Copyright Notice and Takedown

What this process is

NovelVerse is operated by Dave Zachary Macarayo, an individual based in the Philippines. This policy is written against Republic Act No. 8293, the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines, and section 30 of Republic Act No. 8792, the Electronic Commerce Act. The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines is the domestic authority for copyright matters, and NovelVerse gives effect to orders it issues.

Notices are accepted from claimants in any jurisdiction. The form collects the elements a claimant familiar with United States practice will expect, so that nobody has to learn a second format — but that is convenience, not a legal posture. NovelVerse does not claim safe-harbor status under 17 U.S.C. section 512, designates no agent under that statute, and nothing in this policy should be read as an assertion of either.

Copyright submissions enter the same moderation case system as every other decision here, so a notice produces a recorded case, a human decision, a notice to the affected person, and a route to answer.

A Report is not a Copyright Notice

There are two ways to raise a copyright concern, and they are not interchangeable.

A **Report** is the low-friction control on chapters, novels, and comments, with a copyright or plagiarism reason. It asks for no legal declaration, it carries no assertion of authority, and it cannot by itself cause anything to be disabled on copyright grounds. It is the right tool for a reader who has noticed copied work.

A **Copyright Notice** is a formal legal submission by a rights holder or their authorised agent. It requires identification, declarations, and a signature, and it is the only path that can lead to material being disabled for infringement. It does not require a NovelVerse account.

A moderator may escalate a Report into the copyright process where the material warrants it, but nobody can manufacture rights-holder authority on a reporter's behalf: the escalated case still needs a claimant who holds the rights.

Plagiarism and copyright infringement are also not the same thing. Uncredited copying that infringes nobody's exclusive rights is handled under the Community Guidelines as a community matter, not here.

Sending a Copyright Notice

Use the Copyright Notice form linked from the Contact page. If you cannot use the form — because you are acting under an order, because your submission needs attachments the form will not take, or for any other reason — write to copyright@novelverse.ink and include the same elements.

A complete Notice contains all of the following:

• Your name and, if you are acting for someone else, the rights holder you represent and the basis of your authority.
• Contact details that reach you, including an email address you can receive at.
• Identification of the protected work — what it is, where it was published, and when.
• Identification of the material on NovelVerse you say infringes it, precise enough to find: the exact chapter, comment, image, or audio, with URLs.
• The jurisdiction whose law you are relying on.
• A statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by the rights holder, an agent, or the law.
• A statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.
• Your electronic signature.

What happens after you send one

You receive an automated acknowledgement with a case identifier immediately. That confirms arrival and nothing else — it is not a decision, and it is not an assessment of your claim.

A person then triages the submission. Triage rejects submissions that are abusive or that do not match their stated target, asks for missing elements where the claim is incomplete, and otherwise opens qualification review. Triage is due within 24 hours of arrival.

Where a complete evidence package exists, the qualification decision is due within two business days. Time spent waiting for information from you pauses that clock — the operator's obligation runs while the operator holds the ball, not while you do.

These are internal operating targets for a single-operator service. Missing one raises an operational alert and is recorded as an incident. It never causes content to be disabled, and it never causes a claim to succeed or fail on its own.

An order from a court or from IPOPHL is escalated immediately and follows the deadline the order itself states, not these targets.

Qualification: what actually disables content

A complete Notice is not a takedown. Structural completeness, verified contact details, and signed declarations never disable anything on their own. This is the most important paragraph in this policy, and it is deliberate: a process where filling in a form removes someone else's work is a censorship tool with a form in front of it.

Before anything is disabled, a person must record two findings. First, credible evidence connecting you — or the rights holder you act for — to the work you say is protected. Second, identification of the specific protected expression, matched against the specific material on NovelVerse you have named.

Evidence can take many forms and no particular one is required. A registration certificate, control of the authoritative original publication or publisher account, source files or dated creation records, a signed transfer, licence, or agency authorisation, or a court or IPOPHL order will all serve. Copyright registration is not a precondition.

What does not qualify: a title, an idea, a trope, a premise, a fact, a similar plot, or an assertion of ownership unsupported by anything. These are refused as a matter of course, and refusing them is not a judgement about your rights — it is a judgement about what this evidence shows.

Only once both findings are recorded does the Notice become a Qualified Copyright Notice, and only a Qualified Copyright Notice applies a Copyright Hold.

Qualification is an evidence threshold, not a finding of infringement. It says the claim is substantiated enough to disable access pending an answer. It does not decide who owns anything.

The Copyright Hold

A Hold disables public access to the identified material while preserving the material itself and the evidence around it. It is reversible by design, and reversing it is a routine outcome rather than an admission of failure.

The person who published the material is notified, told what was claimed and by whom, and given the Counter-Notice route. They keep access to their own work: they can read it, export it, and revise it privately.

What they cannot do is publish around the Hold. Re-uploading held material, or publishing a lightly altered successor to it, extends the Hold to the new copy rather than resetting the process.

Where the material has been revised to remove or license the claimed expression, a person can grant Revised Work Clearance — but only after confirming that the claimed expression is actually gone or actually authorised. The original revision, the Hold, the evidence, and the case history are all preserved either way.

Answering a Hold: the Counter-Notice

If your material has been held and you believe the claim is mistaken, you can answer it. Only the person who published the material, the account owner, or someone authorised to act for them may do so — through their signed-in account, or through the case-bound link in the notice if the account is unavailable.

A Counter-Notice identifies the exact Hold, states in good faith that the claim is a mistake or a misidentification, sets out the lawful basis for the material, supplies supporting evidence, carries an accuracy declaration, and is electronically signed.

You need a verified email address and control of the affected account or its case link. Government identity documents are not required by default.

A Counter-Notice is not a moderation appeal, and a moderation appeal cannot lift a Hold. They travel different routes because they answer different questions.

Once accepted, the relevant substance of your Counter-Notice is forwarded to the claimant, because the process cannot continue without it. Contact between the parties is mediated by default: NovelVerse passes messages rather than handing over your details. A home address or telephone number is disclosed only where it is legally necessary, and the Privacy Notice covers that handling.

If you are in the United States, or the claimant is proceeding under United States law, additional statutory elements may apply — consent to federal court jurisdiction and acceptance of service of process among them. Those are an extension for claims where United States law is engaged, not a requirement imposed on everyone.

Restoration on business day 11

Accepting and forwarding a valid Counter-Notice starts a ten-business-day clock for the claimant. At the start of business day 11, NovelVerse restores public access and notifies both parties.

Restoration is the default outcome and it is not the claimant's to veto. The only thing that continues a Hold past day 11 is verifiable evidence that a court or IPOPHL proceeding has actually been filed, or an enforceable order capable of restraining the exact material.

Repeating the claim does not continue the Hold. Neither does a threat to sue, a demand letter, a solicitor's correspondence, or another copy of the same form. This is stated bluntly because the pattern it describes is the ordinary way a takedown process becomes a permanent one.

Restoration is immediate, without waiting for day 11, if the claimant withdraws, acknowledges a mistake, or turns out not to hold the authority they asserted.

A Hold continued by legal action is reviewed every 90 days. It ends on withdrawal, dismissal, settlement, expiry of the order, or any final disposition that permits publication.

Abuse of this process

A claim that fails is not abuse. A mistaken claim made in good faith is not abuse. People misjudge what they own and misidentify what they are looking at, and that is an ordinary part of running this process.

Abuse is a finding a person makes, and it requires one of four things: knowing material falsity, fabricated authority, impersonation, or deliberate targeting of material the submitter knows is not the claimed work.

A finding comes with a notice explaining it and a route to challenge or correct it. A first finding is a warning. A second within twelve months adds identity checks, tighter submission limits, and mandatory second review of anything further.

Where fraud or impersonation is found, ordinary form intake may be suspended pending identity review. A valid court or IPOPHL order is never blocked by this, whoever delivers it.

NovelVerse keeps a non-public keyed marker to apply this rule, containing no evidence and no submission content. It expires twelve months after the most recent finding.

This section applies equally to Notices and to Counter-Notices, and a finding under it never disables or restores content by itself.

What is kept, and for how long

Submissions are snapshotted when they arrive, so what was claimed cannot be quietly edited afterwards. What happens next depends on how the case ends.

A submission that is rejected, abandoned, incomplete, or never qualified keeps its claimant details and evidence for 90 days after the case closes. The payload is then purged, leaving a content-free audit record that the case existed and how it ended.

A Qualified Notice, a Counter-Notice, a Hold, and the communications around them keep the minimum necessary case evidence for four years after final resolution, then are securely purged. Encrypted operational backups may retain a copy for at most 30 further days, as the Privacy Notice describes.

Only the claimed passages and the context needed to understand the decision are preserved — not whole works.

An active court or IPOPHL matter is retained while it is live and reviewed every 90 days. Retention beyond these periods requires a scoped legal hold recording who authorised it, why, who owns it, when it is reviewed, and when it expires.

Where this policy sits

This policy is part of the Terms of Use and is administered by Dave Zachary Macarayo. Where it and the Terms differ on a copyright matter, this policy governs.

Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here limits a right you have under Philippine law or under the law that applies to you.