DMCA.com was featured in the August 2012 Cosmopolitan Magazine in an article titled"Survive a Naked-Pic Scandal" in the magazine's "Need to Know" section.
The article illustrates the need for readers, particularly female readers, to be vigilant in the use of their cell phone camera. The article states:
Even though your e-mail is unlikely to be targeted by a hacker, like Christina Aguilera's and Scarlett Johansson's was, there are still plenty of ways for your intimate picture public. Case in point: According to a cosmopolitan.com poll, a whopping 77 percent of our readers have taken a naked photo of themselves and then e-mailed or texted it to a guy.
At DMCA.com we are not surprised by these numbers. It certainly fits considering the number of clients that use either our DIY takedown service or have one of our Professional DMCA Takedown staff help get their personal and very intimate photos taken offline.
The article goes on to ask:
So what happens when, say, the relationship fizzles and your ex decides to share those photos? Is there any way to fight back and/or contain the fallout? The answers may make you want to put duct tape over your phone camera lens.
Cosmo does a great job at quoting a legal experts opinion of the photo owner's rights and specifics regarding copyright law and your personal private photos:
Simply taking a photo of yourself means you own the copyright. But here the clincher: If your ex took the photo — even with your phone or camera —he's the one with the copyright, which will make it a lot harder to get it removed. Whether you snapped it or not, your first step should be to try to get it down.
Here's where DMCA.com comes in.:
...you can file a takedown notice through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Che Pinkerton, CEO of Digital Millennium Copyright Act Services Ltd., says his website (dmca.com) is flooded with requests from women whose nude pics ended up on a website… or hundreds (of websites).
Cosmo interviewed DMCA.com's CEO regarding this issue. He is quoted as saying:
most web-hosting companies want to be within the realm of the law,”
The article points out however that this is not always the situation!
But in some cases, the sites or their owners choose not to comply. If this happens, the next step is to attempt to get a court order against the web host, website owner, or your ex who submitted the photos. Unfortunately for most people, it doesn't end there. In many cases, it is very rare that the photo(s) is in just one place.
DMCA.com agrees. The faster the better for you to get your photo(s) taken offline or taken down. The longer your site remains online the better chance it has of being copied by other sites or actually sent to other sites from republication elsewhere.
In the worst cases when someone has waited to pursue this matter legally or through the courts, their pictures or video have been online for weeks or months. Worse still they are scatter throughout the internet on hundreds of sites and links.
The main point to take from this is: Do not wait to conduct a takedown - DO IT NOW!! even if you get a company like DMCA.com to conduct a takedown on your behalf it does NOT prevent you from pursuing the infringers legally. It simply gets your photos offline while you do.