Copyright and takedowns

How Toread works, so you know what you are asking about

Toread is a read-it-later library. A reader pastes a link or presses a button in their browser, and our servers fetch that page and keep a copy for that reader to read later. A copy is private to the reader who saved it: there is no feed, no public page, no sharing feature and no way for one reader to show another reader a saved copy. Toread stores one copy of a page’s contents for everyone who has saved it, so a takedown removes it from the accounts concerned.

We do not choose what gets saved and we do not review it in advance. That is why this page exists: it is the way to tell us about something we would otherwise not know about.

Sending a notice

Write to copyright@toread.app. So that we can act, a notice should contain the six things U.S. law (17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)) asks for — and they are a good shape for a notice under any law:

1. your physical or electronic signature, as the owner of the right or someone authorised to act for them;
2. what work you say is infringed — if several, a representative list is enough, but be specific enough that we can tell which;
3. what exactly you want removed and where it is: the URL of the page we fetched, which is what identifies a copy in Toread;
4. how to reach you: an address, a telephone number if you have one, and an email address;
5. a statement that you believe in good faith that the use complained of is not authorised by you, your agent or the law;
6. a statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and — under penalty of perjury — that you are the owner or are authorised to act for them.

A notice that leaves something out is not ignored: we will write back and ask. Please send one notice per work or per group of works, rather than a list of thousands of URLs.

What we do when a notice arrives

• We look at it, and if it is a valid notice we remove or disable the stored copy for the accounts that have it. The reader keeps the link they saved; what goes is the copy we made.
• We tell the reader that a copy was removed, who asked and why, and how to answer if they disagree. We do not hand over their identity in doing so.
• We keep a record of the notice and of what we did, so a repeated pattern is visible.
• We answer you once it is done.

If your copy was removed and you disagree

You may send a counter-notice to copyright@toread.app. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) it needs four things:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. which copy was removed, and where it was before it was;
3. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you believe in good faith it was removed as a result of a mistake or a misidentification;
4. your name, address and telephone number, and — if you are in the United States — your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for that district, or, if you are outside it, of any district in which we may be found; and that you will accept service from the person who sent the notice.

We pass a counter-notice on to whoever sent the original notice. If they do not tell us within ten to fourteen business days that they have gone to court, we may restore the copy.

Repeat infringers

We terminate the accounts of readers who infringe repeatedly, in appropriate circumstances. What counts is a pattern rather than a single notice, and we take into account whether the notices were valid and whether a counter-notice was upheld.

A word about false notices

Sending a notice or a counter-notice that knowingly misrepresents something has consequences: under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), whoever does it can be liable for the damages and legal costs it causes. Please be sure you hold the right you are asserting, and that the use really is unauthorised.

For publishers: asking us not to fetch your site

If you would rather Toread never fetched your pages at all, write to copyright@toread.app from an address at the domain, say which domain it is, and we will add it to the list of domains Toread refuses. That covers the domain and every subdomain of it, and every request our servers make: saving a page, following another site’s redirect to yours, checking your feed, and fetching a picture for a saved page, a cover, a newsletter or a link preview. A reader who pastes a link from it is told the site has asked us not to fetch it, before anything is fetched or stored, and a feed on it stops being checked. Copies saved before that are a separate question — use a notice above, and we will remove them.

Our fetchers identify themselves. These are the exact strings, so you can match on them:

• Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Toread/1.0; +https://toread.app)
• Toread/1.0 (+https://toread.app/feeds)

We do not save YouTube videos at all, because the only way to get a video’s words is an API YouTube’s terms do not allow us to use.

Contact

Copyright notices and counter-notices: copyright@toread.app. Anything else about these pages: hello@toread.app. Toread is run by one person, in Taiwan. Their legal name is being added to this page. A postal address will be published here with it; until then email is the way to reach us, and every address below is read. The legal notice has the rest.