Skip to content
Copyright & Safety

Copyright & DMCA

Our designated agent, what a notice needs, what we remove and when, counter-notices, paused courses, and the strikes that close a role.

Last updated on October 25, 2026.

If someone has put your work on ACADA without your permission, send our designated copyright agent a notice with the six things the law requires, and within 2 business days we remove exactly what the notice identifies and tell the person who posted it, with a copy of your notice. If your material was removed and the notice is wrong, you can file a counter-notice from your account, or at acada.ac/counter-notice if your account was closed; we send it to the claimant and put the material back 10 business days later unless they tell us they have gone to court. A removal is a strike: the first is a warning, a second within 12 months restricts course and press publishing for 30 days, a third closes the instructor role, or the account where the material was not course content, and a course that is substantially someone else's work is theft, not a strike, and closes the instructor role at once. A course paused under a notice refunds its students if it is not back within 14 business days, or, once a counter-notice is pending, if the claimant reports a court case.

This summary is for orientation only. The sections below are the operative terms.

1. What this covers

This policy is how ACADA L.L.C., a Tennessee limited liability company (ACADA, we), handles copyright on acada.ac under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 512. It applies to everything anyone puts on ACADA: courses, lessons and the files in them, messages, reviews, assignment submissions, press articles, and profile images. It is written for the owner of a work who finds it here, the member whose material is named in a notice, and the students of a course caught in between.

We host what members upload; we do not review it first, and we do not decide who owns what. When a notice and a counter-notice disagree, the law gives each side a step and a clock, and we follow them; whether a use is fair, licensed or otherwise lawful is between the two of you and, if it comes to it, a court. A complaint about a name, logo or brand is a trademark matter and goes through the Trademark policy. Who owns course content in the first place is in the Intellectual Property policy.

2. Our designated agent

Our agent for notices of claimed infringement is registered with the United States Copyright Office:

  • Name. ACADA L.L.C., Copyright Agent.
  • Address. 29 N. Lafayette Ave #1017, Brownsville, TN 38012, United States.
  • Email. copyright@acada.ac.
  • Form. acada.ac/copyright, which asks for every element in section 3 and refuses to send a notice without one.

The form is the fastest way and needs no account. A notice by email or post is treated the same once it has the same elements. We accept notices from anywhere in the world, about any material on ACADA, wherever the person who posted it lives.

3. Sending a notice

Section 512(c)(3) of the Copyright Act says what a notice must contain, and we can only act on one that has all of it:

  1. Your signature. Your full name, typed, is enough; it is an electronic signature.
  2. The work. What it is, well enough for us to know what we are looking at: a title, what kind of work, when it was made or published, a link to the original if there is one, a registration number if you have one.
  3. The material. A link to each page on acada.ac where it appears and, where the page holds more than the material, which part: the video in lesson 3, the third image, the whole course.
  4. How to reach you. Your postal address and your email address; a phone number if you want.
  5. Good faith. A statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent or the law.
  6. Accuracy, under penalty of perjury. A statement that the notice is accurate and that you are the owner of an exclusive right that is infringed, or are authorised to act for that owner.

When you send it. You get a reference by email at once, and a person reads every notice. If something in the list is missing, we tell you what within 2 business days, and nothing is removed until a complete notice arrives. If it is complete, section 4 happens within 2 business days.

One notice, one person's material. A notice can name any number of items, but they have to belong to the same member, because the notice becomes that member's strike. Material posted by different people needs a notice each.

Before you send it. A notice is a legal statement. Someone who knowingly misrepresents that material infringes is liable under section 512(f) for the damages and costs of the person whose material came down, and of ours. Your name, address and email go to that person with the notice; the law requires it.

4. What we do with a complete notice

  • We remove what the notice identifies, within 2 business days. Exactly that, no more: one file in a lesson, one lesson, one whole course, one message, one review, one submission, one press article, one profile image. Where a notice names a whole course but describes one part of it, we remove the part.
  • We tell the person who posted it the same day, by email and in their Account Standing record, with what was removed and a copy of the notice: your name, your organisation if any, your address, your email, and what you said about the work. They cannot answer a notice they cannot see.
  • We tell you what was removed and that the poster has the notice. If they file a counter-notice, section 7 follows.
  • We record a strike against the poster, as section 8 sets out.
  • We do not judge. Removal on a complete notice is what the law asks of a host. It is not a finding that the poster did anything wrong, and we say so to them.

5. Courses with students

A whole course named in a notice is paused rather than deleted. Sales stop, and nobody but the instructor, their collaborators and ACADA can open it. Its students are told by email the day it pauses, and again when it is decided.

  • While it is paused. Students' progress, certificates and achievements stay on their portfolios. A monthly subscription does not renew while the course is paused. The instructor cannot republish a paused course; only we can lift the pause.
  • If it comes back within 14 business days, because of a counter-notice or a withdrawn notice, access resumes where it left off, a subscriber gets the paused days added to their period, and nothing is refunded.
  • If a counter-notice is pending by then, the course stays paused until it is settled. If the counter-notice restores it, access resumes as above, with the paused days added. If the claimant reports a court case instead, the course stays down until the court decides, every student is refunded on the terms below within 5 business days, and the course retires 90 days after the removal.
  • If it is not back by then and no counter-notice is pending, the removal is final and every student is refunded on the terms in Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions within 5 business days of that date: a lifetime buyer for the part of the course they had not completed, a subscriber for paid days after the pause. The course retires 90 days after the removal.
  • A paused course is never offered as a download. The copy a lifetime buyer can make of a closing course is for courses the instructor closes, not for material a notice says is someone else's.

A notice that names one lesson or one file pauses nothing: the rest of the course stays open, students see a note where the material was, and no refund is owed.

6. Removed material

  • Hidden, not deleted. We keep a private copy of what we removed for 90 days, so that it can go back exactly as it was if a counter-notice succeeds or the notice is withdrawn. After 90 days down it is deleted for good; a counter-notice after that can clear the strike but cannot bring the material back.
  • Under a court case reported to us under section 7, the copy is kept until the case is decided.
  • Putting it back yourself is a further strike. Re-uploading removed material, or uploading it again somewhere else on ACADA, counts as a new notice against you, whether or not the claimant sends one.

7. Counter-notices

If your material was removed and you believe the notice is wrong, because the work is yours, you hold a licence for it, it is not the work described, or it was misidentified, you can file a counter-notice. Section 512(g)(3) says what it must contain, and our form asks for all of it:

  1. your full legal name, postal address and email, and a phone number if you want;
  2. which material was removed and where it was, which the form fills in from the notice;
  3. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you believe in good faith the material was removed by mistake or misidentification;
  4. your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the district where your address is, or, if your address is outside the United States, any judicial district in which ACADA may be found, and your agreement to accept service of process from the claimant or their agent;
  5. your signature: your full name, typed.

What happens next. The form sends the whole counter-notice, including your name and address, to the claimant the moment you file it; one we cannot send at once goes within 2 business days. Then we wait 10 business days. If in that time the claimant tells us they have filed a court action to keep the material down, it stays down until the court decides, and we tell you. If they do not, we restore everything the notice removed, withdraw the strike, lift any restriction it caused, and tell both of you. A paused course resumes as section 5 says.

Who can file one. Only the member whose material was removed: from Settings, under Account standing, or, if the account was closed and cannot sign in, at acada.ac/counter-notice with the reference and the email address in the notice we sent, within 30 days of the closure, before the account and its data are deleted. While a counter-notice is pending, the deletion waits for it. It is a legal statement made under penalty of perjury, and filing one that is false carries the same liability under section 512(f) as a false notice.

8. Strikes and repeat infringers

The law requires us to close the accounts of repeat infringers; this is how we count. Each notice we act on is one strike against the person who posted the material, however many items it named.

  • First strike in 12 months. The removal, and a written warning. Nothing else changes.
  • Second strike in 12 months. The removal, and creating and publishing courses and publishing press articles are restricted for 30 days. Everything else works as before.
  • Third strike in 12 months. The removal, and the instructor role is closed under the Account Enforcement & Appeals policy. Where the material was not course content, the account is closed instead.
  • A course that is substantially someone else's work is theft, not a strike. The instructor role closes at once as fraud under the Instructor Agreement, and earnings from the course are withheld as the Fraud & Scams policy sets out.

A strike expires 12 months after we act on the notice. A successful counter-notice, or a notice the claimant withdraws, removes the strike as if it had never been made, and lifts a restriction or undoes a closure it caused. A strike is contested by counter-notice, not by appeal; the restriction or closure that follows a strike can be appealed under Account Enforcement & Appeals like any other decision, and a counter-notice that succeeds lifts it anyway.

Money. A strike on one item of a course leaves the course's earnings, and its publishing fee, where they are. Theft withholds them.

9. Notices we refuse

We do not act on a notice that does not identify a copyrighted work and material that copies it: a complaint that is really about a trademark, a name or a person; a claim over an idea, a method, a title or a fact rather than the expression of it; a notice about material that is not on acada.ac; or a notice plainly not made in good faith. We tell the sender why, and they can reply with anything we missed. Where we refuse a notice as bad faith, we tell the member whose material it named who sent it, so that they can decide whether to act under section 512(f), and we may refuse further notices from the same sender; if we do, we say so when we refuse them.

10. Your record

Settings, under Account Standing, shows every notice acted on against you, in full, the strike it made, where it stands, and the counter-notice form. Nobody else sees it. The claimant is told when you answer, and the record outlasts the material.

11. Timelines

  • An incomplete notice is answered. Within 2 business days.
  • A complete notice is acted on. Within 2 business days; the poster is told the same day.
  • A course stays paused before it is refunded. 14 business days from removal, or until a court case is reported on a pending counter-notice; refunds within 5 business days after that.
  • A counter-notice is forwarded. The moment it is filed; within 2 business days if it cannot be sent at once.
  • Material is restored after a counter-notice. 10 business days after forwarding, unless a court action is reported.
  • A removed copy is kept. 90 days, then deleted; a paused course retires then.
  • A strike counts. For 12 months.
  • A restriction lasts. 30 days.

12. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we change the date shown at the top. If a change adds a rule or a consequence, we post a notice in the app at least 14 days before it takes effect.

13. Related policies