Copyright policy
silken converts video, and for file delivery the output is written to storage you control. A copyright notice to silken can lead to action on the account that submitted the job and, for media hosted by silken, on the hosted asset. This page says what a notice has to contain and where to send one.
What silken can act on.
The account, and media hosted by silken.
silken is a conversion service. A job gives us two links you signed on your own object storage: one to read a source file, one to write the converted result. For file delivery we fetch, convert, write back, and keep no copy beyond the working files the running job needs — the privacy policy describes exactly what touches our disk and for how long. Some output modes are hosted by silken: complete-file ladders and progressive playback are stored and served by silken for the retention periods in that policy.
The practical consequence is worth stating before you spend time on a notice:
- For outputs written to your storage, only the account holder or their storage provider can remove the delivered copy.
- For media hosted by silken, include the silken playback or download address and any job identifier in your notice so we can identify the hosted asset and assess the appropriate action.
- We can act on the account. Submitting content you do not have the rights to process breaches the acceptable use policy, and section 10 of the terms lets us suspend or terminate an account for it, immediately and without notice where the conduct requires it.
- We can stop further conversions of the same material by the same account.
Why your storage provider is usually the right address
If you have found infringing material at a URL, that URL may belong to an object store, a CDN or a website rather than to silken. The provider serving it is the party that can make it stop being served, and is the one a takedown notice is designed to reach. Sending us a notice as well is reasonable where you believe silken is being used to produce the copies, and section 02 says what we need in order to act on that. Sending us one instead leaves a copy on someone else's storage exactly where it is.
The short demonstration clip a new account can convert once is a sample we supply and whose rights we hold; an account can instead upload its own MP4 for that demonstration, and demonstration objects expire after 24 hours. Both are described in section 04 of the terms.
Sending a notice.
In writing, with everything below in it.
If you own a copyright, or are authorised to act for the owner, and you believe silken is being used to infringe it, write to the address in section 06 and include all of the following. These are the elements the Digital Millennium Copyright Act sets out at 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3), which is the form a notice is expected to take whether or not the sender is in the United States.
- Your physical or electronic signature, as the owner of the right or as someone authorised to act on the owner's behalf.
- Identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed.
- Identification of the material you are complaining about, and enough information for us to find the account behind it. This is the part that decides whether we can act at all. What helps most is a silken job id if you have one, the destination URL the converted file was written to, or the URL at which the material is published together with any evidence tying it to silken.
- Your name, postal address, email address and telephone number, so that we and the account holder can reach you.
- A statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
- A statement that the information in your notice is accurate, and — under penalty of perjury — that you are authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the right.
A notice we cannot tie to an account or a hosted asset is a notice we cannot act on. silken looks up jobs, accounts and hosted addresses rather than content, and produces no fingerprints of what it converts. If your notice identifies only a published URL and nothing linking it to a job here, we will say so rather than act on a guess.
We pass notices on. Where a notice concerns an account, expect its contents — including your identity and your contact details — to be given to the account holder, so that they can respond to it or dispute it. Beyond that, we disclose a customer's information only where the law requires it. If you would rather not be identified to the person you are complaining about, do not send the notice.
Misrepresentation has a price. 17 U.S.C. §512(f) makes a person who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing liable for the damages, costs and legal fees caused by it. Section 05 of the terms says the same thing from the other direction to the customer who submits a file.
Disputing a notice.
If your account was acted on and you believe the claim is wrong.
If your account has been suspended or restricted because of a notice, you can dispute it. Write to the same address with a counter-notice containing the elements 17 U.S.C. §512(g)(3) sets out:
- Your physical or electronic signature.
- Identification of the material the notice concerned, and of the job or account it was acted on through.
- A statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith the action was taken as a result of mistake or misidentification.
- Your name, postal address and telephone number; a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district your address is in — or, if your address is outside the United States, of any judicial district in which silken may be found; and a statement that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the notice.
If your account access or media hosted by silken was affected by a notice, identify the relevant account, job and hosted address when disputing it. We assess the request under applicable law and explain the action we can take. Copies on your own storage remain under your and your storage provider's control. A counter-notice is passed to the person who sent the original notice in the same way theirs was passed to you.
No timetable is published for either direction, and silken makes no commitment about how quickly a notice or a counter-notice is read or acted on.
Designated agent and safe harbour.
No agent is designated and no statutory immunity is claimed.
No external agent acts for silken. Notices are received and reviewed by Velvet Software Limited itself, at the address in section 06. We have appointed no agent service and no third party to take notices on our behalf, so please do not send one to anybody claiming to act for us — an agent designated by the same operator for a different product does not act for silken, and a notice about silken sent there does not reach us.
We receive copyright notices and counter-notices at the address in section 06 and assess them under applicable law. Include information identifying the work, the material, your authority and how to contact you. We ask for the DMCA's elements whatever law you are relying on, because they are what we need in order to identify the material and reach the right account.
silken has designated no agent with the United States Copyright Office, and this document claims no DMCA safe harbour. It claims no other statutory immunity either. If the status of a notice matters to your legal position, take your own advice.
None of this reduces what silken will actually do with a notice. Acting on a clear notice is a term of the agreement rather than a favour granted by a statute: the acceptable use policy forbids processing material you do not have the rights to, and we enforce that whether or not a safe harbour is available to us.
What silken owes you if something goes wrong is a separate question from any statutory immunity, and it is not an open one: section 11 of the terms excludes silken's liability to the fullest extent the law permits, subject only to the heads of liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.
Repeat infringement.
What happens to an account that keeps attracting notices.
An account that repeatedly submits material it has no right to process has its access terminated. That is not a separate policy with its own machinery — it is section 10 of the terms applied to a breach of the acceptable use policy, and it can be done immediately and without prior notice where the conduct requires it.
How the record is kept. Notices arrive in the mailbox and are recorded by the people who handle them, and a judgement about repetition is made by a person reading that record.
Terminating an account does not remove copies in your storage, and hosted outputs follow the retention periods in the privacy policy. The terms say what termination does.
Where to send it.
The general address, and why there is not a separate one.
Send notices and counter-notices to support@silken.io, with "Copyright Infringement" in the subject line. Email is the route this page provides for notices. A notice posted to the registered office named at the end of this clause reaches the same company. There is no fax number and no takedown form.
That is the general address, not a dedicated copyright one, and this page will not pretend otherwise. silken operates a single mailbox, so a notice arrives in the same place as a question about a bill and is separated from one by a person reading it. Putting "Copyright Infringement" in the subject line is what makes that separation work, which is why it is asked for above rather than offered as a courtesy.
That mailbox is silken's own. support@silken.io is a mailbox on the silken.io domain. It is the same address a question about a bill goes to, and it belongs to no other product.
The company a notice concerns, and the operator of this service, is Velvet Software Limited, company registration number 633270, registered office 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, D02 AY28, Ireland. That is stated in this clause whether or not an email address is published above, because who a notice is against does not depend on there being a mailbox to send it to — and a notice can be sent to that office in writing if you would rather not send one by email. The contact page identifies the same company in the same words.
Anything that is not a copyright notice — a question about a job, a bill or an account, a security report, or a report of some other abuse of the service — goes to the same address, described on the contact page. There is nothing to route: one mailbox takes all of it, and the subject line is the only thing that tells them apart on arrival.