Copyright and takedowns

1. Our position

CramShare hosts documents created by students. Uploading material you did not write — lecture slides, textbook chapters, solutions manuals, another student’s work — breaches our upload guidelines and is rejected in review where we detect it.

Review is not perfect. When something gets through, we want it reported and we act on valid reports quickly.

CramShare is a hosting service for this material. We do not review every page of every upload for infringement and are not aware of infringing material until it is reported to us. This policy is how we respond once it is. CramShare is operated from India, so it applies under section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and section 52(1)(c) of the Copyright Act, 1957, and under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §512) and equivalent laws elsewhere.

2. Where to send a notice

The fastest route is the copyright report form, which reaches the same team and checks the notice is complete before you send it. You can also write to our designated agent:

This address is for copyright and other intellectual-property notices only. Anything else sent here is not answered — other complaints go to the Grievance Officer named in the terms, and everything else through contact.

3. Who can file a notice

Anyone who owns the rights in the material, or is authorised to act for the owner. In practice most notices come from:

• Publishers, about textbook content.
• Universities and lecturers, about slides, handouts and exam papers.
• Students, about their own work uploaded by someone else.

4. What a valid notice must contain

The copyright report form asks for all of it in order, so nothing is missed. Incomplete notices delay the outcome because we have to come back to you. You do not need a CramShare account to file one.

• Identify the work. Title, author, edition or ISBN — enough for us to recognise it.
• Identify the listing. The full URL of each document, and the page numbers or sections at issue.
• Explain the infringement. What specifically has been copied, rather than a general assertion of similarity.
• Your details. Name, organisation and a reply address we can use.
• Two statements. That you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised by the rights holder, its agent or the law; and, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.
• Your signature. Physical or electronic — typing your full name in the form counts.

A notice that knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing can make the sender liable for damages, including the seller’s costs (17 U.S.C. §512(f)).

5. What happens next

• Within 24 hours, including weekends, we acknowledge the notice and, where it is clearly valid, remove or disable the listing. Sales stop at that point.
• We notify the seller with the substance of the notice, and tell them how to counter-notify.
• Within five working days we complete our assessment and tell you the outcome, including our reasoning if we decline to act.
• If the notice is upheld, the document stops being served to everyone, including past buyers, and every buyer is refunded. The seller’s earnings from it are reversed, including any already spent or withdrawn, as the terms of service set out.
• Repeat infringers lose selling privileges. Three upheld notices results in permanent removal from the seller programme and closure of the account.

6. If your document was removed

You will receive a notice naming the specific reason. If you believe removal was mistaken — for example the material is your own work, is properly licensed, or the use is covered by an exception such as quotation — you can counter-notify.

Reply to the removal notice, or write to the agent in section 2. A counter-notice needs:

• The document URL and the removal reference we sent you.
• Why you believe the removal was wrong, with evidence where you have it — drafts, timestamps, a licence.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that you believe in good faith the material was removed by mistake or misidentification.
• Your name, postal address and phone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the courts for your address (or, outside the US, any judicial district in which CramShare may be found), and will accept service from the person who sent the notice.
• Your physical or electronic signature.

We send a valid counter-notice to the person who filed the notice. Unless they tell us within 10 working days that they have started court proceedings against you, we restore the listing within 10 to 14 working days of receiving your counter-notice. Counter-notices are reviewed by someone other than the person who made the original decision, and a restored listing keeps its sales history.

7. Abusive notices

Deliberately filing a false notice to remove a competitor’s legitimate work is treated as abuse of the process. We keep a record of notices and their outcomes, and we may decline to accept further notices from a party with a pattern of unfounded claims.

8. If someone uploaded your notes

This is the case we act on fastest. Use the report form and choose “a student, about my own work”. Give us the listing URL and any evidence the work is yours — the original file, its metadata, a draft with earlier timestamps, or an email where you shared it. We do not require a formal legal notice from students reporting their own work.