DMCA & Copyright Policy
This page says what we own and what reusing it takes, and it sets out how to tell us that something here infringes your copyright, in the form the law expects.
Last updated: August 2026.
What belongs to us
The reporting, the headlines, the photographs and illustrations we commission, the graphics built from filings, and the code are ours, or are licensed to us. Freelance work is held on the terms agreed with the writer or photographer. Publishing free of charge does not put anything in the public domain.
Some material here is not ours to license to you. Wire photographs, broadcast stills, game screenshots and quotes from other publications appear under licence or as fair use and fair dealing allow, with attribution to the rights holder. Where your request concerns one of those, we will point you at the owner instead.
Quoting us, and republishing us
Quoting is welcome and we would rather you did more of it. Take a paragraph, name The Kissing Punk, and link to the article you took it from. Where we broke a story, a line saying so and a link is all the credit we want.
Wholesale republication is a different act. Copying an article in full or in substantial part, translating it, rewriting it lightly under another byline, or feeding the archive into a model or an index without a licence: none of that is covered, and the reasoning is in our terms of service. An aggregator running our full text and selling advertising against it is not sharing our journalism. It is selling it.
Reprints, syndication and licensing
If you want more than a quotation, ask. Write to support@thekissingpunk.com with the article, where it would appear, for how long, and whether the use is commercial. Reprints for a classroom, a non-profit newsletter or an internal briefing are usually free.
Syndication, translation rights and licensing of the archive for text and data mining are all negotiable, and mining is now the request we get most often. We reply in two to three working days, and a request with the specifics in it gets a faster answer.
Sending us a takedown notice
If you own copyright in something here that went up without permission, tell us and we will deal with it. You do not need a lawyer to write the email, but the notice has to contain the elements the statute requires, because an incomplete one is not something we can act on.
Send it to support@thekissingpunk.com with DMCA at the front of the subject line. That address reaches the person designated to receive copyright notices for this site, who is our managing editor. Include all of the following.
- Identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed. Where several works are covered, a representative list is enough.
- Identification of the material here, precise enough for us to find it: the article address, and where on the page it sits, such as the third image.
- Your name, email address, and a telephone number or other means of reaching you.
- A statement that you have a good faith belief the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
- A statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and that under penalty of perjury you own the right or are authorised to act for the owner.
- Your physical or electronic signature. A typed name at the foot of the email counts.
Where a licence question is arguable, say so. A sentence explaining that our licence expired, or that the agency which sold us the image had no right to, beats a bare demand.
What happens when a notice arrives
We read copyright mail the day it arrives, weekends included, and you get a reply within two working days. Where the claim is clear we remove or disable the material quickly, usually the same day, and tell you what we did.
Where an article changes because of a claim, the page carries a note saying what has gone and why, on the same logic as our corrections policy. A reader who finds a gap where an image used to be is owed an explanation. Complying is not conceding every point, and we will say plainly if we think a claim is wrong while still acting on it.
Counter-notification
If your material was removed and you think that was a mistake or a misidentification, send a counter-notice to the same address. It needs your signature, identification of the material and where it appeared before removal, a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith the removal was a mistake or a misidentification, your contact details, and your consent to the jurisdiction of the appropriate court together with acceptance of service from the person who complained.
We pass a valid counter-notice to the original complainant. If they do not tell us they have filed a court action to restrain the material, we may restore it between 10 and 14 business days after we forward the counter-notice, the window the statute sets.
Repeat infringers
Almost nothing here is uploaded by anyone but us, which keeps this section short. Where readers can contribute, we terminate access for anyone who repeatedly infringes copyright.
In practice a first incident gets the material removed and an explanation, because people paste an image without thinking about who took it. A second is a warning. A third ends the account.
False claims
A takedown notice is a legal document rather than a request. Section 512(f) makes anyone who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing liable for the damages and costs the removal caused, and courts have enforced it.
We mention it because a share of the copyright mail we get is not about copyright at all. It is a subject who dislikes accurate coverage looking for a faster route than a complaint, and the tell is a notice about one photograph that spends two paragraphs arguing the story was unfair. Accuracy complaints go through our corrections policy. Unpublishing is not available as a favour, as our about page explains.
