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How to Report Copyright Infringement to TikTok

How to Report Copyright Infringement to TikTok

TikTok is the current social media of choice. Since 2016, this application has been downloaded more than 2 billion times and has over 650 million users. Millions of dance, comedy and educational videos have been posted to this platform. You might even have posted on TikTok yourself for your own brand, business or as a person. 

But did you know that TikTok is not free of copyright infringing content? Of course you did! On an average day, TikTok gets over 1 billion video views, so it’s not that crazy of an idea that a part of those views are going towards illegal content. Sadly, TikTok is not actively monitoring for illegal content themselves. 

TikTok wants you as a user or brand to find infringing videos yourself, and report them to them, but how does one report a copyright infringing video? Onsist is here to help you out, and we’ve written a blog on how you can report a copyright infringing video to TikTok.

Summary

1.   TikTok and Copyright Infringement: What is it like

2.   How to report a copyright infringing TikTok video

3.   What happens after your report

TikTok and Copyright Infringement: What is it like

By now, most of us are all aware of the trendiest social media platform out there: TikTok. If you’re not aware of this application/social media: TikTok is a platform where people can upload and share short videos on varying topics, such as dance, comedy and education. If you’ve been around for a while, then you might compare this to Vine, only TikTok videos can have a longer duration.

TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service that was founded in China in the year 2016. Originally, it was only available in China, but it became available for a worldwide audience when it merged with another service named Musical.ly. Since then, TikTok has been downloaded on mobile devices over 2 billion times, and it’s still growing.

This growth also means there’s a bigger audience for pirates to share illegal content. What kind of infringing content can we find on TikTok? Users can upload chunks of copyrighted movies, illegally make use of copyright music or sometimes blatantly reupload someone else’s user generated TikTok content.

So, what about reporting piracy on one of the world’s biggest social media platforms? As with for example Facebook , the bigger the platform, the lesser the platform itself works on taking down pirated content. TikTok relies on users and brands to spot copyright infringing content and report them via a copyright infringement form.

How to report a copyright infringing TikTok video

As mentioned in the introduction to this article, TikTok is not actively looking for copyright infringing videos on their platform themselves. Instead, they rely on users and brands to look for and report content to them. Although this may seem as a daunting task at first, it is actually quite simple after you’re done with reading this article. 

Step 1: Finding the TikTok Copyright Infringement form

First things first, you need to navigate to TikTok’s copyright infringement tool. This might be frustrating if you’ve never visited this page before, but lucky for you: we have. To go to copyright reporting page, you can follow this url: https://www.tiktok.com/legal/report/Copyright

Step 2: Filling in basic contact information

Now that you’ve arrived on the copyright infringement form of TikTok, we can start filling it in and report illegal videos. The first section of their form wants you to fill in contact information. Here’s what TikTok needs from you:

  1. Your Full Name

This is where you fill in your name.

  1. Name of the Copyright Owner

This is where you fill in the name of the copyright owner. This could be your brand’s name, your name if you’re the owner or if you’re reporting on someone else’s behalf, the brand’s or person’s you’re acting on behalf of.

  1. Your Email Address

This is where you fill in your email address. This is the address to which TikTok will send a confirmation email, and it will also be the address they’ll use to contact you if they need additional information.

  1. Your Physical Address

This will be the address of where you’re located.

  1. Your Phone Number

Finally, TikTok wants to know your phone number. From our experience, they’ll not contact you via phone.

Step 3: Clarify that you’re the owner of the Copyrighted Content

The third step of reporting a copyright infringing video to TikTok is about proving that you’re the copyright owner. They need this information to verify that you’re not acting on an illegal basis and are reporting videos illegally.

TikTok Copyright Infringing Content Copyright Owner

First off, you have to select which relationship to the copyright owner applies to your report.  You can choose from the following options:

  1. I am the copyright owner
  2. I am a host, office, or director (non-legal) of the copyright owner
  3. I am the legal counsel to the copyright owner
  4. I am an employee of the copyright owner
  5. I am an authorized agent of the copyright owner

Secondly, you need to provide some form of proof in order for TikTok to verify that you’re indeed the copyright owner of the content you want to report. What can you deliver as proof?

  • License Agreements
  • Official Certificates of Copyright Ownership
  • Screenshots of the original content and where it’s sold/showed.

You don’t need to submit all three of these types of proof. One will do, but do know that providing more proof will improve your chances of getting a copyright infringing video removed from TikTok.

If you’re acting on behalf of someone else, you also need to provide a document stating that you are authorized to act on your client’s behalf. Get your client to sign a power of attorney, or some other document stating that you can act on his behalf. 

Step 4: Providing Copyright Infringing Videos and Explanation

Now that you’ve provided basic information and proved that you’re the authorized copyright owner, you can start submitting the illegal video URLs. 

TikTok Copyright Infringing Providing Videos

The first field is where you provide the URLs to the illegal TikTok videos you want to report. In this field, TikTok will give examples on what URLs are accepted. 

After having submitted the illegal TikTok videos, you’ll have to describe your copyrighted content. First of all, you’ll have to select which content type fits your copyrighted work the most. You can choose from the following options:

  1. Video
  2. Original Music
  3. Non-Music Audio
  4. Photo / Picture
  5. Logo
  6. Other

Finally, TikTok will ask you for a short description of your copyrighted content. Try and write a complete yet compact description of your content.

Step 5: Signing the Copyright Infringement Notice

The final step in removing a copyright infringing video from TikTok is to check a few boxes and to sign it with your name.

TikTok Copyright Infringing Content Signature

Before you can sign the infringement notice you’ve filled in, you first need to check a few boxes. These are standard copyright infringement statement boxes that need to be checked  truthfully. 

Verify that you’ve filled in this notice with a good faith belief, that you state under penalty of perjury that you’ve filled in everything accurately and that you acknowledge that the notice may be sent to the infringing uploader.

Finally, sign the form by writing down your name and click on “Send” to submit your complaint.

What happens after your report

Your copyright infringement form has now been sent to TikTok, and they’re now made aware of an illegal video on their platform. What happens now?

First off, you’ll get a confirmation email from TikTok stating that they’ve received your complaint and a member of their team is going to look at it as soon as possible.

Afterwards, you’ll receive an email in which TikTok will give you one of the following results:

  1. TikTok has accepted your copyright infringement notice, and they’ve removed the illegal video from their platform.
  2. TikTok has received your notice, but they’re missing some critical information. They’ll ask you to reply to their email with the information they require to complete the report.
  3. TikTok rejects your notice because they can’t verify that you’re the copyright owner, or other reasons. They will let you know why they’ve rejected your notice. If this happens, you can try and fill in the report again and give TikTok additional proof.

Would you rather not keep reporting copyright infringing TikTok videos? Would you rather have professional anti-piracy service that does all the work for you? Then Onsist is here to help you out. Our anti-piracy services are aimed at helping brands, businesses and content creators out and take down illegally shared copies of their work. 

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