Copyright & DMCA

What this covers

Free-Lance hosts portfolio pages that freelancers publish themselves — at free-lance.app/u/{name} and at {name}.free-lance.me. The images, video links, credits and text on those pages are put there by the freelancer whose page it is, not by us.

If something on one of those pages is your copyrighted work and it’s there without your permission, this page is how you tell us. We take those reports seriously, and we act on them.

This is also the right place to reach us about the product’s own name, logo, or written material. It is not the place for a billing dispute or a complaint about a freelancer’s work — for anything like that, contact the freelancer directly.

Reporting infringement

Email support@free-lance.app with “DMCA” in the subject line. To be something we can act on, US copyright law asks that your notice include all six of these:

1. Your physical or electronic signature.
2. Identification of the work you say was infringed — if several works on one page, a representative list is fine.
3. The URL of the page, and enough detail to find the specific item on it. This is the one people leave out, and without it we often can’t act. “A photo of mine is on your site somewhere” isn’t something we can locate.
4. Your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
5. A statement that you believe in good faith that the use isn’t authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement that the information in your notice is accurate and — under penalty of perjury — that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act for them.

What happens next

We review the notice and, when it checks out, remove or disable access to the material — usually by unpublishing the item from the freelancer’s public page. We tell the freelancer what was removed and why, and we pass along a copy of your notice, including the contact details in it. We do that so the freelancer can decide whether to send a counter-notice, which they can only do if they know who complained — so send a notice knowing the person on the other end will see who sent it.

Removing something from a published page doesn’t delete the freelancer’s own copy inside their account. It stops being public; it doesn’t stop being theirs.

If your work was removed

If your material was taken down and you believe that was a mistake — it’s your own work, you have a licence, or the use is permitted — you can send a counter-notice to the same address. It needs your signature; identification of what was removed and where it was; your name, address and phone number; a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification; your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your district (or, if you’re outside the US, the District of Nevada, where we are); and a statement that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice, or their agent.

We forward the counter-notice to whoever complained and tell them we will restore the material in ten business days. Unless they notify us within that time that they have filed a court action to restrain you, we restore it no sooner than ten and no later than fourteen business days after receiving your counter-notice.

A counter-notice is a legal filing with real consequences, and it is worth getting advice before sending one.

Repeat infringers

We terminate the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe. There’s no fixed number that triggers it — we look at how many valid complaints there have been, whether they were contested, and whether the pattern looks deliberate. Publishing other people’s work as your own credits is already a violation of the Acceptable Use section of our Terms of Service, independently of anything here.

A warning about false reports

Section 512(f) makes someone who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing liable for damages — including the costs and legal fees of the person whose page was wrongly taken down. A takedown notice aimed at a competitor’s portfolio, or at a former collaborator you have a grievance with, is not a costless move.

Contact

Copyright notices and counter-notices: support@free-lance.app, subject line “DMCA”. Free-Lance is operated by Dan Jacobs. If you need a postal address for a formal notice, ask at that address and we’ll provide one.