Copyright & DMCA

1. Designated Copyright Agent

Copyright notices must be sent to our designated agent, registered with the United States Copyright Office:

This address is for copyright notices only. For any other question, please use our contact page. Notices sent elsewhere may not reach the agent and may not be actioned.

2. Filing a Copyright Infringement Notice

To be effective under § 512(c)(3), your notice must be a written communication that includes substantially the following:

1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner, or a person authorized to act on their behalf.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple works are covered by a single notice, a representative list of those works.
3. Identification of the material claimed to be infringing, with enough detail for us to locate it. Manuscripts on Speakeazy are private to the account that uploaded them, so you are not expected to know a project or account identifier — the title and author of the work, and any edition or approximate date you can give, are enough for us to search on.
4. Your contact information: name, mailing address, telephone number and email address.
5. A statement that you have a good faith belief that the use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. You do not have to be the copyright owner — an exclusive licensee, such as a publisher holding audio rights, can file.

3. What Happens After We Receive a Notice

When we receive a notice that substantially complies with the requirements above, we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material identified. We will also make a reasonable effort to notify the user who uploaded it, and provide them a copy of the notice.

If a notice does not substantially comply with those requirements, we may not be able to act on it, and may contact you to ask for the missing information.

4. Counter-Notice

If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake, or that the material is not infringing — for example, you hold a license or the use is otherwise authorized — you may send a counter-notice to the same agent. Under § 512(g)(3) it must include:

1. Your physical or electronic signature.
2. Identification of the material that was removed, and the location it appeared at before removal.
3. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification.
4. Your name, mailing address and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district in which your address is located — or, if your address is outside the United States, of any judicial district in which we may be found — and that you will accept service of process from the person who filed the original notice, or their agent.

If we receive a valid counter-notice, we will promptly send a copy to the person who filed the original notice and tell them we will replace the removed material in 10 business days. Unless they notify us within that time that they have filed a court action seeking to restrain the allegedly infringing activity, we will restore the material in not less than 10 and not more than 14 business days after we receive the counter-notice.

5. Repeat Infringer Policy

6. If You Upload to Speakeazy

You are responsible for making sure you have the rights to any manuscript or other material you upload — whether you wrote it, were engaged to narrate it, or were given it by a publisher or rights holder. Being sent a manuscript to work on does not always carry the right to upload it to a third-party service, and it is worth checking your agreement if you are unsure. This obligation is set out in our Terms of Service.