DMCA and copyright takedown

A takedown notice is a legal instrument, sworn under penalty of perjury. Two checks first, because they resolve most complaints faster than a notice would.

Check what we actually host.Many entries are links to an official store or an authorised third-party host. We cannot remove a file we do not hold — only the link to it. If the material is on someone else's server, your notice belongs with them; we will remove our link on request either way.

Check whether the licence already permits it.If the app is open source, its licence may allow redistribution, in which case a notice will fail on the merits. If you are the author and want your app off APKBrowse anyway, just ask — see section 3. We do not require a licence argument to honour a publisher's wishes about their own work.

To comply with 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), your notice must include all six of the following. A notice missing any of them is not actionable, and we will write back asking for the gap rather than acting on it.

1. 01A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorised to act on their behalf.
2. 02Identification of the work claimed to be infringed. If multiple works are covered by one notice, a representative list.
3. 03Identification of the materialto be removed, specific enough for us to locate it. For APKBrowse this means the package name and, where possible, the version and the SHA-256 shown on the listing. "All copies of our app" is not specific enough.
4. 04Your contact details — name, postal address, telephone number, and email.
5. 05A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. 06A statement that the information is accurate, and — under penalty of perjury — that you are authorised to act for the owner.

Two routes, depending on urgency and formality.

For anything urgent — an app that is actively harming users, or an obvious impersonation of your brand — use the report action on the listing itself as well. Reports land in the moderation queue immediately and a moderator can delist while the formal notice is still in the post. You do not need to be a rights holder to file a report.

If you are the publisher and simply want your own app removed, email the same address from a domain associated with the app. We will not ask you to construct a legal argument for control of your own software.

We aim to act on a complete notice within two working days. Where the claim is plausible on its face, we delist first and review after: the listing leaves search, its page, and every download source stops serving. That is a deliberate bias — the cost of a wrongly delisted app is a few days of unavailability, while the cost of wrongly hosted infringement compounds.

We notify the uploader with a copy of the notice, minus your telephone number and street address, and tell them how to file a counter-notice. We record the action in the audit log. If the notice covers a package we never hosted — only linked — we will tell you that plainly rather than claim credit for a removal we did not perform.

If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you may file a counter-notice under § 512(g). It must contain your signature; identification of the material and the location it appeared before removal; 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 name, address, and telephone number; and your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for your address, or — if you are outside the United States — any district in which APKBrowse may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the complainant.

We forward valid counter-notices to the complainant. If they do not tell us within ten to fourteen working days that they have filed an action seeking a court order, we may restore the material. This is a statutory timetable; we cannot shorten it, and we will not restore early because the wait is inconvenient.

A counter-notice is also sworn under penalty of perjury. If you do not hold the rights, do not file one — a rejected submission is a far cheaper outcome than a false statement to a court.

We terminate the upload privileges of repeat infringers, as § 512(i) requires. In practice we are stricter than the statute's floor: uploading pirated or cracked software is grounds for immediate and permanent removal of upload access, because that submission is not an accident.

For accounts whose infringement is more plausibly careless — redistributing a build they did not have the right to share, without evident commercial motive — we count notices. Two upheld notices produce a suspension; a third ends the account. Notices withdrawn by the complainant, or defeated by a counter-notice, are not counted.

Packages removed for infringement remain blocked from re-publication under any account until the rights holder tells us the position has changed.

Under § 512(f), anyone who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing is liable for the damages the misrepresentation causes, including the other party's legal costs. Takedown notices are not a tool for suppressing an unfavourable fork, a competitor, or a review. We read notices; we do not process them mechanically, and we push back on ones that appear to be about something other than copyright.