Copyright & Takedown Policy
Effective date: 1 August 2026 · Version 2.0
This policy explains how APERTURESyndicate OÜ handles copyright and trademark across the platform, and how rightsholders can ask us to remove infringing material.
Our primary procedure is the EU one. We are established in Republic of Estonia (EU), so the notice-and-action mechanism under Article 16 of the EU Digital Services Act is the route we operate. We also accept DMCA notices under 17 U.S.C. §512 from US rightsholders who prefer that route — Section 6.
Scope. This policy applies to all user content across the platform: messages and uploads in chat, AI-generated images and characters in ASAI, music and cover art on Resonance and ASMusic, datasets on ETHERANE, user profiles, and developer-facing content. Roleplay characters and worlds have additional detail in ASAI Roleplay IP & Copyright — that document adds specifics but does not change the strike ladder, which lives here and only here (Section 5).
If you are a rightsholder reporting infringement, go straight to Section 2.
We write these documents in good faith and keep them accurate to how the platform actually works. They have not yet been reviewed by qualified Estonian legal counsel.
1. We respect intellectual property — and we expect you to
APERTURESyndicate hosts content created by its users. We do not author it and we do not pre-screen it: nothing checks an upload, a generated image, a track, a dataset or a character before it appears. Under EU law (the e-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC and the Digital Services Act) and US law (the DMCA) we operate as an intermediary host — we are not the author, we act on valid notices, and we terminate repeat infringers.
If you upload or generate content on the platform, you confirm that:
- You own the rights to it, or you otherwise have permission to use it — a licence, a copyright exception under EU or Estonia law, fair use, or the public domain.
- You will not upload official artwork, screenshots, recordings, stills, master recordings, logos, or other material owned by someone else without authorisation.
- You accept that if a rightsholder objects, or the situation is clearly infringing, we may remove or disable the content — including before a claim is fully resolved.
Responsibility for what you publish rests with you.
2. How to submit a notice
Send your notice to [email protected] with "Copyright notice" (or "Trademark", Section 8) in the subject line. We accept notices in English or Estonian.
A single format works for both the EU and the DMCA route. Include:
- Identification of the work you say has been infringed. If the notice covers several works, a representative list is enough.
- The exact location of the material on the platform — a direct link where possible, or a description specific enough for us to find it without an unreasonable manual search.
- A sufficiently substantiated explanation of why the use is infringing.
- Your contact details — name and email at minimum, so we can acknowledge the notice and follow up.
- A good-faith statement that you believe the use is not authorised by the rightsholder, its agent, or the law, and that the information in your notice is accurate.
- Authority — that you are the rightsholder or are authorised to act for them.
For a DMCA notice, items 4–6 have additional formal requirements — see Section 6.
Timing. We aim to acknowledge complete notices within 72 hours. We are two people; a complex notice may take longer. Notices missing a required element may be returned to you as incomplete.
3. What we do when a notice is valid
- Remove or disable access to the identified content without undue delay.
- Notify the uploader with a statement of reasons under Article 17 of the Digital Services Act and a copy of the notice, so they can respond or file a counter-notice. We may pass on your contact details unless you ask us to redact them; note that the law may require disclosure of your identity to enable a counter-notice or further legal process.
- Record a strike against the uploader's account (Section 5).
- Log the notice and the action taken.
If a notice is incomplete or unclear, we may come back to you before acting.
If we decline, we tell you why. Declining a notice is also logged.
4. Counter-notice
If your content was removed and you believe it was a mistake or a misidentification, send a counter-notice to [email protected].
Include:
- Identification of the removed content — the link or a description of the material and where it appeared.
- A statement that you believe in good faith that the content was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification.
- Your contact details — name, email, and a postal address.
- Your signature — physical or electronic; a typed full name is enough.
For a DMCA counter-notice under §512(g)(3), items 2–4 have additional formal requirements and you must consent to jurisdiction — see Section 6.
What happens next. We forward your counter-notice to the party who filed the original notice. If they do not tell us within 10–14 business days that they have filed a court action seeking to restrain the activity, we may restore the content. If they do file, the content stays down until the matter is resolved.
We do not adjudicate ownership disputes. Our role is to run the procedure correctly.
5. Repeat infringers — the strike ladder
This is the single, authoritative statement of what a strike means. No other document restates it, so that a third strike cannot come to mean two different things in two places.
| Strike | What happens |
|---|---|
| First | Content removed, warning sent. No further account action. |
| Second | Content removed, publishing and upload privileges suspended — typically for 30 days. |
| Third | Content removed and the account terminated, including a bar on creating new content. |
Severe single strike. For clear, intentional, or large-scale infringement we may terminate an account immediately, without going through the steps above.
Expiry. A strike expires after 12 months of clean behaviour.
Contesting a strike. If you believe a strike was issued in error, write to [email protected] within 14 days of being notified. To be unambiguous: this 14-day window is our own internal copyright process — it is not, and does not purport to be, an appeal under Article 20 of the Digital Services Act. We do not operate an Article 20 internal complaint-handling system at all; as a micro enterprise we are exempt from it, as explained in DSA Notice & Action, Section 7. Separately, and without any deadline, you can always write to [email protected] and a person will re-read the decision. Your right to go to court is unaffected.
6. DMCA — for US rightsholders
If you are a US rightsholder and prefer to proceed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we accept notices and counter-notices at the same address, [email protected].
A DMCA notice under §512(c)(3) must additionally include:
- your physical address and, where available, a telephone number;
- a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you are the rightsholder or authorised to act on their behalf; and
- your physical or electronic signature — a typed full name is acceptable.
A DMCA counter-notice under §512(g)(3) must additionally include:
- a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification;
- your physical address and telephone number;
- consent to jurisdiction — of the federal district court for your address, or, if you are outside the United States, of any judicial district in which we may be found (in practice the courts of Tallinn) — and agreement to accept service of process from the person who filed the original notice; and
- your signature.
Everything else — how we act on the notice, the counter-notice timeline, and the strike ladder — is the same as in Sections 3 to 5.
7. Abuse of the process
The procedure exists to protect genuine rightsholders. Misusing it has consequences.
- Knowingly false notices. A notice that materially misrepresents that content is infringing — or a counter-notice that materially misrepresents that content was wrongly removed — can create legal liability. Under the DMCA, a party who knowingly misrepresents may be liable for damages, including costs and legal fees, to anyone injured.
- Repeat or bad-faith filers. We may decline to process notices from senders who repeatedly submit fraudulent, abusive, or manifestly unfounded claims. We do this under our own terms, proportionately and case by case — we do not operate the formal Article 23 misuse procedure, from which the micro-enterprise exemption relieves us.
8. Trademark
Trademark issues are related to but distinct from copyright, and they come through the same inbox. Write to [email protected] with "Trademark" in the subject line and include:
- your registration details and the jurisdictions where the mark is registered;
- the goods or services the mark covers;
- a link to or description of the content you are objecting to; and
- the good-faith and authority statements from Section 2.
We assess the complaint under applicable trademark law. We are particularly responsive to uses that imply official affiliation, registered logos used as profile or cover imagery, and content engineered to create source confusion.
9. Relationship to our other documents
- DSA Notice & Action is the general illegal-content mechanism. A copyright or trademark notice submitted here is also treated as a DSA notice, and the statement of reasons in Section 3 is the Article 17 statement.
- Acceptable Use Policy sets out what our own rules forbid, independently of whether content is illegal.
- ASAI Roleplay IP & Copyright adds roleplay-specific detail — which universes must not be published, how the universe field works — on top of this policy.
- ASMusic Distribution Terms and the Datasets Terms set out the rights warranties that sellers and artists give us.
Contact
| Purpose | Contact |
|---|---|
| Copyright and trademark notices, counter-notices, strike disputes | [email protected] |
| Illegal content generally | [email protected] — subject "Illegal content" |
| General support | [email protected] |
We accept correspondence in English or Estonian.
APERTURESyndicate OÜ Registry code 17384111 · VAT EE102972654 Priisle tee 8, Lasnamäe linnaosa, Tallinn, Harju maakond, 13914, Estonia Company registration details
This policy is governed by the law of Estonia, with the courts of Tallinn having jurisdiction, and is subject to the GDPR, the EU Digital Services Act, and applicable Estonia and EU law. The English-language version is the controlling version.
Version history
- v2.0 — 2026-08-01 — Restructured around the EU notice-and-action procedure as the primary route, with the DMCA kept as a dedicated section for US rightsholders. The strike ladder is now stated here and nowhere else, so a third strike means the same thing in every document. The 14-day window is explicitly identified as our own internal copyright process and not an Article 20 appeal. Removed the promises of internal complaint handling, out-of-court dispute settlement and DSA transparency reporting, none of which we operate. Company and contact details moved to shared placeholders.
- v1.0 — 2026-06-22 — Initial publication.