Legal Complaints and Court Orders
If you feel that certain content on the site violates your rights or applicable laws, you may submit a legal complaint under our trademark, defamation, counterfeit, or other legal complaint flows. If you have a court order against an uploader, you may attach a copy of the court order in response to the autoreply that you receive after you file the appropriate legal complaint. Each court order is examined and evaluated based on a set of regional and global criteria.
Bear in mind that you also have other resources to bring content to our attention. For example, if you feel that the content does not comply with our Community Guidelines, please flag it. Also, consider whether the video meets the standards for removal under our privacy or harassment policy before filing a legal complaint.
Circumvention of Technological Measures
When we say circumvention of technological measures, we're referring to tools that allow users to evade a software's licensing protocol. This can mean serial numbers, keygens, passwords and other methods to hack software or games.
What is the difference between CTM and copyright?
CTM is a tool that will give users the means to access software. Copyright is concerned with the depiction of the software or the means to acquire it. If the software's interface is in the video, or there's a download link to the software in the video or video description, you may wish to file a copyright takedown notice.
If you believe that you have a valid CTM claim, please fill in our webform.
Submit a Circumvention of Technological Measures complaint
Captioning
If you've received a notice informing you that your video is in violation of the Communications and Video Accessibility Act, you may have uploaded content that was originally shown on TV with captions. The Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) requires that all pre-recorded video programming that is captioned on TV is also captioned on the Internet. If you believe that you're exempt from the CVAA requirement, you may select a certification for your content.
If you believe that a video is required by the CVAA to contain captions, but the uploader has not made captions available, please submit a request via webform.
United Kingdom Online Safety Act ('OSA')
The UK Online Safety Act aims to protect everyone in the UK from harmful content online. It sets rules for online platforms like Google to keep you safe. We implement various measures to protect you from illegal content and to minimise the presence of illegal content on our services.
How to Report Harmful Content
If you find content that you think violates our Community Guidelinesand want to submit it for review, report the content. To learn more about YouTube's policies, you can read our Community Guidelines. Alternatively, you can also report content if you believe that it should be removed for legal reasons.
In addition, we use a combination of manual processes and automated technology to identify and swiftly take down or restrict access to content that violates our Community Guidelines. For more information about our use of automated technology see How YouTube Works.
Legal Removal Process
When you submit a request through one of our legal webforms to remove content that you believe is illegal the request is routed to the team best positioned to help. Occasionally we might ask you for some more details.
Once we have made a decision on the request, we will inform you of the outcome and provide a reason for the decision, which may include taking the action requested, denying your request or taking some additional action that we deem appropriate. We typically make a decision within 10 working days, though some more complex cases may take longer. In limited circumstances, we may make a user aware that a legal complaint has been made against their content prior to any enforcement decision and, in the case of government/court requests, we may include the name of the complainant.
If you have filed a request to remove allegedly illegal content and we decided not to take action, or if you are a content owner whose content has been removed or restricted, you may have the right to file an appeal.
Once we have made a decision on the appeal, we will inform you of the outcome and provide a reason for the decision, which may include taking the action requested in your appeal, denying your appeal, or taking some alternative action that we deem appropriate. We typically make a decision within 10 working days, though some more complex cases may take longer.
Need Support? You're Not Alone.
If you or someone you know has experienced serious harm online, there is support available to help, through organisations and resources recommended by Ofcom.
Google’s compliance with the Online Safety Act
Google is subject to certain obligations under the UK Online Safety Act. Learn more about Ofcom’s Codes of Practice in relation to the UK Online Safety Act.
Google takes its obligations to comply with the Online Safety Act [See Google Help Center] seriously. If you believe Google isn't following the rules of the UK Online Safety Act, you can report this. Let us know through this webform how we can do better.
We will review your report and decide within ten working days, though some more complex cases may take longer. We may also reach out for more information from you.