Copyright Protection
As creators, often we find works posted on other sites and/or social media without our permission. It is in our legal rights to file a claim and report those copyright infringements. Many of you might think that it won’t do anything, but in fact sites take these things very seriously and will take content down swiftly.
I have filed many copyright claims on various platforms for my own works — which extends far beyond AI, and included my designs, photography, music, etc. Creators who had taken my advice and filed reports before have also seen similar results. Here are some links to the various sites where you can file these claims. You don’t need to be on those platforms to file a report, but it is helpful if you are — especially if those works you are claiming are already published on the same platform.
Most copyright claim forms ask you to provide a link to the originally published work, which can be anywhere on the internet. Having only physical presence may be hard (e.g. a physical painting) but you can still try to prove ownership by posting a photo of that work on a publicly viewable URL, e.g. Instagram, Flickr, Twitter, etc.
An important note is that while most of these are just “forms,” they are legal documents, and are legally binding. So you will have to fill in with your real name and address and sign your full name as digital signature. You should do this yourself, but if you have to make claims for a lot of work and can’t afford the time, you can have an agent or lawyer to fill them out on your behalf. Most forms take only a minute to complete, and the sites usually respond within 24 hours. They will usually follow up with an email asking for more information, or if the infringement is very clear, a report of their actions taken on your behalf.
YouTube
If someone took your YouTube video directly and repost, these will get taken down usually within hours. If the copyrighted works is an image you post somewhere else, it can took longer for them to process, but they will still handle it.
YouTube has a 3-strike system. If a YouTuber has received 3 copyright claims successfully, his/her channel will be permanently removed from YouTube, so they do treat this seriously.
After Elon’s takeover, where many Twitter staff were laid off, Twitter copyright claim now takes a lot longer than before, but it is still handled, just not handled within hours as before. TImeframe is measured in days these days. When a content is taken down this way, that media won’t show up on the tweet where it appeared in and will be replaced with something like “media claimed by copyright owner”
You can’t force someone to remove content from their website, but you can prevent them from showing up on Google search results. This is often good enough since most people find out about things on the internet on Google.