Copyright and DMCA

HIT.TV respects copyright. If you believe something we have published infringes a work you own or represent, tell us and we will act on it. This page explains how.

How we work, and why that usually matters here

Our stories are written in our own words from reporting published elsewhere, and each one credits and links the sources it was written from. We do not republish other outlets’ article text. Most copyright questions we receive are therefore about a photograph, a video clip, or a passage that has been quoted more closely than it should have been. All three are worth reporting, and all three are quick for us to fix.

Sending a notice

Send your notice through our contact page, marking it for the attention of the copyright agent, or by post to the address at the foot of this page. To be effective under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), a notice must include all of the following:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed. If several works are covered by one notice, a representative list is enough.
• The material you are complaining about and where it is, precise enough for us to find it. A direct URL to the page is best; “somewhere on your site” is not.
• How we can reach you: address, telephone number, and email address.
• A statement that you believe in good faith 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 the owner or authorised to act on the owner’s behalf.

An incomplete notice may not be effective, but we would rather have it than not: if something is missing we will tell you what, rather than ignoring it.

What we do when we receive one

We aim to acknowledge every notice within two business days and to act on valid ones promptly. Where a complaint is well founded we remove or replace the material.

Where the story itself remains accurate we amend it rather than delete it, and we say what changed. That is the same rule as everywhere else on this site, and our editorial standards explain why: silently vanishing a published page serves us and nobody else. Removal of an infringing image or quotation does not require the surrounding story to disappear.

If you think we got it wrong

If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you may send a counter-notice. It needs your signature, identification of what was removed and where it appeared, a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake, your contact details, and your consent to the jurisdiction of a federal court in the district of your address (or, if you are outside the United States, of any district in which we may be found).

We may restore the material after a statutory waiting period unless the original complainant tells us they have filed a court action.

Repeat infringement

We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers where accounts exist. HIT.TV does not host user-uploaded content: everything published here is produced by us, so in practice this means our own material and our own process for stopping it happening twice.

A word on bad-faith notices

Misrepresenting that material is infringing carries liability under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f). We read every notice on its merits and we do not remove accurate reporting simply because someone would prefer it were not published.

Designated agent

Copyright notices should be addressed to the copyright agent at:

This page describes our process and is not legal advice. Nothing here waives any right or defence available to us. If you need advice on your own position, take it from a solicitor rather than from a publisher’s website.