They copied my photos: what can actually be done
It happens to anyone publishing paid content, sooner or later, and more often than people admit. The first reaction is always the same: look for the way to make it all disappear right now.
That way doesn't exist. A slower one does, and it works — better to know it before you need it.
What you need before doing anything
A takedown request without evidence gets ignored, and trying again later counts against you. So the first thing isn't writing to anyone: it's recording.
You need to note where the copy sits — the exact page address, not the site — when you found it, and where it was taken from. If you have the original with its date, keep it: that's what proves the content is yours.
Do this before reporting, because copies sometimes vanish and reappear elsewhere, and without the record you start from scratch.
Who to write to, and in what order
The site hosting the copy. The most direct route. Serious sites have a form for it and answer within days.
Whoever provides the site's connection. This is for when the site ignores everything. It's slower — weeks — but it gets results where the first route gets none, because the provider has far more to lose than the site does.
The search engine. When a copy won't go away, you can ask for it to be dropped from search results. The file stays online but stops being findable — and in practice that changes nearly everything, because nobody reaches those sites without searching for them.
What signing requires
A takedown is a formal declaration: whoever signs it states they own the content and takes responsibility for what they've written. That's why a legal name and a contact address are needed, and without them it's refused.
Understandably, that worries people working under a pseudonym. Two things are worth knowing: those details serve that single request, and it isn't the same as the ID you'd hand a bank. If you'd rather not expose yourself, it's one of the reasons somebody does this on your behalf — we do, and how it works is written here.
Promises not to believe
"We'll make it disappear forever." Not possible. Whoever copied it does it again, and some sites sit in countries that never answer requests at all.
"We'll recover the money you lost." A takedown removes the file. It doesn't make someone who already watched for free pay for a subscription.
"We cover everything you publish." What you post publicly somewhere leaves the fence: from then on it's no longer an unlawful copy, and it's the most common reason a request gets refused.
What can genuinely be achieved
Keeping the number of copies in circulation low and the time they take to disappear short. Put like that it sounds modest, but it's the difference between content that's free on the first page of Google and content someone has to go hunting for — and that difference shows up in the subscriptions that don't get cancelled.