Designation of Agents to Receive Notifications of Claimed Infringement

This rule was amended by a subsequent final rule, effective May 10, 2017. Information about the amendment is available here.


The Copyright Office has issued a final rule governing the designation of agents to receive notifications of claimed infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). Under section 512 of title 17, the Office is required to maintain a “current directory” of agents that have been designated by online service providers to receive notifications of claimed infringement. To modernize its practices, the Office has created a new fully-electronic online system through which service providers can more efficiently submit and update, and the public can more easily search for and find, designated agent information. The adopted final rule governs service provider use of the new system and updates what is required of service providers to remain compliant with section 512(c)(2).


The new regulations are effective as of December 1, 2016, the same date that the new electronic system and directory will be launched. Any service provider that has previously designated an agent with the Office will have until December 31, 2017 to submit a new designation electronically through the new online registration system.


As part of the transition to the new system, the Office’s present public directory of designated agents, generated by service providers’ paper filings, will be phased out on December 31, 2017. Until that time, an accurate designation in the old paper-generated directory will continue to satisfy the service provider’s obligations under section 512(c)(2), and the public will need to continue to search the paper-generated directory if the service provider is not yet listed in the new electronically-generated directory.


To help acquaint users with the new system, we have created the below video tutorials to show, step-by-step, how to use the system: