DMCA Policy

Effective date: October 14, 2026

Last updated: October 14, 2026

1. Overview

SecuritySage (“SecuritySage,” “we,” “us” or “our”) respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects users of https://www.securitysage.org (the “Site”) to do the same. In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, as codified at 17 U.S.C. §512 (the “DMCA”), we respond expeditiously to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with the DMCA and other applicable law.

This policy applies to material on the Site that is stored at the direction of users, such as blog comments, and also, as a matter of good practice, to content that we publish ourselves, including articles, program materials and images. It forms part of our Terms & Conditions.

This policy covers copyright only. If you have a concern about trademarks, privacy or other rights, please contact us directly at [email protected] and describe the issue.

2. Our designated copyright agent

Please send all notices of claimed infringement and counter-notifications to our designated agent:

SecuritySage

Attn: DMCA Agent

Lakewood, Ohio 44107, USA

Email: [email protected]

Email is the fastest way to reach us. Please use the subject line “DMCA Notice” or “DMCA Counter-Notification” so that your message is routed correctly. Our designated agent handles copyright matters only; other inquiries sent to this address under a DMCA subject line may not receive a response through this process.

3. How to submit a notice of infringement

If you are a copyright owner, or are authorized to act on behalf of one, and you believe that material on the Site infringes your copyright, please send a written notification to our designated agent. Under 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3), to be effective, your notice must include substantially the following:

1. Signature: a physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. A typed full legal name at the end of an email is generally acceptable as an electronic signature.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work: identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works.
3. Identification of the infringing material: identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, together with information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material. The most helpful way to do this is to provide the full URL of each page on the Site where the material appears and a description of the specific item (for example, the image file name or the paragraph concerned).
4. Contact information: information reasonably sufficient to permit us to contact you, such as your name, postal address, telephone number and email address.
5. Good faith statement: a statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law.
6. Accuracy and authority statement: a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Before sending a notice, please consider whether the use may be permitted, for example under an open license or as fair use under 17 U.S.C. §107 (such as short quotations for commentary or education). The Copyright Act requires copyright owners to consider fair use before submitting a takedown notice.

A notice that does not substantially comply with these requirements may not be effective. If your notice is incomplete, we may contact you to ask for the missing information, where we are able to do so.

4. What happens after we receive a valid notice

When we receive a notice that substantially complies with the DMCA, we will:

• act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material identified in the notice;
• take reasonable steps to promptly notify the person who posted the material (where the material was posted by a user, such as in a blog comment), and provide them with a copy of the notice or a summary of it; and
• keep a record of the notice and our response.

Where the material was published by SecuritySage itself, we will review the claim promptly and remove, replace, license or correctly credit the material as appropriate. We may also contact you to discuss the claim.

Please note that a copy of your notice, including your name and contact details, may be shared with the person who posted the material so that they can respond. We handle the personal information in notices in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

5. Counter-notification process

If material you posted was removed or disabled because of a DMCA notice, and you believe in good faith that it was removed as a result of a mistake or misidentification, you may send a counter-notification to our designated agent. Under 17 U.S.C. §512(g)(3), to be effective, your counter-notification must include substantially the following:

1. Signature: your physical or electronic signature.
2. Identification of the material: identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled, and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or disabled (for example, the URL of the page).
3. Statement under penalty of perjury: 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 of the material to be removed or disabled.
4. Contact details and consent to jurisdiction: your name, 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 SecuritySage may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided the original notification or an agent of that person.

What happens next: when we receive a valid counter-notification, we will promptly provide a copy to the person who submitted the original notice and inform them that we will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to it in 10 business days. We will then restore the material not less than 10 and not more than 14 business days after receiving the counter-notification, unless our designated agent first receives notice from the original complainant that they have filed an action seeking a court order to restrain you from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the Site.

Please be aware that your counter-notification, including your contact details, will be shared with the original complainant, who may use that information to file a lawsuit against you.

6. Repeat infringer policy

In accordance with 17 U.S.C. §512(i), SecuritySage has adopted a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts and access privileges of users who are repeat infringers. Under this policy:

• we keep a record of valid DMCA notices concerning content posted by each user or account;
• a user who is the subject of multiple valid notices that are not successfully countered may have their comments disabled, their content removed and their account suspended or terminated;
• we may treat a single instance of clear, willful infringement as sufficient to terminate access; and
• we may also block repeat infringers from creating new accounts or posting new comments.

We apply this policy at our discretion, taking into account the circumstances of each case, including whether a counter-notification was filed and whether the material was later restored. Termination of an account does not entitle the user to a refund of any program purchase where the termination results from repeated infringement.

7. Misrepresentation and abuse

Under 17 U.S.C. §512(f), any person who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material or activity is infringing, or that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, may be liable for damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, the copyright owner or its licensee, or by SecuritySage as the service provider, as a result of our relying on that misrepresentation.

Please make sure that you are, or are authorized to act for, the copyright owner, and that the use is not permitted by license or law, before sending a notice. If you are unsure whether material infringes your copyright, you may wish to seek independent advice before contacting us. We reserve the right to disregard notices that appear to be fraudulent, abusive or sent to suppress lawful content, such as criticism or commentary.

8. Open-licensed images and attribution requests

Many images on the Site come from Wikimedia Commons and are used under open licenses, such as Creative Commons licenses or public domain dedications. We credit these images, including the author, the license and a link to the source where available, on our image credits page. We do our best to follow each license’s attribution requirements.

If you are the author or licensor of an image used on the Site and:

• the credit is missing, incomplete or incorrect;
• you would like to be credited differently (for example, under a different name or with a link to your own site);
• you believe the license terms are not being followed; or
• you believe the image was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons without your permission;

please email [email protected] with the subject line “Image Credit Request,” the URL of the page where the image appears, a link to the original file, and the change you would like us to make. You do not need to send a formal DMCA notice for a simple attribution correction. We aim to respond within five business days and will correct the credit or, if you prefer, remove or replace the image. If you believe an image was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons without authorization, we also encourage you to raise this with Wikimedia Commons so it can be addressed at the source.

9. Use of SecuritySage content by others

Our articles, programs, templates and other materials are protected by copyright. If you believe a third party is copying our content without permission, please let us know. If you would like to reuse our content beyond what our Terms & Conditions allow, please ask us first; we are often happy to grant permission for non-commercial educational use with proper attribution.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this DMCA Policy from time to time, including to reflect changes in the law or in our designated agent’s details. The updated version will be posted on this page with a new “Last updated” date.

11. Contact

For copyright notices and counter-notifications, please write to our designated agent as described in section 2. For any other questions about this policy, contact us at [email protected] or through our contact page.