Copyright and DMCA Policy

Copyright on WAValt

You keep your rights. We act when a person reports a problem.

You keep the rights to the work you upload. We expect you to hold the rights to every file you put into WAValt and every file you send with it. That includes samples, loops, stems, session files, and anything a collaborator handed you.

If someone tells us that a file here infringes their copyright, we act on it. This page explains how to tell us, how the person who uploaded the file can answer, and what happens to an account that keeps getting complaints.

We do not scan your files for this. There is no automatic content matching and no audio fingerprinting, and we do not go through your uploads looking for infringement. We act when a person reports it.

The process below follows a United States law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, at title 17 of the United States Code, section 512. In plain words, that law gives a rights owner a way to ask for material to be switched off, and gives the person who uploaded it a way to answer.

We have a designated agent registered with the United States Copyright Office for receiving copyright notices. The details are below.

Unreleased music and leaks

The part of the industry WAValt was built for. Read this one.

Producers send unreleased beats and unreleased masters to artists, managers, and A and R people every day, and sometimes one of those files gets out.

Tell us straight away. A report about unreleased material is urgent and we treat it that way. It does not sit in a queue behind everything else. We can switch off the link, switch off the file, and sort out the paperwork afterwards.

You do not need a perfect DMCA notice to report a leak. An email from you, from the label, or from the manager, naming the track and the account, is enough for us to act. Send a full notice afterwards if you want the rest of the process to run.

Now the honest part. We can switch off a link and we can switch off a file. We cannot reach a copy that someone has already downloaded. Once a file is on another person’s machine it is on their machine, and nobody can call it back. There is also no agreement between us and the person who received your file, because nobody is asked to agree to anything at the download page, so a recipient who leaks is answerable to copyright law rather than to this policy.

What you can do inside WAValt is keep expiry short and revoke a link the moment you no longer need it. A link is a key, and anyone holding it can open it until it expires or you revoke it.

The agent for copyright notices

The law asks us to name one agent to receive copyright notices, and to publish that agent’s name, street address, phone number, and email address where you can find them.

Send copyright notices to this agent rather than to general support, so they reach the right person without a delay. Email is the fastest way in. Post reaches the same person and takes longer. Both count.

Here are the details.

• Agent name: Joseph Verdi.
• Company: Wiaterra LLC.
• Street address: 1908 Pomona Ave., STE D, Costa Mesa, CA 92627, United States.
• Phone: 949-346-1513.
• Email: dmca@wavalt.com.

How to send a takedown notice

There is no form to fill in. Write to the agent above, in your own words, and put in the six things the law asks for. A notice that leaves one out may not count, so it is worth checking the list before you send.

• Your signature. An electronic signature is fine. Typing your full name at the end counts as one.
• The work you own. Name the song, the beat, the recording, or the sample you say has been copied. If there are several, list them.
• The material you want switched off, and enough information for us to find it. A share link is best. If you do not have one, read the next section.
• How to reach you. Your address, your phone number, and your email address.
• A statement that you believe in good faith that this use of the material is not authorized by you, by your agent, or by the law.
• A statement that the information in your notice is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that you own the right or are authorized to act for the owner.

If you cannot give us a link

Most files on WAValt are sent privately, from one person to a few named people. So if your track is here, you may never have seen the link and cannot paste one. That is the usual case here, not the odd one, and it does not stop us.

Send whatever you do have. Any one of these is often enough for us to find the file and the account behind it.

• A share link, if one ever reached you, even an expired one.
• The exact file name or pack name as you saw it, including the file extension.
• The email address or the WAValt username of the person you believe uploaded it.
• The email address the file was delivered to.
• The date, or roughly when, the file was sent or received.
• A screenshot of the delivery email or of the download page.

What we can do when we get a notice

What we reserve the right to do, not an automatic pipeline.

A complete notice puts all of this on the table. Depending on what it names and what we find, that can mean any of these:

• Reading your notice and checking it against the six things above.
• Switching off access to the material it names.
• Telling the account holder who uploaded it, and sending them a copy of your notice. That copy includes your name and your contact details, so they can answer it if they believe it is wrong.
• Keeping a record of the notice, what it named, and what we did about it.
• Weighing the complaint when we look at whether that account is a repeat infringer.

We act on reports as quickly as we can. We do not promise a response inside a set number of hours, because that is not a promise we could be sure of keeping.

We do not quietly bin an imperfect notice. If your notice names the work, names the material, and tells us how to reach you, but is missing something else, we will come back to you and say what is missing so you can complete it. The fastest way to avoid that round trip is to send all six things the first time.

How switching off works

We act on the file, not on the one link named in the notice. One file on WAValt can have many share links, and killing only the link you saw would leave the others working, which would be useless to you.

So when we switch off material, every link to that file stops working. That includes links nobody complained about, and links held by people who did nothing wrong.

Where we can, we switch material off in a way that can be undone, so it can go back if a counter-notice succeeds. That is not always possible. If a file has already been deleted, by the account holder or by us, the stored copy is gone for good. We keep no backups, so keep your own copy of your work.

How to answer a takedown notice

The law calls your answer a counter-notice.

If your file was switched off and you believe that was a mistake, you can answer. Send your counter-notice to the same agent, at the same address, as the notice.

Send one only if you genuinely believe the file was switched off by mistake, or that the wrong file was named. You sign it under penalty of perjury, so a false one is a serious matter.

If you do nothing, the material stays switched off. There is no deadline for answering, but nothing moves until you do.

Your counter-notice has to contain these things.

• Your signature. Electronic is fine. Typing your full name counts.
• The material that was switched off, and where it was on WAValt before that happened. The file name and the share link are usually enough.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that you believe in good faith that the material was switched off because of a mistake, or because it was wrongly identified.
• Your name, your address, and your phone number.
• Your agreement to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the district where you live. If you live outside the United States, that is any district where WAValt can be found.
• Your agreement to accept service of process from the person who sent the notice, or from that person’s agent.

The jurisdiction line is the piece people leave out, and a counter-notice without it does not count. In plain words it means this. You agree that a court in one particular place can decide the argument about this file, and you agree to accept legal papers from the person who complained. You are not agreeing that you were wrong. You are agreeing where the fight would happen if there is one.

What happens after a counter-notice

We pass your counter-notice to the person who sent the notice. They get a copy, and that copy includes your name, your address, and your phone number. There is no way around that. The law requires it, and you should know it before you send.

Then we wait. If that person does not tell us they have gone to court to stop you using the material, we put the material back. That happens between 10 and 14 business days after we receive your counter-notice.

If they do go to court and tell us, the material stays switched off and the rest is between the two of you.

We do not decide who is right. We are not a judge of who owns what and we do not pick a side. We follow the process, we keep the record, and we stay out of the argument.

Repeat infringers

The law requires us to publish this policy, so here it is.

This section is a legal requirement, not a courtesy. The law says we must have a policy for accounts that keep getting copyright complaints, and that we must tell you what it is.

The policy is this. An account that collects repeated copyright complaints can be closed, and the account holder loses the account and the files in it.

We do not run a strike counter and we do not publish a number of strikes. A fixed number sounds fair and is not, because one careless week and a settled habit are not the same thing. What we look at is the pattern: how many complaints, how serious they are, how far apart, and what the account holder did once they were told.

Two things we do not hold against you. A complaint that the sender withdraws. And a complaint you answer with a counter-notice, where the material goes back up.

If we close your account for repeated infringement, do not open another one. We may refuse a new account in your name or from your email address.

False claims

The law is blunt about this, and it points both ways.

If you knowingly claim that material is infringing when it is not, you can be made to pay for the harm that causes. If you knowingly claim that material was switched off by mistake when it was not, the same is true. In either case that can include the other side’s costs and legal fees, and ours.

A label sending a careless notice and a producer sending a false counter-notice are in the same position. Neither one gets the benefit of the doubt because of who they are.

So take a minute before you send either one. Check that you actually hold the right. Check that the file is the one you think it is. If a sample is in play, check who cleared it. And think about whether the use might be allowed anyway, because some uses, such as commentary and criticism, do not need permission.

Trademarks and other rights

This policy is about copyright. Other rights work differently and the DMCA process above does not apply to them.

If you think something on WAValt uses your trademark, your artist name, your logo, or your likeness without permission, write to the same address as a copyright notice and say clearly that it is not a copyright claim. Tell us which right you hold, show us that you hold it, point us at the material, and tell us what you want done.

The WAValt name and logo are not yours to use. What you may and may not do with them sits in the Terms of Service, under "The WAValt name and logo", not on this page.

Changes to this policy

We update this page when the process changes, and when the agent details change. The version and the date at the top tell you which one you are reading.

This policy forms part of the Terms of Service. When a change matters, we post the new version and the Terms acceptance flow is where you are asked about it.