Copyright and DMCA Policy

1. Overview

Courses on SmartKourse are uploaded by independent instructors. We do not review every upload for infringement before it appears, but we do act on properly submitted notices from rights holders, and we terminate accounts that repeatedly infringe.

This policy describes a process modeled on the notice-and-takedown procedure in Section 512 of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Please read section 2 before relying on it as a completed safe-harbor process.

2. Designated agent status

The designated agent’s name is pending owner configuration. Until it is published, send notices to the copyright contact in section 16. A physical agent address has not yet been published.

3. Before you file

A DMCA notice is a legal document sworn under penalty of perjury, and a knowing misrepresentation can make you liable for damages and attorney fees under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f). A few things worth checking first:

• Do you own the work, or are you authorized to act for the owner? If not, the owner should file.
• Is the use actually infringing, or might it be licensed, fair use, public domain, or your own work posted by a collaborator? Consider that question honestly before swearing to it.
• Is this really a copyright issue? Complaints about accuracy, competition, reputation, or a trademark belong in section 13 or with our support team, not in a DMCA notice.
• Would contacting the instructor resolve it faster? Many disputes are attribution or licensing misunderstandings.

We recommend consulting an attorney if you are unsure.

4. Filing a takedown notice

Send your notice to Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration), or submit it through the contact form choosing the copyright topic. Written notices may also be sent to the agent address in section 2 once it is published. Use the form in section 5 — a notice missing a required element may not be legally effective and will slow things down.

5. Notice form and required elements

Copy the following, fill it in, and send it as the body of your message.

1. Identify the copyrighted work. Describe the work you own — its title, a link to where it is legitimately published, or a registration number if you have one. If the notice covers multiple works, list them.
2. Identify the infringing material. Give the specific SmartKourse URL or URLs, the course name, and the lesson or section, precisely enough that we can locate it without guessing.
3. Your contact information. Full legal name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
4. Good-faith statement. “I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted material described above is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”
5. Accuracy and authority statement. “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner, or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”
6. Signature. Your physical or electronic signature. Typing your full legal name in an emailed notice is acceptable as an electronic signature.

Please note that we may forward your notice, including your contact information, to the instructor who posted the material, and may publish it in redacted form. If having your address disclosed is a concern, consider using an agent or attorney to file on your behalf.

6. What we do with a valid notice

1. We acknowledge receipt.
2. We review the notice for the required elements and locate the identified material.
3. We expeditiously disable access to or remove the identified material. Depending on scope, that may mean a single lesson, a resource file, or an entire course.
4. We notify the instructor, forward the notice, explain the counter-notice option, and record a strike under section 11.
5. If the course was purchased by learners, affected purchasers may be eligible for a refund under the Refund Policy.

We act as quickly as we reasonably can, but we do not promise a specific response time. Notices that are clear and complete are handled fastest.

7. Incomplete or abusive notices

If a notice is missing required elements or is too vague to locate the material, we will tell you what is missing and invite a corrected submission rather than ignoring it. If we receive notices that appear to be filed in bad faith — to suppress criticism, to attack a competitor, or over material the sender plainly does not own — we may decline to act, and repeated abuse can result in us refusing further notices from that sender except through counsel.

8. Filing a counter-notice

If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification — for example because you own the work, have a license, or the use is fair use — you may file a counter-notice. Send it to Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration). As with the original notice, this is sworn under penalty of perjury.

9. Counter-notice form and required elements

1. Identify the removed material and the location where it appeared before removal.
2. Good-faith statement. “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.”
3. Your contact information. Full legal name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
4. Consent to jurisdiction. “I consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district in which my address is located, or if my address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which SmartKourse may be found, and I will accept service of process from the person who provided the original notification or an agent of that person.”
5. Signature. Physical or electronic.

We forward counter-notices, including your contact information, to the party who filed the original notice. That is a required part of the process, so file only if you are willing to have your identity disclosed to them.

10. Restoration timeline

After we forward a valid counter-notice to the original complainant, the statutory process provides a waiting period of ten to fourteen business days. If the complainant does not notify us that they have filed a court action seeking to restrain the activity, we may restore the material. If they do file, the material stays down pending the outcome. We will keep you informed of which path applies.

11. Repeat infringer policy

We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. In practice we record a strike for each valid notice that results in removal, and:

• A first strike brings a warning and an explanation of this policy.
• Further strikes bring loss of publishing privileges and payout holds.
• Accumulated strikes result in termination of creator status and account termination.

A strike is withdrawn if the notice is retracted, if a counter-notice results in restoration without a court action, or if we determine the notice was invalid. Egregious cases — wholesale republication of another party’s course — can result in immediate termination without a strike sequence. Terminated users may not open new accounts.

12. Guidance for instructors

The reliable way to avoid all of this is to publish only material you created or are licensed to use, including music, stock footage, images, fonts, slide templates, code, and excerpts. Keep your license records. Attribution alone is not a license, and material being freely available online does not make it free to reuse.

If you receive a notice you believe is wrong, use the counter-notice process rather than reposting the material — reposting removed content is treated as a further violation. Full obligations are in the Instructor Terms.

13. Trademark and other IP complaints

Trademark, right-of-publicity, trade-secret, and defamation complaints do not use the DMCA process. Send them to Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration) describing your right, the specific content at issue, and why it infringes. We review these on their merits and may ask for documentation of your rights. Privacy complaints about personal information should go to Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration) instead.

14. Non-U.S. rights holders

We accept notices from rights holders outside the United States and apply the same process. Where your local law provides a different or additional procedure, tell us which law you are invoking and include the equivalent elements so we can evaluate the request properly.

15. Records and transparency

We retain notices, counter-notices, our actions, and strike history as records of our handling, and use them to apply the repeat-infringer policy consistently. We may publish aggregate statistics or redacted copies of notices. We may also disclose notices when legally required.

16. Where to send notices

• Copyright notices and counter-notices: Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration)
• Other intellectual property and legal notices: Contact form on this website (email address pending owner configuration)
• Or submit through the contact form using the copyright topic.
• Forms are on this page: takedown notice and counter-notice.

Designated agent details and a postal address are pending owner configuration and will be published here, alongside completion of Copyright Office registration.