Copyright & DMCA Policy

1. Scope of this policy

This policy applies to material made available on or through the Aravien service. It is intended to provide a practical path for copyright owners and users while preserving the safe-harbor protections available under Section 512 of the DMCA for qualifying service providers. Submitting a notice under this policy does not waive any rights; submitting a counter-notice does not waive any rights.

Aravien is a U.S.-oriented editorial service. We will in good faith consider notices that comply in substance with the DMCA regardless of the sender’s jurisdiction. If you prefer a different legal basis (for example, a national copyright regime or the EU framework), you should still provide the information required below so that we can evaluate the claim.

2. What Aravien actually hosts

We think it is useful to be specific about what content Aravien actually serves, because it affects where a valid takedown belongs:

• Aravien editorial text. Commentary, rationales, pathway descriptions, regional lenses, and adjacency explanations are authored by Aravien. If you believe Aravien editorial text reproduces your copyrighted work without permission, send a notice under this policy.
• Third-party metadata we display. Titles, credits, dates, identifiers, and similar factual metadata are drawn from open catalogs (including Wikidata, MusicBrainz, OpenLibrary, TVMaze, and Cover Art Archive). Bare factual metadata is generally not copyrightable, but specific textual descriptions or images can be. Send a notice under this policy if you believe such material as displayed on Aravien is infringing.
• Third-party images and cover art. Where we display posters, covers, or stills, they are typically served via hotlinks to third-party sources. Send a notice under this policy and we will address Aravien’s display of them; you may also need to address the upstream host separately.
• Embedded third-party video. Trailer previews play via an iframe pointed at YouTube’s servers. Aravien does not host, copy, or cache that video data. Takedown of a specific video from YouTube must be submitted to YouTube directly through its own copyright process. We will promptly remove an embed from Aravien on receipt of a valid notice pointing to the specific embed.
• Member notes and shelf content. Signed-in members can save references to works and add private notes visible only to themselves. These are not public. If you nonetheless have a good-faith basis to believe a member’s private notes infringe your rights, send a notice under this policy and we will evaluate it.

3. How to file a copyright notice

To submit a notice of claimed copyright infringement, send a written communication to our designated copyright agent (see Section 11). We strongly prefer email. Please use the subject line “DMCA Notice — Aravien.”

We can only act on notices that contain the information required by the DMCA. Incomplete notices will be returned with a request for the missing information.

4. What a notice must contain

To be effective, a notice of claimed infringement must include substantially the following, as required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3):

1. A physical or electronic signature of the person authorised to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple works on the service are covered by a single notice, a representative list of those works.
3. Identification of the material 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 — ideally the specific Aravien URL(s) where the material appears.
4. Information reasonably sufficient to permit us to contact you, such as your full name, postal address, telephone number, and an email address.
5. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorised to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

5. Warnings about false notices

Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), any person who knowingly 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, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorised licensee, or by Aravien, as a result of our reliance on that misrepresentation.

Before submitting a notice, please consider whether the use you are objecting to may be fair use, licensed, protected commentary, criticism, news reporting, scholarship, or research. Notices that target clearly protected editorial commentary or factual reference may be refused and may expose the sender to liability.

6. What Aravien does when it receives a valid notice

When we receive a notice that complies in substance with the DMCA, we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material identified in the notice. We will take reasonable steps promptly to notify the user who posted the material, if any, that the material has been removed or access disabled. We may provide the user with a copy of the notice (redacted where required by applicable law).

For third-party media that Aravien merely embeds (for example, a YouTube trailer iframe), “removal” means removing the embed from the affected Aravien page; we cannot remove content that lives on a third-party service, and you may need to submit a separate notice to that service’s own copyright process.

7. Counter-notice process

If you are a user whose material was removed or to which access was disabled by Aravien in response to a DMCA notice, you may submit a counter-notice. To be effective, a counter-notice must include substantially the following, as required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3):

1. Your physical or electronic signature.
2. Identification of the material that was removed or to which access was disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access disabled.
3. 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.
4. Your full name, postal address, 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 Aravien may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the person who submitted the original notice, or an agent of that person.

On receipt of an effective counter-notice, we will provide a copy to the person who filed the original notice and inform them that we may restore the material in ten (10) to fourteen (14) business days unless we first receive notice from them that they have filed a court action seeking to restrain the user from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material.

8. Repeat infringer policy

It is Aravien’s policy, in appropriate circumstances, to terminate the accounts of users who we determine, in our reasonable discretion, to be repeat infringers of copyright. We may take into account the number, frequency, and nature of valid notices we have received against a given user, whether a user has had material repeatedly removed, the existence and outcome of any counter-notices, whether the user has engaged in behaviour indicating a pattern of infringement, and any other relevant factor. We may also, at our discretion, take lesser action — including warning a user or removing specific material — short of account termination.

9. Standard technical measures

Aravien accommodates and does not interfere with standard technical measures used by copyright owners to identify or protect copyrighted works, as that term is used in 17 U.S.C. § 512(i).

10. Trademark and other complaints

This policy is specific to copyright. If you believe content on Aravien infringes a trademark, violates a right of publicity, or is otherwise unlawful (for example, defamatory or privacy-violating), please contact us at [email protected] with a subject line identifying the type of complaint, a description of the material and its location on Aravien, the basis for your claim, and the rights or interests you assert. We evaluate non-copyright complaints on a case-by-case basis.

11. Designated copyright agent

Notices under this policy should be sent to Aravien’s designated copyright agent:

The designated copyright agent of Steamed World L.L.C. is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(2). You may verify the current registration through the U.S. Copyright Office’s DMCA Designated Agent Directory.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in the service, applicable law, or our practices. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. Your continued use of the service after the changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.