DMCA / Copyright & Trademark Policy

1. Safe Harbor & Scope

GotSMS is a registered trademark and DBA ("doing business as") of Aurora Art Trading Inc. We respect the intellectual property rights of others and expect the same from everyone who uses this website.

This policy is designed to comply with the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512, and explains how to submit a copyright infringement notice, how we respond to it, and how to submit a counter-notification if your material was removed in error.

2. What a Valid Takedown Notice Must Contain

To be considered valid under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), a takedown notice must include, at minimum:

(a) A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf.

(b) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed (or a representative list, if multiple works at a single location are covered by one notice).

(c) Identification of the specific material you claim is infringing, with a direct link or other information reasonably sufficient for us to locate it. Generic, domain-level claims — such as asserting that an entire website infringes without identifying specific pages, images, or passages — are legally insufficient under § 512(c)(3)(A)(iii) and will not be processed as valid takedown notices.

(d) Your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.

(e) A statement that you have a good-faith belief the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

(f) A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on their behalf.

3. How to Submit a Notice

Send notices to our designated agent at support@gotsms.org.

The email subject line must contain the exact phrase "DMCA Takedown Notice". Notices submitted without this subject line, sent to any other address, or missing any element listed in Section 2, may be delayed, filtered as spam, or returned for correction, and are not guaranteed a response within any statutory timeframe.

4. Misrepresentation Is a Federal Offense — 17 U.S.C. § 512(f)

Anyone who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing is liable under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) for damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner, or by us as a result of relying on that misrepresentation.

We treat bad-faith, harassing, or plainly baseless notices — including notices used to suppress lawful comparison, commentary, or competition rather than to protect an actual copyright — as material misrepresentations under § 512(f). We reserve the right to reject such notices outright and to forward them, together with all identifying information supplied by the sender, to legal counsel and, where warranted, to law enforcement.

5. Counter-Notification

If you believe material was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, you may submit a counter-notification under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3) containing:

(a) Your physical or electronic signature.

(b) Identification of the material that was removed and its location before removal.

(c) A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification.

(d) Your name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the judicial district in which your address is located (or, if outside the United States, any judicial district in which we may be found), and that you will accept service of process from the person who filed the original notice or their agent.

Upon receiving a valid counter-notification, we will forward it to the original complainant. Unless that party informs us within 10 business days that it has filed a court action seeking to restrain the allegedly infringing activity, we may restore the removed material.

6. Repeat Infringer Policy

Consistent with 17 U.S.C. § 512(i), we maintain a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances, the access of any user determined to be a repeat infringer.

7. Trademark Notice & Nominative Fair Use

All third-party brand names, logos, and trademarks referenced on this website — including platform names mentioned throughout our comparison and guide pages — are the property of their respective owners. Their use is purely nominative: solely to identify, describe, and compare which specific service a given phone-verification guide relates to, as permitted under 15 U.S.C. § 1115(b)(4) and equivalent nominative fair use doctrine.

GotSMS is a registered trademark and DBA ("doing business as") of Aurora Art Trading Inc. No third-party brand owner mentioned on this website has sponsored, endorsed, or is otherwise affiliated with GotSMS unless explicitly stated. If you are a trademark owner with a specific, good-faith concern about how your mark is presented on a specific page, contact support@gotsms.org with the exact URL in question and we will review it promptly.