Designated Copyright Agent

Notices of claimed infringement should be sent to our designated agent, who is registered with the United States Copyright Office:

This mailbox also receives general enquiries, so put DMCA Noticein the subject line — it is what gets a copyright complaint read against the clock the statute puts on it rather than in ordinary turn. Other complaints — safety, conduct, a problem with a booking — reach us faster through Support, and are not delayed by the process on this page.

Filing a notice of infringement

To be effective under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), your notice must be in writing and include all six of the following. A notice missing any of them may not be actionable, and we may ask you to resubmit:

• A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner, or of a person authorised to act on their behalf.
• Identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed. If several works at one location are covered, a representative list of them.
• Identification of the material you say is infringing, described precisely enough for us to find it — a listing URL, a profile URL, the tour and the photograph within it, or the session and the time at which the material appeared.
• Your contact information: name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and — under penalty of perjury — that you are authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the right claimed to be infringed.

What we do with a notice

• We remove or disable access to the identified material expeditiously.
• We notify the user who published it, and pass on a copy of the notice, including your name and the contents of your complaint.
• We record the notice against that user’s account for the purposes of the repeat-infringer policy below.
• Live sessions are transient. Material that appears in a live walk exists only while that walk is in progress and is not recorded, so there is often nothing left to remove by the time a notice arrives. In that case we act against the account rather than the content, which is why the repeat-infringer policy is the operative remedy for live material rather than takedown.

Counter-notification

If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you may send a counter-notice to the agent above. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3) it must include:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Identification of the material removed and the location at which 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 your address is located — or, if your address is outside the United States, of any judicial district in which AvatarWalk may be found — and that you will accept service of process from the person who filed the original notice.

We forward valid counter-notices to the original complainant. If they do not notify us within ten business days that they have filed an action seeking a court order, we may restore the material, generally between ten and fourteen business days after receiving your counter-notice.

Repeat infringers

AvatarWalk terminates, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of users who are repeat infringers. In practice:

• A valid notice against an account is recorded as a strike, and the user is told it has been recorded.
• A strike is withdrawn if the user files a counter-notice that goes unchallenged, or if the complainant retracts the notice.
• An account that accumulates repeated strikes is terminated. Termination removes the ability to host or book tours, and an Avatar’s published listings are withdrawn.
• We may terminate an account immediately, without waiting for a pattern, where the infringement is flagrant — for example a listing built entirely from another person’s photographs, or a stream whose purpose is to rebroadcast a performance or a screening.
• Pending payouts for sessions already delivered are not withheld as a copyright penalty. Money owed for time worked is settled under the Terms of Service.

Notices made in bad faith

Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), a person who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing — or that it was removed by mistake — is liable for damages, including costs and legal fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner, and by AvatarWalk. A takedown notice removes a real person’s livelihood from the platform while it is being reviewed. Send one only about material you actually hold rights in.

Scope

This page concerns copyright. If your complaint is about something else — your likeness appearing in a walk, a trademark, defamation, privacy, or your safety — do not use this process, which is slower and narrower than what you need. Use Support and say what happened.