DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998 is a legislation passed by the United States to protect the copyrighted works. The Act protects and provides immunity to the owner of the copyrighted work. This Act is a very stringent one, which expressly provides the rights and obligation of the website as well as the service providers.

A Takedown is a process against an infringing website or/and online hosts in response to allegations of illegal content. Content is removed by the infringing website host subject to the receipt of the notice. Take down notice is widely operated in relation to copyright infringement.

Yes, DMCA notices are sent to the host usually and most of the hosting providers comply with the DMCA protocol. So it is not limited to the United States.

Sending a DMCA notice helps in taking down the infringing contents from the infringing website. This excludes others from using your work for their business purpose and safeguard your rights as well as carry forward with your business dealings safely.

There are some cases where we send DMCA notices to the host and they do not respond to the notices. In such cases, we can go for Google removal of that infringing link. That means we can file with Google to remove the infringing link(s) from the Google search results.

Cease and Desist notice is the notice sent to the infringing website or an individual to stop illegal activity (i.e., Cease) and not to restart it (i.e., Desist). Cease and desist notice is not a lawsuit but a warning notice to the person involved in illegal activity. Cease and desist letter don’t have a legal standing but it is like the first step to remedy which further broadens the scope.

The notice is a formal way of warning the person not to continue illegal use of the intellectual property and informing him that further penalties may follow. If the infringer doesn’t stop the illegal behaviour even after the Cease and desist notice, then Cease and desist order can be prayed from court by filing a law suit, in order to stop the illegal behaviour.

Original links means the website or any link where your work has been published. That will indicate the source of your work.

Infringing link means the website or any link where your copyrighted work has been copied and posted. That will indicate the violation.

The time period for a takedown may take few hours to some days. It depends on the host and the country.

It is not mandatory to get registration for takedowns but registration of copyrighted work will be helpful as an evidence in the eye of law. It will also help the service providers to know that the work is your original one and the claim is legitimate.

You can ask for taking down of an image, article, blog, video, audio, application, etc. with the help of a DMCA take down notice.