Due to a particular site (*cough*rule34.xxx*cough*), I feel that I should post this for the benefit of all of the artists who may have found their art surreptitiously uploaded to any site without their consent. Just to make sure that I declare this here and now, I am not an attorney. I am a systems engineer who has dealt with DMCA style takedowns both as a site admin and as an admin for a shared host. As such, this information is from that perspective, as this is how some requests achieved my attention on the matter.

First, keep the DMCA professional. That alone will win points with any staff. Do not use any profanity (except, if unavoidable, for the name of the work), make no threats, and realize that the person reading the takedown probably has just as little desire reading it as you probably have writing it.

Second, include links both to the offending work, and to accessing the offending work. For example, in Firefox, right click on the image, and select Image Properties. Next, you should right-click on the highlighted address, and select copy. That will give you the address directly to the image. Paste that in a document, then fetch the address out of the browser’s address bar and paste that in the same document. Then, get the URLs (if applicable) of your original work and include that. Follow that process for every infringing piece that you hold the copyright to on the site. You will want to include all of the offending pieces in one takedown notice if possible (it makes the admin's life much easier).

I created a template take-down notice that should provide notice pursuant to US and EU copyright laws and WTO treaties. It's located in a public Google Doc. This template is a work in progress, and I would love input from any legal-furries out there that licensed to practice in the US or Europe. And, if anyone has notification requirements for other jurisdictions to add to this letter, that would also be helpful. In the mean time, I recommend submitting this letter (with the appropriate information updated) to the hosts (the actual server owners) of those who have stolen your artwork, in addition to the site owner. This means that sites that repeatedly violate copyrights will get action taken upon them by the hosts so that they (the hosts/service providers) can retain their immunity to copyright action. If you wish to take the time, it may also be advantageous to you, the artist and copyright holder, to go through the host's Terms of Service agreement and/or Acceptible Use Policy and cite their copyright infringement provisions in the letter.

I used IPWatchdog's Sample DMCA Takedown Notice as the base for my template, and added the terminology that includes violations of Article 14 of the European Union's E-Commerce Directive law, the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (two international copyright treaties singed by member nations of the WTO). That should be enough to cover most service providers. And, most ISPs have provisions in their Terms of Use agreements and/or Acceptable Use Policies that prohibit the posting and/or distribution of copyrighted material (including artwork) without consent of the content creator.

It's relatively easy to find the actual host. The simplest way depends on the operating system. On Windows, click on Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt. In the box, type "nslookup <host>" and press enter. This will give you the actual IP address for that host. Take this IP address over to http://tools.whois.net/whoisbyip/ and find the owner of the host. Send the takedown notice to their abuse contact. For example:C:\Users\Kaze>nslookup rule34.xxx
Address: 192.168.1.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: rule34.xxx
Addresses: 2a00:1ca8:2a::24
178.21.23.190The part we are interested in is the "Addresses" part, particularly (in this case) "178.21.23.190". Take this to Whois (link above) to find this information:inetnum: 178.21.23.0 - 178.21.23.255
person: Gijs van Gemert
address: https://www.serverius.com
address: De Linge 26
address: 8253 PJ Dronten
address: The Netherlands
phone: +31 (0)88 73 78 374
nic-hdl: GVG18-RIPE
abuse-mailbox: abuse[at]serverius.com
remarks: Contact for customer IP space ranges
remarks: Please send email to "abuse@serverius.com" for complaints
remarks: regarding portscans, DoS attacks and spam.
mnt-by: SERVERIUS-MNT
source: RIPE #Filtered

route: 178.21.16.0/21
descr: Serverius Route Object
origin: AS50673
mnt-by: SERVERIUS-MNT
source: RIPE #FilteredHere, grab the "abuse-mailbox" and send the takedown notification there.

In the case of the site “rule34.xxx”, I would highly advice to follow a slightly different route. In this instance (and others like it) where the admins seem to be involved in willful infringement of your copyrighted works, include their ISP and registrar in all DMCA takedown requests. For rule34.xxx, here are the host, content distribution network (CDN) and registrar with contact information:Registrar
Name.com LLC
2500 E 2ND AVE # 2
DENVER CO 80206-4746
Abuse contact: http://www.name.com/abuse
TOS: http://www.name.com/policies/regist.....tion-agreement (Section 12 “Acceptable Use” is the most relevant)

Host
Serverius B.V.
De Linge 26
8253 PJ Dronten (The Netherlands)
support[at]serverius.com +31(0)88-7378374
Abuse: abuse[at]serverius.com
TOS: http://serverius.nl/algemeen/terms-and-sla (English: http://translate.google.nl/translate?hl=nl&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fserverius.nl%2Falgemeen%2Fterms-and-sla ): Section 7.3

CDN
Swiftway Poland
ul. Warszawska 44/1
15-062 Bialystok, Poland
0048 8574 111 10 - Main
0048 8574 111 10 - Fax
http://www.swiftway.net
support[at]swiftway.co.uk
TOS: http://swiftway.net/links/aup/ under General Conduct I hope that helps all those artists who are dealing with their artwork being stolen by less-than-honorable sites.