Did you know that Remove Your Media LLC has allegedly been targeting anime creators since 2014 at least?
This has been going on for a long time, 10+ years at this point. Though it may stretch further than that since this is based on what I’ve found.
Who is Remove Your Media LLC?
In their own words:
“Our key to success lies in relentless search engine removals, repeat hosting/registrar DMCAs, social media elimination and advertising enforcement correspondence. We remove millions of infringing links, every week, and are directly responsible for the closure of nearly one thousand illegal domains annually.”
This is what they say in their DMCA section in particular, but their “business” goes further than this by providing anti-privacy solutions, hosting takedowns, and providing legal services to companies like VIZ Media and Crunchyroll.
All mentions of Remove Your Media LLC’s takedowns are about the misuse of DMCA copyright and don’t include “legitimate” cases against piracy.
Names associated with Remove Your Media LLC:
- Eric Green.
- Jim Mcanally.
Remove Your Media LLC DMCA Timeline:
1. 2014 Twitter
As you can see from top to bottom, from January 2014 to December 2014, there were a small amount of Tweets about Remove Your Media LLC taking down content.
During this stage of the game, there isn’t much conclusive evidence (meaning detailed screenshots, stories, outcry, etc). But 2014 was the year Remove Your Media LLC made a video on YouTube about their services.
This is also the year creators in smaller numbers started mentioning their names in regards to anime takedowns and content takedowns in general. But apparently, this has gone on since 2009 (unconfirmed).
2015 takedowns
Up until this point, we can clearly see that some of these Tweets don’t make much sense.
While other Tweets do make sense, but they all have ties to Remove Your Media LLC either way.
From this point forward, things start to:
- Get more serious.
- Make more sense.
With reliable content and cases of copyright abuse, DMCA takedowns, and even apologies on their behalf (a minority of cases).
In the same year (2015) a blog called “No Nonsense Anime Blog” wrote an article about the false DMCA takedown they received from Remove Your Media LLC.
I say “false” for a very good reason.
Here’s the long and short of it:
- They received a takedown notice for a non-existent video on their site.
- Japan Creative Contents Alliance (JCCA) filing inaccurate DMCA notices.
- The reasons for the takedown notice are due to the title and URL being supposedly similar with illegal sites.
- The only shared words that warranted the abuse of DMCA was the word “episode” and a numeral with illegal sites.
As pointed out in the 2015 article:
“It seems to me that Remove Your Media’s “high level” programmers and network engineers are unable to create a crawler that can verify if a web page actually contains an embedded or linked video because the article that got me listed in their take-down notice to Google contained no video links— or any outgoing links for that matter.”
The falsely targeted content was then reinstated by Google 3 days later (surprisingly)
“I’ve just received an email from Google informing me that my six reviews that were removed due to a wrongful DMCA take-down notice have been reinstated!
The wrongful DMCA take-down notice was “robo filed” by Remove Your Media on behalf of a conglomerate of distributors and publishers, including the Japanese Creative Contents Alliance and Funimation.
I really did not expect Google to act this quickly! I expected my content to remain excluded from Google search results for weeks, perhaps months, so I am really impressed by Google’s quick action.”
In their case, I’d say partially because they own their website, Google reinstated the content in question that got removed.
So this is one of those rare cases in this article where Remove Your Media LLC actually backfired, with a happier ending than usual.
2016 DMCA takedowns by Remove Your Media LLC
In this first section, it’s explained that Remove Your Media LLC was sending DMCA takedowns to Twitter accounts for anime screenshots.
If you understand copyright you know nothing is being infringed. I suspect this is the reason why it stopped down the line because I’ve never seen any case of this happening on a mass scale.
The video was taken down and then reinstated
A YouTuber explains how his channel “was saved” after his videos were taken down, with his channel threatened by Remove Your Media LLC’s aggressive bot-driven takedown requests.
In this exceptional case, they even apologized in an email sent to the creator about the situation, making this a rare case as you’ll see the more we dig into this entire story.
animeforums.net targeted by Remove Your Media LLC (2016)
The owner (in some way) of the anime forum called animeforum.net was caught up in the Remove Your Media LLC copyright abuse.
As stated in the forum post in January 2016:
“Hello everyone,
I am getting very frustrated at this point and would sincerely appreciate any advice from people that have been in this situation.
I own an anime forum and I am getting caught up in a barrage of false DMCA notices. I have had many Google SERPs removed due to copyright allegation claims by numerous companies.
But they are all without any legal basis! Some of the DMCA claims don’t even match against the URLs in question on my site! It seems Google, to reduce their liability they will just remove your Google SERPs upon receipt of a DMCA takedown notice sent to them without any requirement to confirm it actually does infringe copyright!”
In the example they use, it shows their website as mentioned above, and the fact Google decided to NOT take action. Meaning they couldn’t submit their counter-notice.
Google wasn’t having any of it despite the relevant details of the matter. Details like URLS being allegedly infringing despite those URLs not matching anything existing on their forum.
Remove Your Media LLC also exposes the addresses of counter DMCA notices
As explained in a 2016 article by Torrent Freak, they say:
“As the tweet shows, Remove Your Media has launched its own transparency report which details the counter-notices filed by people it has filed DMCA notices against.
However, while Lumen Database goes to some lengths to protect the personal details (company names aside) of the people who send DMCA notices, Remove Your Media offers no such courtesy.”
It continues:
“As can be seen from the screenshot above, the company publishes names, addresses, email address and even personal telephone/cellphone numbers of counter-notice senders. Given the tone of the tweet directed towards Lumen (transparency “works both ways now”), it seems reasonable to presume this is a deliberately provocative move.”
This goes to show you the level of disrespect and violation that Remove Your Media LLC was willing to go to.
Exposing the personal addresses, telephone numbers and the like of those who send counter-notices to your claims goes beyond nefarious, and into the realm of a so-called “legal criminal”.
Morally speaking it says everything it needs to.
From here we’ll skip 2017 and jump straight to 2018, 2019, 2020 and beyond where things get serious.
December 2018
“DMCA Takedown Update: I tried to get clarification the Japan Creative Contents Alliance on why they targeted some of my URLs. The e-mail address on their site bounces back; no DNS host record (info@jccadmca.com). WhoIs says the domain is available. Huh?”
As recorded from December 27th 2018, a DMCA takedown request (many) was sent to this account’s website.
When emailing the address it bounced back, meaning the address didn’t exist.
This is where things start to get shady.
In the words of the OP on Reddit in 2018:
“I’ve just received this copyright strike (without any e-mail notification) by this company.
The copyright strike that they gave me is on one of my Shin Megami Tensei (video game) video that’s made by Atlus.
This is the 1st time I received a strike by these people and it’s clearly that this is a troll by the name of ”rymserplegal@gmail.com” and it’s over the internet.
What’s the best thing to do against this and why is this still going around?”
Also from one of the deleted comments via the subreddit post:
“dude F*CK THAT COMPANY. they are attacking the f*ck out of my etsy store for shirts that are fair use but derivative from anime. if you find any further information about them, let me know, and I will do the same. my good friend is a lawyer and we are working on getting in contact with this company. their address on their website is fake and they haven’t responded to a single email of mine. this company is bsically some SJW fucking assholes going around reporting small business folks.”
The rest of the comments are people going back and forth about copyright, fair use, abuse, and the trend of Remove Your Media LLC taking down content regardless of ethics or whether it’s legitimate or not.
2019 takedowns
September 5th, 2019, a commentary video of which there are many on YouTube to this day was taken down.
It’s unknown if the video was ever reinstated.
September 18th, 2019, a video talking about Junji Ito was taken down and the YouTube creator made their account private to avoid their channel being shutdown completely.
I found proof that the video was never reinstated (screenshot above).
On August 2nd 2019, a video was taken down which was a commentary-style piece of content on Danmachi episode 2, (season 2).
I personally entered the URL of the video and found it taken down hence the above screenshot via YouTube.
Dear
@TeamYouTubepartner. Please let me know when my video will be returned to normal, and the strike on my channel removed. Video in question: youtube.com/watch?v=Y9GYsA Channel URL: youtube.com/channel/UCQc2Q
Surprisingly, in this case, the video was reinstated despite the rate of videos and content that usually NEVER sees the light of day again.
I confirmed this by clicking the video which is why it’s embedded above.
2020 takedowns and discussions via Etsy + more
“I blog at strawhatmanga.com and I rank good for some of the best keywords in the niche. I write about manga and anime and Viz is the authority in this niche.
Remove your Media LLC is the one responsible for all the Copyright materials for Viz. I have direct contact with both Viz and Remove your Media LLC and they have verified that they are not sending me any copyright notices as I am not using anything Copyrighted.
They even went on to say that someone from Ukraine is doing this by misusing Remove Your media LLC name.Every week I rank for a good keyword and then the next day 2-3 pages of mine get copyright and removed from Google. This has been happening for last 4 weeks now. I even have proof of Remove your Media LLC saying they are not behind these claims.”
In February 2020 this claim was made via Google’s forums for SEO and all things related.
While it’s hard to say beyond the details what happened, the website in question hasn’t been updated since 2020.
Ironically this is the same year they were getting DMCA takedowns by Remove Your Media LLC despite them saying there are no issues.
On September 15th 2020, a cosplayer from the Philippines had their entire store taken down over a cosplay print of Genos.
A cosplay print of Genos.
In their own words:
“My cosplay isn’t part of your inellectual property. I’m not even wearing a canon outfit he has in the anime??”
On August 24th 2020, @breadborl made a tweet about their Kimetsu No Yaiba soap listings. They say they never used any character images on the listing.
This speaks to the automated nature of the takedowns not being able to differentiate.
In their own words:
“I wonder if this is becoming more widespread, I got fraudulently smacked today by a VIZ claim by a third party on an original piece, nonfanart.”
They are, of course, talking about Remove Your Media LLC! Not to mention their art was an original piece, in their own words, despite non-fan art still being taken down in spite of it.
In their own words:
“We in the anime community believe this is a dmca troll, as they cannot provide any evidence of connections to large media companies, but they allege that they are working on behalf of them. So small business owners on etsy are seeing their pages suspended.”
September 8th 2020.
While in this case it’s related to actual fanart of copyrighted works, I’ll explain later why this is absolute hypocrisy at the highest level.
They’re picking and choosing who is violating copyright.
September 17th, 2020. After the wave of Etsy shops getting shut down, people started digging into who Remove Your Media LLC is.
They created a document that led to this.
The document can be found in a DOC format.
It details 10 pages of contradictions, bogus emails, bogus addresses, and examples of what’s going on behind the scenes.
At least during that time.
In December of the same year (2020), this Instagram post surfaced in regards to Remove Your Media LLC.
In this case, their own custom-made anime character called “Queenie” was falsely accused of copyright infringement, according to them.
This was enough for Etsy to shut down their entire store.
QUOTE:
“Eric Green, a person who makes bots that search for keywords that he can file copyright claims on, filed a claim against my shop. Because of this, my shop has been deleted by Etsy. The listing he went after of course, is artwork of my and @storyofthedoor ‘s character Queenie. I think he is claiming she is Kilala and that as a rep of Viz, he can demand her removal. Obviously, they look nothing alike”.
To finish up the 2020 section, we can see with these screenshots that Remove Your Media LLC has been as aggressive as always with takedowns.
Whether having Kimetsu No Yaiba charms or not is reason enough to take something down is for you to decide. But with the other case by Anime Troop, they weren’t in the wrong and didn’t go out of their way to “sell” fanart for example.
This is the majority of cases in this article where BOTS decide who receives a DMCA request instead of an actual person, making 99% of claims bogus or abuse of DMCA at the very least.
2021 takedowns
As can be seen from the original tweets, the YouTuber in question wasn’t able to submit a counter notice or respond to Remove Your Media LLC because, in their words, they blocked his or her emails.
And of course, YouTube being YouTube they didn’t offer much help and ultimately sided with the copyright service, and that’s all she wrote.
The YouTuber’s account was ended overnight and that’s all there is to it.
Fanart creators get demolished by the dozens, which is essentially what this Tweet explains.
Etsy creators, of course. 2021 was a big year for this.
Tweets being DMCA’d and deleted over bogus infringement claims. Plus another YouTuber shut down while YouTube ignores their messages, and Remove Your Media LLC allegedly threatens them by “forwarding this abuse to my lawyers”.
An obvious fearmongering tactic.
Judging from the comments of the Tweet by MInistry Of Otaku, their fair use video was removed about Attack On Titan.
The video in question, presumably, doesn’t use excessive amounts of music, sound, clips, or otherwise from the Attack On Titan series to make whatever point they were making in the original video.
And yet, Funimation at the time used Remove Your Media LLC to take the video down with a copyright strike no less.
QUOTE:
“I’ve just found out today a few minutes ago that the video ” Representative Paul Bosar’s Attack of Immigrants” was removed. Dear Funimation/Remove Your Media LLC, does the words “Fair Use” is in your vocabulary? Because it’s clear that it’s not.”
Kickstarter campaign shutdown by Remove Your Media LLC 2021
A campaign was launched called Anime Tube, with a Trademark sign at the end of it. This indicates the creator of the campaign trademarked the name beforehand.
Before the campaign could reach the status intended, Remove Your Media LLC swooped down like an Eagle and ripped its head off its shoulders.
Killing it on the spot.
In their own words via DMCA details:
“Description of copyrighted material: Copyrighted Japanese anime owned by Viz Media. The anime is Naruto.”
It continues:
“Description of infringing material: Now closed campaign is displaying copyrighted Japanese anime for which it has no licensing. Campaign was using stolen anime artwork, from a number of studios, in an attempt to legitimize the fund. This campaign was not sanctioned by any of the anime owners we work.”
Whether this is true or not is not for me to answer as I had no idea it even happened at the time. This was during the pandemic when too much was going on already.
But Anime Tube allegedly was using funding as a mask for the fact what they were doing is basically piracy, though only those who know the details (including the creators and supporters of the campaign) can say if that’s true or false.
On December 15th, 2021, a useless petition was made because of the amount of Etsy creators being shut down by Remove Your Media LLC on behalf of anime companies.
I say useless because petitions like this are even worse than protesting. They never go anywhere, and it’s all hype that never manages to move the needle through the thread.
Aside from that, it’s clear why the petition existed (but failed) since many felt the pressure as their livelihoods were threatened, regardless of whether they shot themselves in the foot or not.
Another blog was falsely flagged by Remove Your Media LLC (they apologized)
Judging from the date of the comments which is November 2021, this post was likely written the same year or even the same month.
Either way, the author talks about how they used to be wrongly targeted by Remove Your Media LLC.
The points have been broken down:
- The author’s blog was flagged by Remove Your Media for a non-infringing post about the “Girlish Number” anime. This led to a threat from the hosting’s legal department to shut down their website.
- The exact reason for the flagging was unclear, but the author speculates it could be due to an overreliance on algorithms that flag content based on keywords without proper review.
The most important part is this:
“Remove Your Media later apologized, admitting it was a mistake, then allowing the so called infringing post post to be restored.”
But after such an incident, the author, like anyone, is sceptical about their process and how they go about DMCA removals. After all, their website was almost shut down by their overreactive web hosting company who were biased instead of neutral until the facts were clear.
2022 Remove Your Media LLC
As seen in the Tweets, especially when analyzed, Remove Your Media LLC has again targeted Etsy listings in particular.
This time though, it’s not just on behalf of Viz Media, but Crunchyroll as well.
While it’s viable as it’s fanart, you’ll see as I said earlier in this article why it’s hypocrisy (on behalf of RYM LLC that is).
“Etsy Account Permanently Closed due to DMCA strikes by Remove Your Media LLC (Crunchyroll Representative) An ENORMOUS thank you to everybody who has supported through the years. you are absolutely amazing. This door closes, but will be looking for new open doors. Stay tuned <3”
While it’s clear when digging into the artist’s profile, websites, etc, that they are indeed drawing and selling fanart, not everything can be described as fanart down to the letter.
Either way, Remove Your Media LLC shut down their Etsy store entirely and they pivoted.
2023 Remove Your Media LLC
These Tweets highlight more Etsy shops being targeted yet again, and some of the listings, even if those listings don’t match the keywords used, are still targeted and even shut down.
While a Genshin Impact product being taken down for being “Demon Slayer” is factually incorrect, it’s clear that custom-made pieces are treated the same way as Fanart.
These Tweets simply point out the apparent hypocrisy of removing some listings, but not others, despite all those listings on Etsy being the same as far as fanarrt or custom anime pieces.
This point is similar to what I’ll get into later.
And even more complaints about Remove Your Media LLC in relation to Etsy store owners, and what they feel is their right to sell fanart as it is fair use and doesn’t infringe copyright since no official logo’s are being used, etc.
Not to mention how Viz Media is one of the most prevalent companies issuing DMCA on behalf of RYM LLC.
2024 complaints
Why Remove Your Media LLC (and the anime companies) are being hypocrites
1. Picking and choosing WHO to takedown
Let’s use websites like:
- Teepublic
- Redbubble
And Spreadshirts for example.
All of these websites sell anime merchandise from individual sellers by the 100s of thousands when combined (if not millions).
Fanart is rife on the website and some of the designs are even direct copies of original works, plus so much more.
The question is how do these websites get away with it? Better yet, why isn’t Remove Your Media LLC or Crunchyroll and Viz Media targeting these websites and their sellers?
I dug through the internet and never seen ONE attack against these “print on demand” websites and their sellers from RYM LLC.
Examples
As you’ll notice with these designs from:
- Demon Slayer.
- Dragon Ball.
- Jujutsu Kaisen.
- Naruto.
- One Piece.
- Sword Art Online.
- Umaru Chan.
And Cowboy Bebop…. is these designs are most definitely NOT licensed, and no copyright deal was made for these designs to be here.
Plus, the fanart versions of the designs sit up there happily making dough without the likes of so-called “Remove Your Media LLC” and anyone else saying shit about it.
Why is that? Is it just as simple as it being hypocrisy?
According to Spreadshirts (edited for clarity):
“Spreadshirt provides services “as is” without guarantees, disclaiming responsibility for indirect damages. Disputes are resolved via arbitration, not in a class action, and Spreadshirt complies with DMCA requests, reserving the right to deny service over infringement risks.”
Link: Spreadshirts Policy
According to Teepublic (edited for clarity):
- TeePublic follows U.S. intellectual property laws and the DMCA to address copyright and intellectual property infringements, and will also respond to notices from other jurisdictions.
- To report an infringement, users must email TeePublic’s Legal Department with a detailed notice including their contact information, a description of the infringed work, and statements of good faith and accuracy under penalty of perjury.
- TeePublic may remove or disable access to the infringing material upon receiving a valid notice and will inform the user whose content was removed, providing them with the notice details.
- Users who believe their material was wrongly removed can submit a Counter Notice with similar detailed information and a good faith statement, consenting to legal jurisdiction.
- Upon receiving a Counter Notice, TeePublic may reinstate the removed material after approximately 10 business days unless the original complainant seeks a court order against the allegedly infringing user.
Link: Teepublic IP Policy
According to Redbubble who owns Teepublic (edited for clarity):
- Fair Use and Legal Compliance: Users are reminded that “fair use” is a complex legal concept, varies by country, and Redbubble must adhere to takedown procedures when infringement is reported, even if “fair use” is claimed.
- Notice and Takedown Procedure: The procedure for reporting and addressing alleged infringements requires detailed information and declarations from the complainant and includes the possibility of account suspension for repeat infringers.
- Counter Notices: Users can file a counter notice if they believe their work was wrongly removed, providing specific details and agreeing to legal jurisdiction. If no legal action is taken by the complainant within 14 days, users can request reinstatement of their work.
Link: Redbubble IP Policy
According to Redbubble’s partner program:
“Create and sell officially licensed fan art designs for your favourite brands.”
This obviously doesn’t apply to anime, and the page in question doesn’t highlight any anime images either.
I imagine this applies to a small selection of merch that involves American cartoons (it’s a US company) but not content from foreign lands like anime or manga.
How Redbubble in particular seems to get away with it
On a Quora question about redbubble selling copyrighted works, one person said something curious.
Here’s what they said in response to the question:
“It is not legal but Redbubble have a work around where they claim they are not actually selling the works for sale on Redbubble but that individual sellers are the ones listing items for sale. And a separate company makes the products. So they say they are just a middle man and not responsible.
Atari recently took them to court over this issue but failed as Redbubble’s claim they they are a “transactional intermediary” rather than a seller of the goods on the website . They use a separate shell company to actually print and supply the goods they offer – this was upheld. Redbubble make money from the art even if it is illegal for them to sell it so it is not in their interest to stop it and they is why the whole site is full of stolen works.”
They continued:
“They will only remove work when someone complains and can prove that a piece of work is their own. Then they will only remove that one single piece of work. And even then they take no action on the person who uploaded the works and keep the profits they made from that stolen work.”
There are legitimate news articles related to what this person on Quora mentioned.
For example:
Redbubble scores a significant win against video game company Atari International
Jury knocks out Atari’s IP claims against online marketplace
I suspect this is why Remove Your Media LLC, Crunchyroll, or Viz Media don’t target sites like Redbubble.
While this may be true, it still doesn’t change the hypocritical nature of targeting Etsy, YouTube, or in some cases, blogs but never going after print on demand websites where designs are blatantly ripped from original sources.
Given the size of Redbubble, it’s not as if they’re unaware either.
Teepublic is owned by Redbubble, so that goes without saying. As for Spreadshirts, the reasoning may be similar.
Remove Your Media LLC stats
According to Google’s web page, they’ve had over 170,000 URLS delisted, with over 70,000 of them happening in 2016 alone.
It has declined significantly since 2016.
How I discovered Remove Your Media LLC in the first place
They had the audacity to try and take down some of my own content (or websites) connected to Anime Motivation.
They failed miserably, of course, but the alias “Eric Green” was behind the bogus DMCA filed complaint that was sent to Cloudflare, then sent to my host, and then laughed out the door.
It never had a leg to stand on.
This is what lead me to see what others have said, and who else they’ve been fucking with without my knowledge online.
Somehow it doesn’t surprise me but it does seeing how the double standards work.
In the end, there are double standards at play and that’s the point
There are some lessons to take from all of this:
- Sell your own custom anime merchandise, or license it.
- Run your own website and online business where you have FULL control.
- Don’t sell your merchandise on third party platforms (though Redbubble looks enticing I’d imagine).
- Companies like Remove Your Media LLC are hypocrites and their method of DMCA takedowns is flawed.
- Nobody gives a shit about your livelihood (not these copyright services) which is why they’re known to abuse it.
- Do everything in your power to protect yourself from this sort of nefarious bullshit.
DMCA Database for RYM LLC.
