Copyright & content takedown policy

The core of what we publish is facts: that an event is happening on a particular date, at a particular time, at a particular venue, run by a particular organiser. Facts about events are not protected by copyright — no one owns the fact that a salsa night is on this Friday at that bar. We extract these facts from sources that organisers have published openly to attract attendees, which is exactly the audience we help them reach.

Where a listing includes descriptive text or images (a blurb, a flyer, a logo, a photo), those belong to whoever created them. We use the minimum necessary to make the listing useful, we attribute the source, and we link back to the original so the organiser gets the traffic. We do not present someone else's work as our own.

We rely on a conservative, consistent reading of the law across the places we operate, rather than picking whichever jurisdiction is most permissive:

• In the UK, on the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and on the principle that factual event data is not a copyright work.
• In the EU, on the text-and-data-mining exceptions in Articles 3 and 4 of the Digital Single Market Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/790). We honour machine-readable opt-outs (for example, robots.txt, noai/noindex signals, and TDM reservation metadata) and will stop processing a source that reserves its rights this way.
• In the US, on fair use (17 U.S.C. § 107), given the factual, transformative, directory nature of what we do and the minimal amount of any one work we use.

Our stance is simple: we would rather take content down than argue about whether we strictly had to keep it up.

Any organiser can ask us to remove their content for any reason. You do not have to explain yourself. You do not have to assert that anything is infringing. If you would simply prefer not to appear on Active Scene, that is reason enough.

Send a request to support@activescene.org. We have deliberately kept this frictionless: one email, plain language, and we will take care of the rest.

To help us act quickly and accurately, please include the following where you can. None of this is meant to be a hurdle — if you only have some of it, send what you have and we will follow up.

• Identification of the work or listing — a link to the page on Active Scene, the event name, or the image/text in question, so we can find exactly what you mean.
• Your contact details — a name and an email address (and, if relevant, the organisation you represent) so we can reach you.
• A good-faith statement — a short note that you believe, in good faith, that the material should be removed.
• For US / DMCA notices only: a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act on their behalf. See the DMCA section below.

• Acknowledge within 48 hours. We will confirm we have received your request.
• Remove within 7 days. We will take the content down within seven days — usually much sooner — unless we have a genuine, narrow reason to contest it (see below).
• Notify you on completion. We will let you know once the content has been removed.

In the rare case where we think a removal request is mistaken — for example, where it targets genuine factual event information that isn't anyone's copyright, or content we are confident we are entitled to publish — we may respectfully push back and explain why. Even then, our default leans towards removal, and we will always remove anything an organiser simply does not want listed.

If we do contest a request and you disagree with our reasoning, you are free to escalate the matter to a court or the relevant regulator. We will engage with that process in good faith.

We do not want Active Scene to be a vehicle for anyone's content to be used against their wishes. If a particular source repeatedly generates valid removal requests, we will stop aggregating from that source altogether and add it to an internal block list so its content does not reappear. Where a person or organisation repeatedly and knowingly misuses the takedown process itself, we reserve the right to decline to engage further beyond what the law requires.

For our US launch, we comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512). If you are a copyright owner (or authorised to act for one) and believe content on Active Scene infringes your copyright, you may send a formal DMCA notice to our designated agent.

Designated agent: Troc Studio Ltd (attn: Copyright Agent)
Email: support@activescene.org

A valid DMCA notice should include:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Identification of the copyrighted work you say is infringed.
• Identification of the material to be removed, with enough detail (such as a URL) for us to locate it.
• Your contact details (address, telephone, email).
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the rights holder, its agent, or the law.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act on their behalf.

Counter-notice. If your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or misidentification, you may send a formal DMCA counter-notice to the same agent. It should include your signature, identification of the removed material and where it appeared, your contact details, a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed by mistake or misidentification, and your consent to the jurisdiction of the appropriate court (and, if outside the US, of any judicial district in which we may be found). Where the law requires it, we may restore the material after the statutory waiting period unless the original complainant files suit.

Images deserve a special mention because they are the most personal part of an organiser's identity. Where a listing shows a flyer, logo or photograph extracted from a public source, we display it on the same fair-use / fair-dealing basis described above: in service of a factual listing, at minimal scale, with attribution and a link back to the original.

The takedown route applies to images exactly as it does to text — email support@activescene.org and we will remove any image you ask us to.

Better still, organisers can supply a preferred logo or image through the organiser portal. Anything you provide there replaces images we extracted, so the listing shows exactly what you want it to.

Active Scene is operated by Troc Studio Ltd (company number 17244336), registered office 45 Albemarle Street, 3rd Floor, Mayfair, London W1S 4JL, United Kingdom. This policy is governed by the laws of England and Wales.

Contact for all copyright and takedown matters: support@activescene.org.