Copyright contact: DigitalFreedom Global LLC, 30 N Gould St, Ste N, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States · hello@digitalfreedom.co.za

1. Introduction

DigitalFreedom Global LLC respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects the same of everyone using Snapshots. This policy is the route for a copyright complaint about anything in the app or on this website.

It is written against the frameworks that apply where Snapshots is distributed, in particular: the DMCA, 17 U.S.C. § 512 (United States); the DSM Directive (EU) 2019/790, the E-Commerce Directive and the Digital Services Act (European Union); the UrhG and DDG (Germany); the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (United Kingdom); the Copyright Act and notice-and-notice regime (Canada); the Copyright Act 1968 (Australia); the 著作権法 and the Provider Liability Limitation Act (Japan); the 저작권법 (South Korea); Law No. 9.610/1998 and the Marco Civil (Brazil); and the Copyright Act, 1957 with the IT Act, 2000 (India).

2. What Snapshots contains — and what it does not

Every word and every image in Snapshots is produced by us: the words and their translations by GPT-4o, the three hint images per puzzle by DALL·E 3, in a generation job on our own servers. Nothing is uploaded by a player, and nothing is hosted on anybody’s behalf.

The only content a player contributes is the player name they type in. If a name infringes your trademark or another right, § 3 is the route; we can remove or rename it.

3. Filing a copyright notice

Send a notice to hello@digitalfreedom.co.za containing:

Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to be infringed.
Identification of the allegedly infringing material — the screen, the URL, the puzzle, or the player name, with enough detail for us to find it.
Your contact information — name, postal address, telephone number, email address.
A good-faith statement that the use is not authorised by you, your agent or the law.
An accuracy statement, under penalty of perjury for a DMCA notice, that the information is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for the owner.
A signature, physical or electronic.

A notice that does not substantially comply may not be acted on; we may ask for more information before processing it.

4. How we respond

We review the notice for completeness and plausibility.
Where the claim is made out, we remove or disable the material expeditiously — for a puzzle that means withdrawing it from the active set, for a player name renaming or removing it.
Where a player is affected, we inform them, with the reason.
We keep a record of the notice and of what we did.

Jurisdiction	Standard we work to
United States (DMCA)	Expeditious removal on a valid notice
European Union (DSA)	Without undue delay, weighted by the type of content and urgency
Germany (DDG)	Immediate removal on knowledge of illegal content
United Kingdom	Expeditious removal on obtaining knowledge
Canada	Notice forwarded to the affected user; removal is not automatic
Everywhere else	In accordance with applicable local law

5. If we removed something of yours

If your player name was removed or renamed and you believe that was a mistake, write to hello@digitalfreedom.co.za and say why. We will look again and restore it where the objection is justified and no third-party right stands in the way. Because nothing else in Snapshots is user-supplied, there is no material for which a DMCA counter-notification under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) could arise — but if you want to put one on the record anyway, we will treat it as such and forward it to the complainant.

6. Repeat infringement

Where the same person repeatedly supplies infringing material — in practice, repeatedly choosing infringing player names — we escalate: warning and removal, then temporary restriction, then permanent exclusion from the leaderboard. We weigh the number and severity of the infringements, whether the person acted in good faith, and proportionality.

7. Misuse of notices

Knowingly filing a false or misleading notice can mean liability for damages under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), civil liability for abuse of process or tortious interference, criminal liability under applicable law, and exclusion from the Services. Notices and objections must be made in good faith.

8. Liability position

United States: the § 512 safe harbour is not relied on. It is available only to a provider that has registered a designated agent with the U.S. Copyright Office under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(2). No agent is registered, because Snapshots stores no material at the direction of users — § 512(c) is not engaged in the first place. If that ever changes, an agent will be registered before the safe harbour is invoked.
European Union: the liability rules of Art. 4 to 6 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, applicable through § 7(1) DDG, and the absence of a general monitoring obligation under Art. 8.
Germany: the NetzDG was repealed by the Digital Services Act Implementation Act with effect from 6 May 2024, save for § 5 on the agent for service. Its 24-hour and 7-day deadlines, its regulated self-regulation and its transparency reports no longer exist and are not undertaken here.
United Kingdom: the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. The Online Safety Act 2023 applies to user-to-user and search services; Snapshots is neither, so its content-moderation duties are not engaged.
Brazil: under the Marco Civil, content is generally removed on judicial order; for copyright specifically, notice-and-takedown may apply under Law No. 9.610/1998.

9. Our own rights

The Snapshots name and logo, the app, this website, the puzzle set and its images are ours. Use beyond what copyright law permits requires our written consent. Third-party trademarks that appear here are used nominatively — see the trademark notice. Open-source components and their licence terms are listed in the open source notices.

10. Contact

DigitalFreedom Global LLC — Copyright 30 N Gould St, Ste N, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States hello@digitalfreedom.co.za