
Ask HN: What's the Best DMCA, Privacy Policy, and ToS Boilerplate Out There? - rpm4321
Hi HN, I'm just getting ready to launch a big side project that I've been working on for quite a while, and I'm realizing that I need to have a DMCA notice, as well as Privacy Policy and Terms of Use statements.<p>I'm obviously going to hold off on legal consultation until I get some traction, so I'm wondering what the best reusable DMCA boilerplate is?<p>Regarding Privacy and Terms of Service, I believe Automattic has open sourced theirs, correct? Any better options out there?<p>Thanks in advance.
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pasbesoin
I found HN's approach to be interesting. (I looked when I noticed the new link
in the footer.)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html>

I can't speak to how "good" or "correct" it is. OTOH, pg usually seems to put
some good thought into such things.

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dangrossman
What are you referring to when you say DMCA boilerplate? You don't dictate
anything about that, the process is defined by statute. Copyright holders send
infringement notices to your DMCA agent listed at the copyright office, you
disable access to the content in those notices in a reasonable time, you gain
the safe harbor liability protections.

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rpm4321
Hi Dan, I'm aware of how DMCA works, but from what I've seen there's a fair
amount of variation between how the DMCA Notice pages are written.

Examples:

<http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php>

<https://www.dropbox.com/dmca>

EDIT:

In case anyone's interested, here's the relevant info and forms from the US
Copyright Office:

<http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/>

as well as a few other resources:

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-
loo...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loophole/)

<http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/>

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dangrossman
"DMCA notice pages" are something these businesses made up for their own
convenience, to better funnel the notices to the right people and make sure
they're in the right format so they can deal with them faster. You don't have
to make such a page -- most businesses don't. You don't lose anything; the act
is in force whether you copy its terms onto a page of your website or not.
Until you have millions of customers, "too many companies are sending notices
to our sales and support mailboxes instead of our DMCA agent" probably isn't a
problem you have to address.

