Copyright / Takedown

Last updated: 28 September 2026

Our position

Everything on A Stranger's Shelf was left by the person who made it. Every submission requires a confirmation that the work is theirs to share, and everything is reviewed by a person before it can be found.

That is not a guarantee. Review catches what a reader can recognise; it cannot detect that an unfamiliar poem was copied from a notebook, or that a photograph belongs to someone else. When we are told, we act.

If your work is here and you did not put it here, tell us and we will remove it. You do not need a lawyer to do that.

How to report an infringement

Write to legal@astrangersshelf.com.

Please include:

• What was taken — identify the work you own, well enough for us to know what it is. A link to where it appears elsewhere is the easiest way.
• Where it is here — the address of the page on this site, or enough description that we can find it. Because the Shelf shows one creation at a time at random, a description of the piece is often more useful than a link.
• Your contact details — name, postal address, telephone and email.
• This statement: "I have a good faith belief that the use of the material described above is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law."
• This statement: "The information in this notice is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, I am the owner, or authorised to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
• Your signature, physical or electronic.

Items 4, 5 and 6 are what US law requires of a takedown notice under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3). If you are elsewhere and those formalities are unfamiliar, send us what you can — we would rather remove infringing work than stand on procedure.

Please do not send a false notice. Under § 512(f), a person who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing can be liable for damages, including costs and legal fees.

What happens next

We aim to review notices within 5 working days and to act expeditiously on those that are valid. If a notice is complete and appears genuine, we remove or disable access to the work while we look at it. Removing first is not an admission that the complaint is right.

We will try to inform the person who left the work. We often cannot. There are no accounts here and most submissions are anonymous with no contact details, so in many cases the only notice we can give is the removal itself. We would rather state that plainly than imply a process we cannot run.

If your work was removed and you believe that was wrong

Write to the same address with a counter-notice containing:

• Identification of the work removed and where it appeared.
• This statement: "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification."
• Your name, address and telephone number.
• A statement consenting to the jurisdiction of the appropriate court, and to accept service of process from the person who complained.
• Your signature.

Under US law, if we receive a valid counter-notice we may restore the work after 10–14 business days unless the complainant tells us they have filed court proceedings.

Understand the trade before you send one. A counter-notice requires your real name and address, and those are passed to the person who complained. If you left work here anonymously and want to keep it that way, a counter-notice is not the route for you — and choosing not to send one is a perfectly reasonable decision.

Repeat infringers

We terminate the ability to submit of anyone who repeatedly leaves work that is not theirs.

How that is enforced here, stated honestly: with no accounts, we cannot identify a returning person reliably. What we can do, and do, is decline and remove infringing work whenever we find it, refuse resubmissions of work already removed, and apply the technical blocks available to us. We describe this rather than claim an account-termination process the site does not have.

Reports that are not about copyright

Anything unlawful or against the Submission Guidelines — impersonation, private information, harassing or abusive material — can be reported using the Report link shown beneath every creation, or by writing to hello@astrangersshelf.com.

If you are in the European Union, this is our notice-and-action mechanism for the purposes of the Digital Services Act. Tell us what the content is, where it is, and why you believe it is illegal, and give us a way to reply. We will confirm receipt, tell you what we decided, and give reasons where we are able to reach the person affected.

Our contact for legal notices

legal@astrangersshelf.com — A Stranger's Shelf, operated from the Philippines.