Copyright and takedown

Read this first

This project has not registered a designated agent with the United States Copyright Office. That is a deliberate choice for now, and it has a consequence worth stating plainly rather than hiding: without a registered agent, the project does not claim DMCA safe harbour.

What that means in practice is that the process below is a good-faith one we operate because it is the right way to handle claims — not a statutory procedure with the protections and deadlines that attach to one. Claims are taken seriously and acted on quickly. But if you are a rights holder expecting the formal machinery of a §512 notice-and-takedown regime, it is not in place here.

If the catalog grows to a point where that becomes untenable, an agent gets registered and this document changes.

If your work is here without permission

Use the in-app report form and choose "My work is here without permission", or email reports@aussie-theo.dog if you would rather. Either reaches a moderator, both are monitored, and you do not need an account to report.

Identify:

• What — a link to the specific photograph or page. "Somewhere on your site" cannot be acted on.
• Who you are and what your relationship to the work is: you took it, you own it, you represent whoever does.
• Why you believe it was posted without authorization.
• How to reach you.

A statement that you are reporting in good faith, and that what you say is accurate, is expected. Deliberately false claims are their own problem — a takedown used to bury an inconvenient honest review of a fabric is misuse, and it is treated as such.

What we do

The item is withdrawn from public view before any assessment of the claim's merits. This is deliberately a low bar: it is cheaper to restore something wrongly paused than to leave infringing material up while we deliberate.

A moderator does this through a moderation console: the report is attached to the photograph it concerns, the photograph is withheld from every reader, and the decision that follows is recorded against it. Removal is carried out by the same takedown command a rights request uses, under its own recorded basis, so a copyright removal and a safety removal are never afterwards mistaken for one another. The console is in place; the draft banner at the top of this document still stands until the site owner completes the legal review the terms require, not because the mechanism is missing.

Then it is reviewed, the uploader is notified, and one of two things happens: it is removed, or it comes back. You get told which, and why.

If it is removed, the file is deleted. The record of the removal — what, when, on what basis — is kept, without keeping or reconstructing the file.

If your upload was taken down

You will be told, and you can respond. If you believe the claim is mistaken — you took the photograph, you have permission, the fabric rather than the image is what was copied — say so and it is reviewed again.

Nothing you say in a counter-response is passed to the claimant without telling you first.

Repeated infringement costs you the ability to contribute. One good-faith mistake does not.

Measurements taken from removed images

Facts extracted from a photograph — colour values, texture descriptors — are measurements, not copies of it. Where their production and retention remain lawful, they can outlive the image, and the catalog keeps them so that removing a photograph does not silently degrade unrelated data.

Where the removal reason taints them — the image was never lawfully obtained, or the measurements are personal — they go too.

If you believe retained measurements should also have been removed, say so in your report and it is assessed separately rather than assumed.

Things that are not copyright claims

• A specification you disagree with. Facts are not copyrightable, and a pile height is a fact. Report it as a correction instead; that route is faster and works better.
• Your fabric being reviewed unfavourably. Honest evaluation is not infringement.
• Photographs of a product you sell, taken by a customer. Selling the fabric did not give you rights in someone else's photograph of it.
• A photograph depicting you, rather than taken by you. That is an image-consent report, covered by the content rules, and it moves faster than this process does.

Appeals

Any decision here can be appealed, on the terms in the content rules — including the rule that an appeal is reviewed by someone other than the person who made the original call.