Content Theft Laws, DMCA Takedowns, and Damages

Copying someone’s original online work without permission is copyright infringement, and content theft laws give you two practical tools to fight back: a DMCA takedown notice to get the material removed quickly, and a lawsuit for damages ranging from $750 to $30,000 per work, or up to $150,000 per work if the copying was willful.¹ Which remedies you actually get depends heavily on one thing most creators skip: registering your copyright before the theft happens.

What Counts as Protected Content

Copyright protection begins automatically the moment you save or publish original work in a lasting form. That covers blog posts, articles, and code as literary works; photos, illustrations, and graphic designs as pictorial and graphic works; and videos, tutorials, and animations as audiovisual works.²

The originality bar is low. Courts require only a minimal spark of creativity beyond a mechanical arrangement of facts. But copyright protects your expression, not your underlying ideas — someone can write about the same subject in their own words without infringing anything.

The AI Boundary

Purely AI-generated content has no copyright protection. The U.S. Copyright Office requires human authorship, and its registration guidance states that when “an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship.”³ The Supreme Court effectively confirmed this position by declining to review Thaler v. Perlmutter in March 2026.

Using AI as a tool while exercising meaningful creative control — selecting, arranging, or substantially editing the output — can leave the human-authored portions protectable. Typing prompts alone does not. If what someone copied from your site was AI-generated, you may not have anything to enforce.

Fair Use Before You Accuse

Not every unauthorized copy is illegal. Fair use permits copying for criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, and research, with courts weighing four factors:⁴

Purpose and character of the use. Commercial use weighs against fair use; transformative use that adds new meaning, commentary, or context weighs in favor.
Nature of the original work. Factual works get thinner protection than highly creative ones.
Amount taken. A small excerpt is more defensible than the whole work, though even a small portion can infringe if it captures the core of what makes the original valuable.
Market impact. If the copy acts as a substitute for the original and cuts into its audience or value, that weighs heavily against fair use.

No single factor decides the outcome. A review that quotes several paragraphs of a book may qualify; reposting an entire photograph with a new caption almost certainly does not. Getting this wrong before you send a takedown carries real risk, which is covered below.

Filing a DMCA Takedown Notice

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act lets you get infringing material removed without going to court. A valid notice must contain:⁵

Your physical or electronic signature, or that of someone authorized to act for you.
Identification of the original work, with enough detail to show what was infringed. A representative list works if multiple works on one site are affected.
The specific URL or other location information so the host can find the infringing material.
Your contact information: name, address, phone, and email.
A good-faith statement that you believe the use is not authorized by you, your agent, or the law.
A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the notice is accurate and that you are authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf.

Most major platforms provide dedicated online forms for takedown requests. If no form exists, send the notice directly to the service provider’s designated agent, looked up through the U.S. Copyright Office’s directory at dmca.copyright.gov.⁶

False Notices Carry Liability

Anyone who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing is liable for damages caused by the false claim, including the other side’s costs and attorney’s fees.⁷ The same applies to fraudulent counter-notices. Sending a takedown against material that clearly qualifies as fair use exposes you to a claim for the other party’s lost revenue and legal expenses.

What Happens After the Takedown

Once a host receives a valid notice, it must promptly remove or block access to the material to keep its own legal immunity for user-posted content.⁵ The person whose content was pulled can file a counter-notice claiming a mistake or misidentification. If they do, the host must restore the material in 10 to 14 business days unless you file a lawsuit in that window.⁷

A takedown is temporary. If the other side pushes back, you either drop it or take the case to court.

Register Early or Lose Your Best Remedies

Automatic protection is not enough to sue. You cannot file a copyright infringement lawsuit until the Copyright Office has processed and approved your registration.⁸ The Supreme Court settled this in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com: submitting the application is not enough — you must wait for registration to be granted.⁹

Timing also controls what you can recover. Register before infringement begins, or within three months of first publication for published works, and you are eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees.¹⁰ Miss that window and you are limited to proving actual damages, meaning exactly how much money you lost and how much the infringer gained. That is a harder and more expensive case.

Registration fees are modest. A single-author electronic filing costs $45, and the standard electronic application runs $65.¹¹ Most infringement claims fall apart here: a strong case was never registered, and by the time the theft is discovered, the best remedies are already gone.

The Copyright Claims Board for Smaller Disputes

Federal litigation is slow and expensive. The Copyright Claims Board, a tribunal inside the Copyright Office, lets you resolve infringement claims without a lawyer or a federal courtroom.¹² Total damages there are capped at $30,000.

The process is voluntary for the other side. The respondent has 60 days after being served to opt out, and does not need to give a reason.¹³ If they do not opt out in that window, the proceeding moves forward whether they participate or not. If they do opt out, your remaining options are federal court or letting it go.

Damages in Federal Court

Federal copyright law offers two paths to money.¹

Actual damages cover the money you lost, plus any of the infringer’s profits not already reflected in your losses. You only need to prove the infringer’s gross revenue; the infringer then has to prove which expenses to deduct and which profits came from something other than your work.

Statutory damages are available when your copyright was timely registered. They run from $750 to $30,000 per work at the court’s discretion, rising to as much as $150,000 per work for willful infringement.¹ Statutory damages exist because proving exact financial harm from online copying is often impractical: the infringer may have made no obvious profit while still diverting your audience.

The court may also award attorney’s fees and costs to the winning side.¹⁴ That cuts both ways: it puts teeth in strong claims and real risk on weak ones.

The Three-Year Deadline

You have three years to file a copyright infringement lawsuit, measured from when you discovered the infringement or reasonably should have.¹⁵ The Supreme Court clarified in Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy (2024) that this deadline governs only when you must sue, not how far back your damages can reach. If your claim is timely, you can recover for infringement that happened years earlier.¹⁶

Old infringement is not automatically out of reach. But three years from discovery goes quickly, and the evidence trail — who copied what, when, and from where — gets colder every month.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement Damages and Profits
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright In General
3
Federal Register. Copyright Registration Guidance – Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 107 – Limitations on Exclusive Rights Fair Use
5
U.S. Copyright Office. Section 512 of Title 17 – Online Service Provider Safe Harbors
6
U.S. Copyright Office. DMCA Designated Agent Directory
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 512 – Limitations on Liability Relating to Material Online
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 411 – Registration and Civil Infringement Actions
9
Supreme Court of the United States. Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp v Wall-Street.com LLC
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 412 – Registration as Prerequisite to Certain Remedies for Infringement
11
U.S. Copyright Office. Fees
12
U.S. Copyright Office. About the Copyright Claims Board
13
U.S. Copyright Office. Respondent Opt-Out Information
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 505 – Remedies for Infringement Costs and Attorneys Fees
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 507 – Limitations on Actions
16
Supreme Court of the United States. Warner Chappell Music Inc v Nealy