Copyright and takedowns

Inkwharf is a hosting service, not a publisher. Nobody here reads a manuscript before it goes on sale, commissions it, edits it or checks who wrote it. Authors upload their own files, set their own prices and take payment into their own accounts.

That means we do not know a book is infringing until somebody tells us, and it means we act when somebody does. Every author agrees, in section 3 of the Terms, that they hold the rights to everything they upload.

Send a notice to the contact address published on this site with the subject line Copyright notice. To act on it we need all of the following, and a notice missing any of them will be answered with a request for the rest rather than a removal:

• The work you say has been infringed — title, and where an authorised copy can be seen if one is online.
• The URL of the book or storefront page on Inkwharf you are reporting. One link per work; a whole shop is not a location.
• Your name, postal address and email address, and whether you are the rights holder or acting for one. If you are acting for one, say who.
• A statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by the rights holder, its agent, or the law.
• A statement that the information in your notice is accurate, and — under penalty of perjury — that you are authorised to act for the rights holder.
• Your signature, electronic or physical.

Notices are read by a person. Please do not send one for something that is not a copyright claim — a book you dislike, a pricing dispute, a bad review — because it goes into the same queue as the ones where somebody’s work has actually been stolen.

We aim to look at every notice within two working days. Where a notice is complete and the claim is not obviously mistaken, the book is taken out of sale while it is looked at, and the author is told what was claimed and by whom. Removal from sale is not a finding against the author; it is the position that costs least if the claim turns out to be right.

Buyers who already paid for a removed book keep the file they downloaded — we could not take it back if we wanted to, and the honest thing is to say so. Where a book is removed as infringing, any buyer who has not yet downloaded it should ask the author for a refund; the money is theirs and so is that decision. See Refunds.

Reply to the message telling you it was removed, and say so. What we need is your name and address, the book that was taken down, and a statement that you believe in good faith it was removed as the result of a mistake or a misidentification. If you are outside the United States, add that you accept the jurisdiction of a court where you live, and that you will accept service from the person who complained.

A counter-notice is forwarded to the person who sent the original notice, with your contact details, because that is what the procedure requires — they are entitled to know who is disputing it and to take it to court if they wish. If they do not, the book goes back on sale.

An account that attracts repeated valid notices is closed, and the storefront with it. There is no fixed number that triggers this and no strike counter to game: a first notice for a whole shelf of other people’s books is more serious than three for one contested cover image, and both are judged as what they are.

Sending false notices has a cost too. A notice that misrepresents what it claims can make the sender liable for the author’s losses, and an address that sends them repeatedly stops being read.

The same address takes reports of anything else in section 5 of the Terms — content that is unlawful where it is sold, material that sexualises children, material published to harass or defame a real person. Say what you are reporting and where it is. Reports of material involving children are acted on immediately and reported onward to the authorities; nothing about that waits for a procedure.