Connect with us

DMCA & Copyright Policy

Where we stand on copyright

WinAddons lives on both sides of copyright at once. What we write is how the site survives, so we defend it; what other people make is how they survive, so we respect it. This page describes how we use work that is not ours, the way to notify us if you think something here infringes a right of yours, what follows a notification, and how to respond if material you provided has been taken down. The procedure follows the notice-and-takedown model of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and we run the same procedure for valid notices under the equivalent laws of other countries, since our readers and the people whose work we quote are spread across all of them. Questions go to support@winaddons.com with COPYRIGHT in the subject line.

Work that is not ours, and how we use it

You cannot report on a technology company without quoting it and showing its products. Our rules:

  • Release notes, KB articles, advisories, documentation, roadmap entries and filings are quoted only as far as reporting and criticism need, with the source named and, wherever one exists, a link to the original.
  • Screenshots of software, consoles, dashboards and store listings show the thing the story is about, cropped to what the story needs, and labelled with the build or version when that matters.
  • Product images, renders, key art, trailers and stills that Microsoft, studios, publishers and hardware makers hand out in press kits are used for exactly the purpose they were handed out for, with a credit.
  • Photographs are our own, licensed, given to us for publication, public domain, or released under terms that permit our use. A picture being visible on social media does not make it ours to take; when a member of the public’s photograph is the news, we ask permission, give credit and, where appropriate, pay.
  • When a document, a clip or a post is itself the subject of a story, we show the part that is the subject and nothing beyond it.

We believe all of this sits inside fair use and fair dealing. If you think your work has been treated otherwise, write to us before going anywhere else; disagreements of this kind are usually settled in a single exchange of email.

Sending a takedown notice

Should you believe that material on winaddons.com infringes a copyright you hold or are authorised to enforce, email support@winaddons.com with a notice containing everything section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires:

  • the copyrighted work you believe has been infringed (a representative list will do if the notice covers several);
  • which material on this site you say infringes it, described precisely enough for us to locate it, meaning the page address and the image or passage concerned;
  • how to reach you: name, postal address, telephone number and email address;
  • a statement of your good-faith belief that the use has not been authorised by the owner, the owner’s agent or the law;
  • a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the notice is accurate and that you are the owner or act with the owner’s authority;
  • your signature, physical or electronic.

A notice lacking any of these cannot be acted on until we have written back and received the rest, so completeness is in your interest. If the law you are proceeding under requires the registered details of a designated agent, ask and we will supply them in writing.

What happens once a notice arrives

Receipt is confirmed within two business days. The notice is then reviewed by an editor who had no part in publishing the material. Where the claim is clearly sound, the material is removed or replaced and you are told. Where we hold a licence, a press kit or a public-domain basis for the material, we say so and show it. Where the use is fair, we explain why it is fair, leave the material up, and you may take whatever further steps the law allows. Where a reader or contributor supplied the material, it comes down promptly, the notice is passed to whoever supplied it, and they are given the chance to answer. Taking material down in response to a notice is the process the statute prescribes while the question is settled; it does not concede that the material infringed.

Notices sent in bad faith

Copyright notices are sometimes aimed at reporting rather than at infringement. A company embarrassed by a story about a broken update, a slipped release date or a missed target cannot make it disappear with a form letter, and a screenshot of a bug does not infringe anything because the bug is awkward. Knowingly misrepresenting that material infringes, or that it was taken down in error, can make the sender liable for damages, costs and legal fees. Every notice is assessed with the difference between infringement and journalism in mind, and where a notice is plainly an attempt to bury accurate reporting, we reserve the right to say so in public.

Counter-notices

If something you supplied was taken down after a notice and you believe the takedown was mistaken or misidentified the material, a counter-notice may be sent to the same address. It must carry your signature, physical or electronic; identify what was removed and where it used to be; state, under penalty of perjury, your good-faith belief that the removal was a mistake or a misidentification; give your name, address and telephone number; and confirm that you accept the jurisdiction of the competent court for the judicial district of your address (or, if that address is outside the country whose law governs the notice, of any judicial district in which we can be found) and that you will accept service of process from whoever sent the original notice. We pass the counter-notice to that person. Unless they inform us within ten business days of having gone to court to restrain the alleged infringement, the material may go back up, normally ten to fourteen business days after the counter-notice reached us.

Repeat infringers, and complaints that are not about copyright

A contributor or supplier who infringes repeatedly stops being one. A copyright notice is also the wrong instrument for complaints about accuracy, fairness, privacy or a story you would rather not exist; those belong under CORRECTION or GENERAL and are dealt with under our corrections policy. Using a copyright notice to get a story removed will fail, and may bring the liability described above.

Using our work

Linking to any story and quoting a short passage with attribution and a link is always fine, as our terms of service say. Republishing whole articles, scraping the site, reusing our work without credit and feeding our articles into products, models or datasets are infringements, and we act on them. To republish a piece, reuse a graphic or reproduce anything longer than a short excerpt, email support@winaddons.com with COPYRIGHT in the subject line and describe what you want and how it will be used. Educational and non-commercial requests usually get a quick yes; commercial republication is licensed on written terms.