Wednesday, September 19, 2007

How do you remove information from the Internet?

I often get asked how someone can get information removed from the Internet. Here are my suggestions:

  • If you are looking to delete information from a particular website, contact that website owner or their Internet Service Provider. You can usually find their contact information on the site or look it up at: http://www.whois.net/ or www.arin.net/whois/ Most web publishers can and should take responsibility for removing information that violates copyright infringement as well as false and inflammatory information.
  • If you are looking to delete information from a search engine or from the search engine cache, see below.
  • There are a very small number of new services that will remove the information. Most will focus on removing it manually using webmaster tools rather through legal means. I am not too familiar with these companies and have not yet used them.
1) SEARCH ENGINES -- Here is the contact information for the four major search engines for removing information on the internet. I have used this information for the removal of both copyright infringement as well as information that was false and inflamatory.

A) GOOGLE
Google Legal Support
Send the written communication to the following address:

Google, Inc.
Attn: Google Legal Support, DMCA Complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

OR fax to:

(650) 963-3255, Attn: Google Legal Support, DMCA Complaints

http://www.google.com/dmca.html#notification


B) YAHOO

Yahoo
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.htm


Yahoo!'s Agent for Notice of claims of copyright or other intellectual property infringement can be reached as follows:
By mail:
Copyright Agent
c/o Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
By phone: (408) 349-5080
By fax: (408) 349-7821
By email: copyright@yahoo-inc.com

C) Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyrtInfrg.htm
Service Provider(s): Microsoft Corporation; The Microsoft Network, LLC; MSNBC Interactive News, LLC; MSBET, LLC; LinkExchange, Inc.; WebTV Networks, Inc.
Name of Agent Designated to Receive
Notification of Claimed Infringement: J.K. Weston
Full Address of Designated Agent to
Which Notification Should be Sent: One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052
Telephone Number of Designated Agent: (425) 703-5529
Facsimile Number of Designated Agent: (425) 936-7329
Email Address of Designated Agent: jkweston@microsoft.com


D) Ask.com
http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/copyright.shtml
Copyrights and Copyright Agent
Ask.com asks our users to respect the intellectual property of others. Pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. sec. 512 ("the DMCA"), Ask has designated an agent to receive Notifications of Claimed Copyright Infringement on its site, who can be reached as follows:

copyright@ask.com, or
IAC Search & Media
Legal Dept.
Attention: Copyright Agent
555 12th Street, Suite 500
Oakland, CA 94607

2) NOTICES -- This site contains sample legal Notices

http://chllingeffects.org


A) Inflamatory Notice -- http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1308