Copyright & DMCA Policy

animeclips.online is a small library of short anime clips built for AMV editors and content creators. We curate seconds-long fragments of footage so editors do not have to download whole episodes just to grab a few frames for their work. We respect copyright, we take takedown requests seriously, and this page explains exactly how to send one, how we handle it, and what to do if you believe a takedown was filed against your work in error.

Who this page is for

You are a rights holder, a legal representative, or an enforcement company who believes a specific clip on animeclips.online infringes a copyright you own or represent. If that is you, the rest of this page tells you exactly what we need to act on your notice.

How to contact us about a takedown

All notices of claimed copyright infringement must be sent to the contact below. Notices sent through general site contact forms, comments, or social media may be missed and will not be treated as official.

Email is the fastest way to reach us and is the preferred channel for all notices and counter-notices.

Before you file: fair use and transformative work

Federal copyright law recognizes that not every unauthorized use of copyrighted material is infringement. Under 17 U.S.C. § 107, the fair use doctrine permits the use of copyrighted works for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research, and transformative creative work. Courts evaluate fair use against four factors: the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the work as a whole, and the effect of the use upon the potential market for the original.

What we host

animeclips.online is a library of short anime clips, typically a few seconds to under a minute long, curated for AMV editors and other content creators who use them as raw source material for transformative work. We do not host full episodes. We do not host complete films. We do not host content that substitutes for watching the original work. The clips are short, often without dialogue, and are not a viewing experience in their own right; they are reference and source material for downstream creative work.

Senders must consider fair use before filing

Under Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., 815 F.3d 1145 (9th Cir. 2016), a copyright holder is required to consider whether a use is fair use before issuing a DMCA takedown notice. Failure to do so can constitute a material misrepresentation under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), which carries personal liability for the sender, including damages and attorney's fees.

If you are sending a notice about a clip on this site, please confirm in your notice that you have considered the four fair-use factors as applied to the specific clip you are reporting, not just the underlying work as a whole. Pattern claims that treat every use of a copyrighted work as automatically infringing, without addressing the four factors against the specific short excerpt, will be flagged in our log and may be returned for clarification.

How we handle plausibly fair uses

When we receive a notice for material that appears on its face to be a plausible fair use, for example a seconds-long silent excerpt being used as source material for AMV editing, we still process the notice as the DMCA requires. We also forward our preliminary fair-use evaluation to the uploader so they can make an informed decision about whether to file a counter-notice, and we record the fair-use posture in our internal log. That record is part of how we score senders under the bad-faith-filer policy below.

What a valid takedown notice must include

For your notice to be actionable, it must satisfy every element of 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3). Notices that are missing any of the items below will be returned to you and no content will be removed until the missing information is supplied.

1. Your physical or electronic signature, or the signature of a person authorized to act on the rights holder's behalf.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed. If you are claiming infringement of multiple works on the same notice, a representative list of those works is acceptable, but each work must be identified by title and rights holder.
3. Identification of the specific material you claim is infringing, with information reasonably sufficient for us to locate it. In practice this means the exact, full URL of every page or clip you are reporting, copied directly from your browser. Generic site-wide claims, partial URLs, or pattern-generated URLs we cannot verify are not sufficient.
4. Your contact information: full legal name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address. If you are a representative, the name of the rights holder you represent and your authority to act for them.
5. A good-faith statement that you believe the use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement under penalty of perjury that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner, or are authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the right that is allegedly infringed.

What happens after you send a valid notice

1. We acknowledge receipt by email within two business days.
2. We review each URL in the notice. Verified URLs that match the claim are removed or disabled promptly.
3. We notify the user who uploaded or posted the affected material, give them a copy of the notice (with your personal contact details redacted if you are an individual), and tell them about their right to file a counter-notice.
4. We log the notice internally so we can identify repeat infringers and repeat bad-faith filers over time.

Counter-notices

If material of yours was removed and you believe it was removed in error, or that you have the right to use it (for example, because it is your own work, falls under fair use, or was licensed to you), you can file a counter-notice under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g).

A valid counter-notice must include:

1. Your physical or electronic signature.
2. Identification of the material that was removed and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed.
3. A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification.
4. Your full legal name, mailing address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the judicial district in which your address is located, or if your address is outside the United States, for any judicial district in which we may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided the original notice or an agent of that person.

Send counter-notices to the same agent contact above. If we receive a valid counter-notice, we will forward it to the original complainant. Unless that complainant files an action seeking a court order against you within ten business days, we may restore the removed material in ten to fourteen business days.

Repeat infringers

animeclips.online has a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of users who are repeat infringers. As a guideline, an account that is the subject of three valid takedown notices, resolved without successful counter-notice, will be terminated and the user banned from creating future accounts.

Repeat bad-faith filers

17 U.S.C. § 512(f) makes it a federal offense to knowingly materially misrepresent that material is infringing. We take this seriously in both directions. If you or your enforcement company repeatedly file notices that include URLs which do not exist on the site, URLs that were never published, or claims of representation we cannot verify, your future notices will receive heightened scrutiny and may be rejected on receipt. We may also report the pattern to the relevant intermediaries (search engines, hosting platforms, the U.S. Copyright Office) and, where appropriate, to counsel.

If you are an animeclips.online user

If a clip you posted has been removed because of a takedown, you will receive an email at the address on your account. That email includes the notice, the affected URL, and instructions for filing a counter-notice if you believe the removal was in error. You do not need to do anything if you agree with the removal.

Before you escalate

If you are a rights holder with concerns about a specific clip, you are welcome to reach out informally before sending a formal notice. Many situations are resolved faster, and with less friction on both sides, by a short email than by a takedown filing. We are happy to discuss clip length, framing, or context in good faith.

Not legal advice

This page describes our internal takedown procedure. It is not legal advice. If you are unsure whether your situation is covered by the DMCA, you may want to consult a lawyer.