Copyright complaints and takedown

1. Overview

Regulator Watch publishes journalism that links to and quotes from public regulator records. Our use of those records relies on fair-dealing / fair-use principles for news reporting, on the exceptions in Article 17(7) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 (Digital Single Market), and on the journalistic exemption from data-protection law (Art. 85 GDPR).

If you believe that material on the Service infringes a copyright you own or are authorised to act for, or that it is otherwise unlawful, this page tells you how to submit a notice. We handle US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512) notices, EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) trusted-flagger and user notices, and equivalent national-law notices, all through the same address.

2. Where to send notices

Email: info@disruptfinance.io

Postal: the address on the imprint page, marked “FAO: Designated Agent — Copyright”.

3. What to include in a copyright notice

For a notice to be actionable under the DMCA (and useful under equivalent regimes), it must include all of:

1. A physical or electronic signature of a person authorised to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed (title, URL of the original publication if available, or any other reasonable identifier).
3. Identification of the material on the Service that you believe infringes — including the full URL of each affected page.
4. Contact information sufficient for us to reach you — email address; a postal address and telephone number if you wish them on the record.
5. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorised to act on the owner’s behalf.

Incomplete notices will be acknowledged with a request for the missing information. Knowingly material misrepresentations in a DMCA notice expose the sender to liability for damages under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) — and equivalent statutes exist in other jurisdictions.

4. Our process

• We acknowledge receipt within two business days.
• We assess the notice. Where the complaint is well- founded and our use is not covered by a clear fair- dealing, fair-use, or news-reporting exception, we remove or disable access to the material expeditiously.
• Where the complaint targets a quotation we believe is within fair-dealing / fair-use boundaries — typically short quotes from regulator records that we have attributed and linked back to source — we explain our position and offer to discuss. We will not pre-emptively remove journalism that we judge to be lawful.
• We log every notice and every action taken in our internal transparency record. Aggregate statistics are published annually.

5. Counter-notice

If material you submitted to the Service (for example, a right-of-reply statement or a sponsor asset) has been removed in response to a copyright notice and you believe the removal was in error, you may file a counter-notice including:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. identification of the material that was removed and the URL at which it appeared;
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, telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the courts in the operator’s jurisdiction (or, if you are outside the operator’s jurisdiction, in any jurisdiction where the operator may be found) and that you will accept service of process from the complainant.

On receipt of a valid counter-notice we will forward it to the original complainant. If the complainant does not notify us within 10 business days that they have filed an action seeking a court order against you, we may restore the material.

6. Repeat infringers

In appropriate circumstances we will terminate the account of any user determined to be a repeat infringer.

7. EU Digital Services Act — notice-and-action

Notices alleging illegal content other than copyright infringement (defamation, doxxing, unlawful processing of personal data, hate speech, etc.) may be submitted to the same address. Such notices should describe the alleged illegality, identify the specific URL(s), and provide a contact address. We will acknowledge receipt, assess the notice diligently, and notify both the complainant and the affected user of our decision with a statement of reasons, in line with Articles 16 and 17 of the DSA.

Statements of reasons for content moderation decisions taken on the Service are submitted to the European Commission’s DSA Transparency Database where applicable.

8. Regulators and public bodies

If you represent a regulator or public body and would like an item linking to a publication of yours updated, corrected, or removed (for example, because the source URL has changed or the underlying notice has been withdrawn), please write to info@disruptfinance.io and we will action the request promptly.