copyright and dmca

crosscode's hosted coordination service stores files that users choose to sync. if you believe something stored there infringes your copyright, this page is how you tell us, and what we do about it.

not yet in force. the designated agent below has not yet been registered with the us copyright office. until that registration exists, the §512(c) safe harbor does not attach, no matter what this page says. see before this takes effect.

• effective date: {{EFFECTIVE_DATE}}
• designated agent: {{PROVIDER_NAME}}
• address for notices: {{PROVIDER_ADDRESS}}
• email: legal@getcrosscode.dev

what this page covers, and what it does not

it covers content users store on the hosted service: the uncommitted working-tree files their daemons publish, and the project and repository names attached to them. that is material stored at a user's direction, which is what 17 u.s.c. §512(c) is about.

it does not cover crosscode's own software. the cli, daemon, and mcp server are ours and are published under the mit licence. a complaint about that code is an ordinary dispute with us, not a takedown request, and belongs at legal@getcrosscode.dev in plain prose.

it also does not reach copies we never had. crosscode syncs between checkouts; every member of a project holds a full git repository on their own disk. removing content from our service removes it from our service. it cannot un-copy what someone already cloned. we would rather say that here than let a notice-sender believe otherwise.

how to send a notice

email legal@getcrosscode.dev, or post to the address above. a notice must include all six elements that §512(c)(3)(a) requires. a notice missing any of them is not a valid notice, and we will tell you which element is missing rather than ignoring it.

1. a signature (physical or electronic) of the copyright owner, or of a person authorised to act for them.
2. identification of the copyrighted work you say is infringed. if several works on the same project are covered, a representative list is enough.
3. identification of the infringing material, with enough detail for us to find it. for crosscode that means: the repository as owner/repo, the branch, and the file paths. we store changes keyed on exactly those three things, so a notice giving them is one we can act on and a notice without them usually is not.
4. your contact details: address, telephone number, and email.
5. a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. a statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and (under penalty of perjury) that you are the owner or are authorised to act for them.

misrepresenting that material is infringing carries liability for damages under §512(f). we mention it because it is a real provision, not to discourage a genuine notice.

what we do when a notice arrives

• we acknowledge receipt by email, to the address in the notice.
• we act expeditiously. in practice: a valid notice is assessed and access to the identified material disabled within 3 business days of receipt. crosscode is run by one person, and 3 business days is what one person can honestly commit to; if a notice arrives during an absence long enough to break that, the acknowledgement will say so.
• we notify the affected user with the reason, the material affected, and a copy of the notice, and we tell them how to counter-notify.
• we record a strike against the account.
• we keep the notice, our decision, and the dates, so a pattern of repeat infringement is something we can actually establish rather than assert.

the internal procedure is written down in docs/abuse-handling.md in the repository, including where it is currently thin. an undocumented procedure is one that fails the first time it is needed.

counter-notice

if your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, send a counter-notice to legal@getcrosscode.dev. under §512(g)(3) it must contain:

1. your signature, physical or electronic.
2. identification of the material that was removed, and where it was before removal: again owner/repo, branch, and paths.
3. a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification.
4. your name, address, and telephone number, plus your consent to the jurisdiction of the us federal district court for the district of your address (or, if your address is outside the united states, of any district in which we may be found) and your consent to accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice.

on receiving a valid counter-notice we forward it to the original complainant and tell them we will restore the material in not less than 10 and not more than 14 business days, unless they first tell us they have filed a court action seeking to restrain the activity. that window is statutory, not a policy of ours, and we cannot shorten it.

repeat infringers

we terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances, as §512(i) requires. concretely:

• a strike is recorded when we disable access to content in response to a valid notice that is not withdrawn and not reversed by a counter-notice.
• three strikes against one account, or a single deliberate and clear-cut infringement, results in termination of that account and of the projects it owns.
• a strike is removed if the notice behind it is withdrawn, if a counter-notice restores the material and the complainant does not sue, or if we conclude the notice was wrong.
• terminated means terminated: the account and its projects are deleted, not suspended pending appeal. you may write to legal@getcrosscode.dev to contest it, and we will answer.

a project's owner is accountable for content their project stores, but a strike attaches to the account that published the change, because that is what our change log records.

registration: an owner action, not a code change

two of the four things §512(c) requires cannot be done by editing this repository. they are the ones providers most often skip, and skipping either means the safe harbor never attaches at all:

1. register the designated agent with the us copyright office at https://www.copyright.gov/dmca-directory/. it costs about $6 and takes half an hour. it requires a public physical address. the address in the directory is published, so it must be one you are willing to have on a public register.
2. renew it every three years. the registration expires. an expired registration is legally identical to no registration, and the expiry is silent: nothing breaks, no deploy fails, no alert fires. a provider who registered once and forgot is a provider with no safe harbor, and that is the usual way it is lost.

publishing this page satisfies the second requirement of §512(c) (the agent's contact information must be available on the service). having a repeat-infringer policy and acting on notices are the other two, and they are only real if the procedure in docs/abuse-handling.md is actually followed.

before this takes effect

• {{PROVIDER_NAME}}: the legal name of the individual provider, matching the name filed with the copyright office.
• {{PROVIDER_ADDRESS}}: the public postal address for legal notices, matching the address filed with the copyright office.
• {{EFFECTIVE_DATE}}: the date this page takes effect. set it no earlier than the date the copyright office registration is confirmed.
• register the designated agent at https://www.copyright.gov/dmca-directory/, and put a calendar reminder three years out for renewal.
• remove the "not yet in force" banner at the top of this page once the registration is confirmed.

view raw markdown · generated from docs/dmca.md at build time, do not hand-edit this page.