Copyright & Takedown Policy

The short version

We move fast on real notices and we ignore fakes. If you own an image or you are an athlete whose likeness we feature, you have a clear path to removal and we will honor it within 72 hours. If you are a random third party trying to harass an athlete by filing bogus takedowns, this page is also your answer: we will not act without verification, and every request is logged with a timestamp.

Two different things

D1Ball handles two categories of removal request on separate tracks. They are easy to confuse but the law treats them differently, and so do we.

• Copyright takedowns — for photos, video, and other works you own or control. These follow the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. § 512.
• Right-of-publicity / likeness takedowns — for an athlete featured on a D1Ball spotlight. These follow state right-of-publicity law, not the DMCA.

1. Copyright (DMCA) notices

A valid DMCA notice must include all of the following. We will reject notices that omit any element, and we will tell you which element is missing so you can fix it.

1. Identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed.
2. Identification of the specific D1Ball URL where the material is located.
3. Your name, address, telephone number, and email address.
4. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized.
5. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf.
6. Your physical or electronic signature.

Send the notice to our designated agent (see below) or use the form at /takedown, which collects the same elements.

On a valid notice we will remove the material within 72 hours and notify the person who posted it. If we believe in good faith that a notice is invalid we will tell you why and ask you to cure it. We log every notice and every action with a timestamp.

DMCA designated agent

D1Ball has designated an agent to receive notifications of claimed infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c). The agent is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Counter-notice

If your material was removed and you believe in good faith that it was removed in error or misidentification, you may send a counter-notice to dmca@d1ball.com with the same identifying information, a statement under penalty of perjury of your good faith, and your consent to local jurisdiction. If we do not receive notice from the original complainant that they have filed a court action within 14 days, the material may be restored.

2. Likeness / right-of-publicity notices

D1Ball spotlights are opt-in — an athlete is featured only after they (or a school representative) submit a highlight through /get-featured. Any featured athlete can request removal at any time, for any reason, no questions asked. The question we have to answer before we remove is only: is the person asking actually the athlete?

We verify identity before acting on a likeness request. We comply only when the request comes from:

• The athlete's verified .edu email address, confirmed through a one-time verification link we send to that address; or
• The official athletics department email domain for the athlete's school, confirmed the same way; or
• A third party who provides a notarized statement of authorization from the athlete.

Requests from anonymous accounts, free email providers (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc.), or unverifiable sources are not acted on automatically. They are logged and reviewed, and we will not remove a spotlight based on a threat from an unverifiable source. This protects athletes from harassment as much as it protects rights.

Start a likeness removal at /takedown. The form asks for the spotlight URL, the athlete's name, and the official email address we should verify against. We send a signed verification link to that address; only after the link is clicked does the request become actionable.

What we do not do

• We do not remove content based on a request from a source we cannot verify, however threatening. Real rights-holders do not threaten; they identify.
• We do not auto-remove on submission. Every request is triaged by a human within 72 hours of verification.
• We do not publish the identities of people who file notices. We do log them privately with timestamps.
• We do not retaliate against anyone for filing a notice, in good faith or otherwise.

Attribution

Imagery on D1Ball is sourced under licenses that permit commercial use — primarily Creative Commons Attribution and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, and public domain works. The full per-image attribution list (source, license, author) is available at /api/attribution. If you believe an image is mis-credited or used outside its license, that is a copyright notice and the DMCA process above applies.

Repeat infringers

In accordance with 17 U.S.C. § 512(i), we maintain a list of accounts determined to be repeat infringers and we terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. (D1Ball does not currently operate user-generated content accounts; this policy is in place for when it does.)

Contact

Copyright: dmca@d1ball.com
Likeness: legal@d1ball.com
General: /contact