--- title: "What Happens After You Send a DMCA Notice to a Hosting Provider, and How to Follow Up" description: "What section 512 asks of a hosting provider after a DMCA takedown notice, what happens after a counter-notice, and how to follow up when nothing changes." canonical_url: "https://adultmodelprotection.com/blog/what-happens-when-you-send-dmca-check-hosting-provider" last_updated: "2026-11-06T04:31:26.339Z" --- You found a copy of your content, you sent the hosting provider a DMCA takedown notice, and now you are waiting. This guide explains what US law asks of the host after your notice, what happens if the uploader objects, and how to follow up when nothing changes. Some people call asking a host about a notice a "DMCA check". It is not a term in the law: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act knows the takedown notice and the counter-notice ([17 U.S.C. 512](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512)). What people usually mean is following up on a notice they sent. Adult Model Protection is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. ## What the Law Asks of a Host After Your Notice Section 512 gives hosts a "safe harbor": it limits their liability for material their users upload, if they meet conditions. The conditions that matter after a notice are: - **A designated agent.** A host that wants the safe harbor must designate an agent to receive notices and register it with the US Copyright Office (512(c)(2)). You can look the agent up in the [DMCA Designated Agent Directory](https://www.copyright.gov/dmca-directory/). Hosts outside the United States, or hosts that do not seek the safe harbor, may not be listed. - **An expeditious response.** After a valid notice, the host keeps its safe harbor if it responds expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material (512(c)(1)(C)). The statute sets no fixed deadline. - **A repeat infringer policy.** A host must adopt and reasonably implement a policy to terminate repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances (512(i); [US Copyright Office](https://www.copyright.gov/512/)). A site is not legally required to remove content, but it loses the DMCA safe harbor protection if it does not act on a valid notice. ([US Copyright Office](https://www.copyright.gov/512/)). Section 512 also lists no duty to confirm that a notice arrived or to send status updates. Some hosts reply, some do not. ![A person holding a camera in front of a yellow curtain](/blogs-img/700x420-dmca-takedown-process-explained-step-by-step.webp) ## When a Notice Is Incomplete A notice has to contain the elements in [17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)(A)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512): a signature, identification of the work, the location of each copy, your contact details, a good-faith statement, and a statement that the information is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act for the owner. Our page on [how a DMCA notice works](/services/dmca-takedowns-adult-content) explains each element. A notice that misses required elements may not count as notice to the host. If it substantially includes the identification of the work, the location of the material and your contact details, the host must promptly attempt to contact you to complete it (512(c)(3)(B)). If a host asks you for more information, answer quickly and with the same details. ![Five steps after a DMCA notice to a host: keep a record of the URL, host, address used, date and reference number; check whether the copy is gone, since the law sets no deadline and no duty to confirm receipt; follow up after a few business days; if the uploader sends a counter-notice you get a copy and the content may return after 10 to 14 business days; escalate to the upstream host, Cloudflare, the registrar, the ISP, a payment processor or search engines.](/images/blog/blog-what-happens-when-you-send-dmca-check-hosting-provider.webp) *What to do after you send a DMCA notice to a hosting provider.* ## If the Uploader Sends a Counter-Notice A host that follows the counter-notice procedure in section 512(g) takes reasonable steps to tell the uploader that the material was removed. The uploader can then send a counter-notice, a statement under penalty of perjury of a good faith belief that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification (512(g)(3)). The host then promptly sends you a copy of the counter-notice and tells you that it will restore the material in 10 business days (512(g)(2)(B)). The platform may restore the content after 10 to 14 business days unless it is told within that period that the copyright owner has filed a court action ([US Copyright Office](https://www.copyright.gov/512/); 512(g)(2)(C)). For a US work, registration (or a refused application) is generally required before the owner can sue ([17 U.S.C. 411(a)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/411)). A lawyer can advise you on what to do when a counter-notice arrives. ## How to Follow Up on a Notice 1. **Keep a record.** For each notice, note the URL of the copy, the host, the address or form you used, the date you sent it and any reference number you got back. When you find a copy, save the link and the date; do not download the copy or take screenshots of the page. 2. **Check whether the copy is gone.** Look at whether the link still leads to the copy. A removed page may show an error or a message that the content was removed. 3. **Give it a few business days.** The law sets no deadline, so this is a rule of thumb, not a rule. Small hosts may take longer. 4. **Follow up with the same details.** Reply to the same address or form, or to the agent listed in the Copyright Office directory, and include the URLs, the date of your notice and any reference number. Ask whether the notice was received and whether anything is missing. 5. **Escalate if nothing changes.** See the next section. ## When a Host Does Not Respond The next step is the companies the site depends on: - **The upstream provider.** A site's own host may rent servers from a larger provider. Large cloud providers publish their own abuse routes; [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/report-aws-abuse/), for example, explains how to report abuse of its resources. - **Cloudflare.** Many sites sit behind Cloudflare. Cloudflare says it does not have the ability to remove content from a website, so it forwards abuse complaints to the hosting provider and the website owner, and it only processes copyright reports that include all the information section 512(c) requires ([Cloudflare](https://www.cloudflare.com/trust-hub/reporting-abuse/)). - **The domain registrar, the internet provider or a payment processor** the site uses. - **Search engines.** Even when a page stays online, Google and Bing take copyright removal requests to drop it from their results. Google says the average processing time for Search removal requests through its web form is approximately 6 hours ([Google Transparency Report help](https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7347743)). Our page on [search engine de-indexing](/services/search-engine-deindexing) explains this route. Our guide on [how DMCA takedowns work](/blog/how-dmca-takedowns-work-a-creators-complete-guide) covers the whole process from the first notice, and the Adult Model Protection docs page [DMCA explained](https://docs.adultmodelprotection.com/docs/legal/dmca-explained) covers the legal background. ![A person at a laptop that shows charts](/blogs-img/700x420-content-protection-analytics.jpg) ## Following Up Yourself or With AMP You can send and follow up on every notice yourself, for free. What Adult Model Protection adds: our team finds copies with regular scans on paid plans of Google, Bing, Yandex and more than 500 known leak and piracy sites, plus reverse image searches and manual searches. Every copy we find gets a notice (up to 100 platform notices a month on the Essentials plan, unlimited on Luxe and higher), filed under our name as your authorized agent, and a person on our takedown team checks each notice before it is sent ([human review](https://docs.adultmodelprotection.com/docs/features/human-review)). The rights holder named on the notice is your model (stage) name, and a host may show it to the uploader. After a notice, we check whether the page is gone, follow up, and escalate to hosting providers, registrars, ISPs, Cloudflare or payment processors when a site does not act. Copies found again in later scans get a new notice. When a counter-notice arrives, our takedown team tells you and explains your options; the decision is yours. The dashboard shows each request and its status. Takedowns start on the Essentials plan. The Free plan includes a quarterly web scan, a dashboard preview and DIY guides, so you can see where copies of your content appear. [Start Free Plan](https://app.adultmodelprotection.com/signup?redirect=/subscribe) or [compare the plans](/pricing). ## FAQ ### What should I include when I follow up? The URLs of the copies, the date you sent the notice, the address or form you used, and any reference number you got back.