright statement would be sufficient. They claim i need to make a statement under threat of perjury--which is ok-- and provide a digital signature--which I don't have-- and a bunch of other stuff which you can read in the copy of the email chain below. Is this really required by DMCA? Thanks for any info.

email trail
## To reply, please write your response above this line ##

.zd_link {color:#FFF;}<http://support.deviantart.com/tickets/64995>Ticket #64995: my photo is being used without permission



Your ticket (#64995) has been updated.

To review the status of the ticket and add additional comments, follow the link below:
<http://support.deviantart.com/tickets/64995>http://support.deviantart.com/tickets/64995

You can also add a comment by replying to the top of this email.



realitysquared, Jul 02 08:41 am (PDT):

Standard DMCA procedure requires that you provide all of the information and make all of the statements which I previously listed.

Please amend your claim so that we will be able to proceed.

--
Daniel Sowers Jr.
Copyright & Etiquette Administration Manager
Community Operations Division
deviantART Inc
<http://realitysquared.deviantart.com>http://realitysquared.deviantart.com



perturbed, Jul 01 01:18 pm (PDT):

I'm sorry to see that you folks don't take copyright infringement
very seriously--taking nearly a month to respond also seems to
indicate a lack of concern. I sent you link to my photo which was
being stolen by one of your users and the link to the stolen product.
Making me jump through hoops as described below is a clear indication
that you don't really want to prevent your users from stealing
content. Other sites have responded quickly by removing content with
no more information than i provided. Note that the link for my
original photo is clearly marked as copyrighted by me. Legally
unless you're willing to contest my copyright as posted you are
obligated to remove the stolen work.



realitysquared, Jul 01 01:05 pm (PDT):

Thank you for contacting deviantART, I will be assisting you with your support ticket.

In order to file a formal copyright infringement notification with deviantART you must be able to provide certain specific information and statements so that we may review the situation and take whatever action appears to be necessary to resolve the issue.

Unfortunately your initial claim lacked some of the necessary parts in order to be considered actionable so if you could please read through the procedure below and make certain to include all of the information and statements listed there our staff will then be able to proceed in reviewing your claim.

If you have any questions about this procedure or do not understand any portion of the instructions below then please let me know so that I can explain them in better detail.

-----

1. Please provide identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, a representative list if multiple works are involved. You may link online or attach files to your reply for the purpose of identifying the copyrighted works.

2. Please provide identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity by providing the full URL or each individual work which can be found posted on the deviantART.com website.

3. Please state that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

4. Please provide information reasonably sufficient to permit us to contact you, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.

5. Please provide a clear statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

6. Please provide your physical or electronic signature.

--
Daniel Sowers Jr.
Copyright & Etiquette Administration Manager
Community Operations Division
deviantART Inc
<http://realitysquared.deviantart.com>http://realitysquared.deviantart.com



perturbed, Jun 08 04:55 pm (PDT):

my crow photo is being used on your site at
<http://chuckster2.deviantart.com/art/Krow-Avatar-131311243>http://chuckster2.deviantart.com/art/Krow-Avatar-131311243
My original is at
<http://www.pbase.com/trinko/image/47565829>http://www.pbase.com/trinko/image/47565829
Please have the image removed. Thank you.

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061004 Firefox/3.0



This email is a service from deviantART

[dougj]

Carolyn Wright provides some useful information on her website related to copyright and DMCA.
http://www.photoattorney.com/

[trinko]

Thanks for the link. Well it's clear that the DMCA is not designed to help content owners. While it only took the thief a second to abscond with my photo I'm going to have to spend hours fulfilling the DMCA requirements. Score one for the bad guys.