Copyright Policy

Effective date: 16 July 2026

1. What this policy covers

This is the Copyright Policy for the services operated by Stichting Modal: the Eurosky Personal Data Server (PDS), the Eurosky Portal, and mu. It explains how to notify us of content that infringes your copyright or trademark, how we process those notices, and what you can do if your content is acted on under a notice you believe is wrong.

The policy applies in two places:

  • At the PDS layer, where the Eurosky PDS hosts content under user accounts. We can act on lawful notices against content hosted on the Eurosky PDS directly. We act at the PDS layer for legal compliance only (see §21.1 of the Terms of Service).
  • At the mu application layer, where mu displays content fetched from the Eurosky PDS or from third-party PDSes. We can act on notices that affect what mu shows, subject to the moderation capabilities described in §3 of the Community Guidelines (some actions are only available once our own moderation layer is live, target summer 2026).

For content hosted on a third-party PDS that mu fetches via federation, we can act at the mu layer but not at the PDS layer (because we do not host it). The right channel for that content is also the third-party PDS provider; we will help you find the right contact where we can.

This policy is part of the agreement under the mu Terms of Service. Words in capitals that we do not define here are defined in the Terms.

2. Submitting a copyright notice

If you believe content on the Eurosky PDS or displayed on mu infringes your copyright, send a notice to ip@mu.social.

Your notice must include all of the following (the format required under Article 16 of the EU Digital Services Act):

  1. A precise identification of the allegedly infringing content, including the AT Protocol URI (at://…) or the URL where the content can be found on mu.
  2. A precise identification of the copyrighted work you believe has been infringed, including, where available, a link to the original work or evidence of your rights.
  3. A clear statement of the reasons why you consider the content to be infringing, sufficient to allow us to assess the notice.
  4. Your name and contact details (email and, where applicable, postal address).
  5. A statement that the information in your notice is accurate and complete, made in good faith.
  6. A statement that you are the rights holder for the copyrighted work, or that you are authorized to act on the rights holder's behalf, with evidence of authority where applicable.

You may also sign the notice (an electronic signature is acceptable), but a signature is not required; the good-faith statement in point 5 is what we rely on.

We accept notices in English, French, German, and Dutch.

Notices that lack any of the required information may be rejected or delayed while we ask for the missing information. Notices formatted for other regimes, including US DMCA notices, are accepted and treated as notices under this policy when they contain the elements above.

3. How we process notices

When we receive a copyright notice:

  1. We acknowledge receipt without undue delay.
  2. We assess the notice for completeness against §2 above. We may ask you for further information if the notice is incomplete.
  3. We assess the merits of the notice against the law and our policies. The decision is ours; the source of the notice does not determine the outcome.
  4. We act on the notice where we conclude action is required. The action we take depends on what layer the content sits at:
    • Content on the Eurosky PDS that we conclude is infringing is restricted or removed at the PDS layer.
    • Content displayed on mu that we conclude is infringing is acted on at the mu layer, subject to the moderation capabilities available at the time (see §3 of the Community Guidelines).
  5. We notify the affected user of any action we take, with a statement of reasons (see §4).
  6. We notify you of the outcome of your notice, with reasons.

Trusted flaggers. Notices submitted by entities awarded trusted flagger status under Article 22 of the Digital Services Act are processed with priority, in line with §13 of the Community Guidelines.

Timing. We act without undue delay on valid notices. Where law sets a specific timeline for a category of content, we comply with the law's timeline.

4. Statement of reasons to the affected user

When we act against a user's content under a copyright notice, we give the affected user a statement of reasons in the format required by Article 17 of the Digital Services Act. The statement describes what we did, why we did it, the legal basis, and how the user can challenge our decision (including the counter-notice route in §5 below and the appeal routes in §26 of the Terms of Service).

We share the relevant information from the notice with the affected user, subject to redaction of personal data of the submitter where appropriate.

5. Counter-notice

If your content has been acted on under a copyright notice and you believe the notice is wrong or your use is lawful, you may submit a counter-notice to ip@mu.social.

Your counter-notice must include:

  1. A precise identification of the content that was acted on (AT Protocol URI or URL).
  2. A description of the action we took (label, restriction, removal, suspension).
  3. The reasons you believe the action was wrong, including any of the following where applicable:
    • the content is not protected by copyright in the relevant jurisdiction;
    • your use is licensed by the rights holder;
    • your use is covered by a copyright exception or limitation under EU or Member State law (for example, quotation, parody, criticism, review, news reporting, teaching, research);
    • the notice misidentified the content.
  4. Your name and contact details.
  5. A statement that the information in your counter-notice is accurate and complete, made in good faith.

As with notices, a signature is welcome but not required.

When we receive a valid counter-notice:

  1. We acknowledge receipt without undue delay.
  2. We send the counter-notice (with personal data of the counter-notifier redacted as appropriate) to the original notifier and tell them that we will reinstate the content after 10 business days unless they provide evidence that they have initiated legal proceedings against the affected user.
  3. If 10 business days pass without such evidence, we reinstate the content.
  4. If the original notifier initiates legal proceedings, we maintain the action against the content until we receive a binding decision from a competent court or the parties otherwise resolve the dispute.

We do not require counter-notifiers to consent to a specific jurisdiction. Counter-notifiers retain their full rights under the law of their country of residence.

6. Repeat infringers

We may suspend or terminate accounts that repeatedly post infringing content. The specific threshold (number of infringements, time window, severity weighting) is set in our internal enforcement procedure and aligned with the enforcement ladder in §10.2 of the Community Guidelines.

Single notices are not sufficient to terminate an account. Termination requires either repeated infringement after warnings, or a single act so severe that immediate termination is warranted under §10.3 of the Community Guidelines.

7. Trademark and other intellectual property complaints

You can also use ip@mu.social to notify us of content that infringes a trademark, design right, database right, or other intellectual property right.

The same process applies as for copyright notices (§§2 to 5), with the following adjustments:

  • In §2, point 2, identify the registered or unregistered intellectual property right instead of the copyrighted work, and provide evidence of the right (registration number, prior use, or similar).
  • In §2, point 3, set out the reasons the content infringes that right (for example, use of the mark in the course of trade in a way likely to cause confusion).

We assess trademark notices against EU and Member State trademark law, including any relevant exceptions (for example, descriptive use, comparative advertising, or nominative fair use).

8. False or abusive notices

Submitting a notice with information you know to be materially false is a misuse of this process. If we receive notices that we conclude are submitted in bad faith, repeatedly without merit, or used to suppress lawful speech, we may:

  • refuse to process further notices from the submitter;
  • record the pattern in our transparency reports under the Digital Services Act;
  • take such other action as we consider appropriate under applicable law.

In serious cases, false notices may be a criminal offence under EU or Member State law and may expose the submitter to civil liability under the law of the affected user's jurisdiction.

9. Federation: content not hosted by us

mu and the Eurosky PDS run on the AT Protocol. Content you see on mu may be hosted on a Personal Data Server we do not operate, posted from an application we do not operate, and federated across the network.

For content not hosted on the Eurosky PDS:

  • We cannot remove the content from its home PDS. Only the PDS provider hosting the content can do that.
  • We can act at the mu layer, subject to the capabilities described in §3 of the Community Guidelines, to stop the content from appearing on mu.
  • The right channel for removal at the source is the PDS provider. We will help you find the right contact where we can.

This is a structural property of operating on an open, federated protocol. It is part of the value (your content is portable, not locked into our infrastructure) and part of the cost (we cannot guarantee removal of content from systems we do not operate).

10. Updates to this policy

We update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in the law, in our services, and in our understanding of how to handle IP notices well. The current version and its effective date are always shown at the top of this page. Older versions, and a log of substantive changes, are kept in our Transparency Centre.

11. Contact

For copyright and trademark notices and counter-notices: ip@mu.social.

For general questions about this policy: dsa-support@eurosky.tech.

Postal: Stichting Modal, Kranenburgweg 135 A, 2583 ER The Hague, Netherlands.