Copyright and DMCA Policy

1You must be the owner

File a claim from inside the app: Support → “Someone is using my own content”. That opens the claim form. You do not need an account. A claim filed any other way, a reply to a notification, an ordinary content report, a message to a moderator, will not be processed, because it does not carry the sworn statement or the evidence a takedown requires.

The person filing must be the person who holds the rights. Not a manager, not a label contact, not a friend, not an agency acting on instructions. There is no "authorised to act on behalf of the owner" route on this form, and removing it was deliberate rather than an oversight.

The reason is that every check that actually works compares the person filing to the owner named on the evidence, the name on the document, the account that holds the original, the channel the verification code appears on. An intermediary filing under their own name defeats all of them simultaneously, and the previous wording invited exactly that: it was the sentence behind which almost every abusive claim sheltered. If you act for a rights holder, they file it themselves, from their own account or their own email address, and you can help them do it.

2What you are claiming, and how far it reaches

Three different things get taken on a short-video platform and they are not variations of one complaint. The form asks which, first, and prints the reach of each beside the choice, because choosing the wrong one is the single commonest reason a good-faith claim is refused.

A SOUND, covers the sound and every public video that used it. This exists because a rights holder whose track was uploaded as custom audio is not fighting one clip: everyone who picked that sound off the sound page is using it, and filing one claim per video is unwinnable. Upholding it archives every public clip using the sound and blocks the sound from further use. That is a great deal of other people's work, and the form tells you exactly how many videos it is before you swear anything.

A VIDEO, covers that one video and nothing else. If ten of your clips have been re-uploaded, that is ten claims. A video claim never reaches the account beyond the clip named.

A PROFILE, covers the whole account. The assertion is that everything the account is doing is you, or is pretending to be you. It is not the route for one bad video. A profile claim is always decided by a person and never acts automatically, because archiving a video is reversible within three days and removing somebody's account is not.

3What proves it, which depends on what you are claiming

3.1A sound: a document

There is a registry behind a piece of music, so a document can reach it. We accept: a copyright registration; a distributor dashboard or royalty statement; a collecting-society registration; a signed licence, split or publishing agreement; a label contract; or a company signature circular naming you.

We do not accept a streaming-service page, a screenshot of the video, or a photograph of a disc, those show that the song exists, not that it is yours.

Registered identifiers are the strongest evidence available and the form asks for them separately. If your document carries an ISWC, an IPI or an ISRC, enter it. An ISWC's final digit is a published function of the other nine and is verified arithmetically the moment you type it; the work is then looked up in the relevant registry. A code that cannot exist refuses the claim on its own, whatever the document looks like, which is the point, because a competently forged document looks exactly like a real one and an invented number does not survive arithmetic.

Your document has to be readable. A photo that is too blurry, too dark or cut off to read is sent back to you once to upload again, from the claim on this page; if the second one cannot be read either, a person reviews the claim.

3.2A video or a profile: your own version

No document is required, and one is no longer accepted as the primary evidence. There is no registry of who filmed a clip or whose face belongs to whom, so a PDF proves nothing about either, and asking for one produced precisely what you would expect, a queue of screenshots that established nothing.

What is required instead is that you point at your version, and the form asks where it is:

On another platform. You paste the link, and then you demonstrate that you control that account, section 4.

On Commentrs. You select one of your own videos, or one of your own accounts, primary or secondary, section 5. This option is not offered when you are signed out, and that is a fact rather than a policy: the whole check is a comparison against your own records, and a signed-out visitor has none.

4Proving you control an account elsewhere

Pasting a link proves nothing, anybody can paste anybody's link. So we generate a code for your claim, which nobody else has ever seen, and ask you to put it somewhere only the account holder can write. Then we go and look.

4.1If the link is to YouTube, a video, read by a person

Post a video on the channel you say is yours. It may be Unlisted, nobody but us needs to see it, and you should not have to announce a legal dispute to your subscribers.

The description must contain the 9-character code the form gives you, and nothing else.

The video must state: "I acknowledge that I am making a copyright claim on the Commentrs platform." How you state it follows what the channel is known for, if your voice is known, say it aloud; if your face is known, say it on camera; if neither is known, show it in writing on paper or as on-screen text.

Show the claim form. The Commentrs screen you are filling in must appear briefly on camera, or be included as a screen recording. This ties the video to this claim rather than to a claim in general.

Send the link in your support ticket.

This route is reviewed by a person, not by an automated check. A voice that matches the channel's voice, a face that matches its face and a screen recording are exactly what no automated check can read, which is also why this route carries more weight than a code in a bio.

If you cannot post an unlisted video, place the 24-character code in the channel description instead and say so in the ticket; we will check it there.

4.2Every other platform, a code in the bio, read by the checker

Place the 24-character code in the profile bio or description of the account, and our checker reads the public page. The schedule is published because a spinner with no schedule behind it is indistinguishable from a stuck one:

Immediately, the moment you press "check now".

Then again after 2 minutes, 5 minutes and 15 minutes. Profile pages cache, and a code is very often in place before it becomes visible to anybody outside the platform hosting it.

After 20 minutes the automatic route stops and the case goes to a person. You are told so, and asked to leave the code in place for the next 5 days, if it is gone when they look, there is nothing for them to confirm. Once the account is verified you can remove it.

We fetch public pages only. We never ask for a password, and nobody at Commentrs will ever ask you for one, in a ticket or anywhere else.

Verification establishes control of an account, and we do not overstate it: control is not the same as ownership of a work. What it settles is that the account you pointed at is yours, which is the question a document could never answer.

5When your original is on Commentrs

Nothing has to be uploaded, verified or waited for, because we already hold both records. We compare the two publication dates:

Theirs is newer than yours → the chronology supports your claim and it proceeds.

Theirs is older than yours → the claim is refused immediately. Whoever published first published first, so the item you identified is not the original. This is the only verdict on the platform decided by arithmetic rather than by judgement, and it is given at once rather than after a wait in a queue, because the answer is already known.

For a profile claim the same comparison is made between the two accounts' creation dates, and the account you identify as yours must belong to your own account family.

Publishing first is strong evidence and it is not conclusive proof of authorship, two people can both re-upload a third person's work, and the earlier re-uploader is not the author. A favourable comparison therefore lets a claim proceed; it does not decide it. An unfavourable comparison is conclusive in the other direction.

6The sworn statement, and the limits

Submitting the form requires you to swear, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner of the rights to the work, not an agent, a manager or a representative, that the use you are reporting is not authorised by you or by law, and that everything you have given, including any link, account or document, is genuine, yours and unaltered.

A takedown notice is a legal instrument. A false one is actionable against the person who filed it, and under 17 U.S.C. §512(f) anyone who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing is liable for the resulting damages and costs.

10 claims per account per 24 hours; 3 per browser per 24 hours signed out.

One open claim per target.

These are anti-abuse limits, set far above what a genuine rights holder reaches by hand.

7What happens after you file

A sound claim is checked automatically, in two steps.

First the document: can it be read, is it real proof of ownership, does it name you. Any identifiers are checked against the arithmetic and the registry. A document that cannot be read is sent back once for a sharper copy. A document that is plainly not proof of ownership, plainly names someone else, or carries a code that cannot exist rejects the claim, and you are told why.

Then the music: ACRCloud, a music recognition service, identifies the recording in the sound, and it is compared with the work you named, by ISRC first and then by title and artist. If ACRCloud hears a different song, the claim is rejected and you are told what it heard. If it recognises no recording at all (its database does not hold every song), a person reviews the claim or, where we have set it to, the claim is rejected with that reason. If it is the song you claimed, your document checked out, and you are the artist or label ACRCloud has on record for it (or a registry confirmed one of your codes), the claim is upheld: the sound is blocked and every video using it is archived at once. Anything else goes to a person, with ACRCloud's result in front of them.

A video archived under an upheld sound claim can be republished by its creator at any time, with different audio or none. What is still archived when the 3-day objection window closes is deleted, together with the sound's audio file. An objection freezes that clock while a person reviews it.

A claim that is not upheld hides nothing. If you believe that is wrong, file again with a clearer or different document, or send a written notice to our designated copyright agent (section 12).

A video or profile claim is decided by a person, with the ownership demonstration in front of them. The only automatic verdict on that path is the date comparison in section 5.

We open a support ticket for you, and that ticket is the channel for the whole case. It goes straight to our team and bypasses the assistant entirely, no automated system attempts to answer a copyright notice.

The ticket number is the case number. It is the only reference you ever need to quote.

That ticket cannot be closed by you for 5 days, and only our team can close it. This protects the one channel we have for telling you the outcome.

A signed-in claimant is not asked for an email address. Mail about a legal matter, sent to an address nobody has proved they can read, is not a channel; the ticket is, and it is attached to an account we can authenticate. A signed-out claimant is asked for one, because their ticket lives in a single browser and clearing site data destroys it, for a notice carrying a three-day clock, one durable address is the floor.

8Removing a sound entirely

Where we decide, outside a claim, that a sound should not be on the platform at all, we delete it: the audio file is removed from storage rather than merely hidden, and the sound cannot be selected again. That is a reviewer's decision, and it is never automatic.

Every video that used the sound is archived, not deleted. The soundtrack was always metadata attached to the video and was never mixed into the file, so the creator's own work is untouched and only the music is gone. Each affected creator is notified and can republish immediately, without asking anyone, in one of two ways: attach different audio, or un-archive the video with no audio at all. There is no queue, no appeal and no waiting period, because nothing has been decided against them.

An upheld sound claim (section 7) is different: the videos using the sound are archived at once, and those still archived when the objection window closes are deleted with the audio file.

9If you are the uploader

You are notified when a claim affects your content, and you have 3 days to object before deletion.

An objection freezes the deletion clock and hands the case to a person. It does not by itself restore the content, and the screen says so before the button.

If the objection succeeds, the content is restored in full and any strike arising from the claim is removed.

If the objection is found to be baseless, it counts on the same ladder as a false claim, see section 10. Filing a genuine objection that loses on the merits is not that; a baseless one is an objection with nothing in it.

A formal counter-notice may be filed within 7 business days of a removal.

What a formal counter-notice must contain

Under 17 U.S.C. §512(g), a counter-notice must include all of the following:

Your physical or electronic signature.

Identification of the material removed, and the location where it appeared before removal.

A statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification.

Your name, address and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the district in which you live (or, if you are outside the United States, any district in which we may be found), and that you will accept service of process from the claimant.

Sending a counter-notice gives the claimant your contact details, and they may respond by filing suit. If they do not seek a court order within 10 to 14 business days, we may restore the material.

If your video was archived because of a sound claim, the same applies: you can object from Settings → Account standing, or republish the video with different audio or none, at any time.

10What being wrong costs

Getting a claim wrong is not misconduct. People genuinely mistake a licensed re-upload for a theft, a parody for a copy, or their own distributor for a stranger, and a system that punishes the first honest error teaches rights holders not to file, which is a worse outcome than the error.

Your first 3 refused claims cost 0%. Nothing is charged and nothing comes off your standing.

The 4th and every one after it costs 5% of a strike, on the same scale as every other weighting in the Community Guidelines, where 100% is one full strike.

The same counter covers objections. A baseless objection against a claim on your own video counts alongside a refused claim, because they are the same mistake seen from opposite ends.

That 5% penalty cannot be appealed. It is the only non-appealable consequence on the platform. The reason is arithmetic rather than policy: the penalty is a count of decisions that were each individually reviewed, each individually refused, and each appealable at the time. An appeal against the total is a request to re-litigate all of them at once, in a queue built for something else. Appeal the individual refusal instead.

You are told where you stand before you swear. The count, and how many free ones remain, are printed on the form above the statement. A warning you can still act on is a warning; one delivered afterwards is a bill.

Filing without an account carries no standing penalty at all, because there is no account to carry one. We do not keep a moderation record against a browser.

Bad faith is a separate and heavier matter. A claim that was not merely wrong but dishonest is scored at 40% as fraud, and a pattern of them may be sanctioned under Chapters 4 and 6 of the Terms, up to and including permanent deletion. A claimant's record of refused claims is visible to reviewers for exactly this reason.

11Repeat infringers

We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. An upheld copyright claim costs the uploader 25% of a strike under the Community Guidelines, so four of them reach a full strike and the suspension ladder follows from there.

12Designated agent

Registration pending. Our designated agent's details will be published here and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Until that entry appears, the in-app claim form described above is the fastest route to a removal: it reaches our team directly and creates a numbered case.

You do not need an account to use it. If you cannot use the in-app form at all, open a ticket from Support, which is reachable without signing in, and state that you are filing a copyright notice, or send the notice by email to support@commentrs.com.

13Your rights in your own content

You retain ownership and copyright in everything you create and upload. Posting grants us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable licence limited to operating, promoting and improving the platform, the For You ranking and the Promote feature, for example. That licence is revocable: deleting a piece of content, or deleting your account, terminates it automatically.

© 2026 Commentrs. All rights reserved.

14Music identified in the videos you publish

Every video published on Commentrs is checked by ACRCloud, a music recognition service, for commercial recordings. ACRCloud downloads the video through a link that expires after six hours and tells us which recordings it heard, where and for how long. A recording counts only when the recognition is confident and it plays for at least ten seconds, so a few seconds of a song in the background is not a match.

Music is licensed country by country, through collecting societies: PRS for Music in the United Kingdom, GEMA in Germany, ASCAP and BMI in the United States, and MESAM in Türkiye. A match matters only in a country where we do not hold a licence from that country's society. Where we do, nothing happens to your video.

Where we do not, depending on the setting in force, your video stays up while a person reviews it, or it is hidden in the countries concerned while they review it, or it is archived while they review it. You are told which recording was found in either case. Archiving is not deletion: you can still see the video, and it comes back if the reviewer clears it.

A music match is not a copyright claim and is never a strike. It does not count against your standing, and nothing about it is visible to anyone else beyond the video being unavailable where it is hidden.

If you have a licence for the music, or the match is wrong, reply through Support with what you have. If a reviewer clears the video, every restriction that came from the match is lifted.

We keep the recordings found in each video (title, artist, label and identifiers such as the ISRC) for as long as the video exists, so that we can report the music used on Commentrs to the societies we are licensed with.