A DMCA Guide for Pinterest Creators: Getting Your Work Taken Down

You made something, put it on Pinterest, and now it is sitting on somebody else's pin with your name cropped out. This guide covers the practical side of getting it removed: what the DMCA is, which details a notice has to include before anyone will act on it, where to send it, and what happens after you press send. It is written for creators rather than lawyers, and it is not legal advice.

What the DMCA is, in one paragraph

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States law that lets platforms host user uploads without being liable for every infringing file, on the condition that they remove infringing material promptly once a rights holder tells them about it. That bargain is usually called notice and takedown. The Copyright Office publishes a readable overview of the DMCA if you want the background. The part that matters to you is simple: the law defines a process, and when you follow it, platforms have a strong reason to act quickly.

Your copyright exists from the moment you create the work. You do not need a registration to send a notice. If the difference between owning a file and owning its copyright is fuzzy, our plain-English piece on whether downloading Pinterest videos is legal separates the two.

Before you file: is it actually infringement?

Not every repost is a takedown case. Someone saving your public pin to their own board, with the source and your profile still attached, is how Pinterest is designed to work. Someone re-uploading your video as a fresh pin, cutting off your handle, or using it to sell a product is a different matter.

Two questions worth answering honestly first:

Did you already grant permission somewhere? A Creative Commons licence on your site, a collaboration, or a brand agreement may cover the use.
Could the use be fair use? Commentary, criticism and teaching sometimes qualify. Our guide to fair use and saved pins walks through the four factors with everyday examples. Fair use is judged case by case, and a notice sent against an obviously fair use can come back to bite you, as the section on false claims explains.

If both answers are no, carry on. Sometimes a short, polite message asking for credit resolves things faster than a formal notice. Knowing what proper attribution looks like helps you ask for exactly that, and how to credit a Pinterest creator lays it out.

What a valid notice must contain

The law lists the elements, and a platform can reject a notice that is missing one. Treat this as a checklist rather than a suggestion.

Element	What to write
Your contact details	Full name, mailing address, email address and, ideally, a phone number
Identification of the work	Describe the original: title, where you first published it, the date, a link if it is online
The infringing material	The specific pin URL, one per line if there are several
Good-faith statement	A sentence saying you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by you, your agent or the law
Statement under penalty of perjury	That the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the owner, or authorised to act for the owner
Signature	Physical or electronic; typing your full name is normally accepted

Why the pin URL is non-negotiable: platforms remove specific items, not descriptions. "Search my name and you will find it" is not a notice. Open the offending pin and copy the address that looks like pinterest.com/pin/ followed by a long number. If all you have is a pin.it short link from a share sheet, open it in a browser first so you can paste the expanded address.

Keep the description of your original work concrete too. A link to the first place you published it, with a date, is the fastest way for a reviewer to see that you were there first.

Filing with Pinterest

Pinterest runs its own DMCA form for pins, and its copyright policy describes how it handles notices. The form is quicker than emailing because it asks for each required element in order, so you are less likely to leave one out.

Gather every infringing pin URL in one place before you start. Filing once with a full list is easier to track than filing five times.
Fill in the form field by field, using the table above as a guide. Paste links rather than retyping them.
Save a copy of everything you submitted, along with the date. Screenshots of the infringing pin are worth keeping too, in case it is edited or deleted later.
Watch your inbox. Pinterest may ask for clarification, and an unanswered question stalls the whole process.

One limit to understand: Pinterest can only remove content from Pinterest. If the file has already been copied to other sites, each of those needs its own notice sent to whoever hosts it.

When to also notify a downloader site

Pinterest is where the pin lives. Downloader sites are a separate question, and how they work decides whether a notice to them makes sense. KeepPin does not host, cache or store pins; a file streams from Pinterest's servers straight to the user's browser, as described in how KeepPin works. There is no copy on KeepPin to delete.

What a notice to KeepPin does achieve is stopping a specific pin from being fetched through the service while you wait on Pinterest, or permanently if you prefer.

Send the same elements listed above to [email protected].
Notices are answered within 48 hours.
When a notice is valid, the pin URL is blocked on KeepPin.
KeepPin cannot remove the pin from Pinterest itself. That still has to go through Pinterest's form.

The full procedure is on our DMCA policy page, and our copyright notice explains how KeepPin treats creators' rights generally.

Counter-notices: the other side of the process

If you are the one whose pin was removed and you believe the notice was wrong, the DMCA gives you a counter-notice. It has its own required elements: your contact details, identification of the material that was removed and where it appeared, a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe it was removed by mistake or misidentification, consent to the jurisdiction of a federal court, and your signature.

After a valid counter-notice, the platform may restore the content unless the original claimant files a lawsuit within the statutory window. That makes a counter-notice a serious step, not a way to register annoyance. File one only when you genuinely have the rights, for example because you licensed the material or created it yourself.

False and abusive claims

The perjury statement is in the notice for a reason. Knowingly misrepresenting that material infringes creates liability for damages, which can include the other party's costs. The DMCA is not a tool for removing criticism you dislike, an original work that merely resembles yours, or a competitor's post.

Repeated bad-faith notices can also affect your own standing with the platform. Our summary of what Pinterest's terms say covers how account-level rules sit alongside copyright law.

A short pre-send checklist

The work is yours, or you are authorised to act for the owner.
You have ruled out permission you already gave and obvious fair use.
Every infringing pin is listed by its full URL.
All six elements are present, including both statements and a signature.
You have kept a dated copy of the notice.

Done properly, a notice is usually a one-time task. Done sloppily, it turns into weeks of back and forth. Ten minutes of preparation is the difference.