Four separate removal routes exist and they are not interchangeable: copyright under 17 U.S.C. §512, non-consensual intimate imagery reporting, GDPR Article 17 erasure, and right of publicity. Answer four questions about the material and the situation, and the route that fits comes back with the form to use.
Given your situation, produce the correct removal route with the exact form to use, in under 60 seconds.
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How the four removal routes differ
Copyright and NCII reporting are asked for interchangeably and are not interchangeable. They rest on different facts, go to different desks, and fail for different reasons.
Copyright, 17 U.S.C. §512. Requires that you own the work — that you shot it, or paid for it under a contract that assigned the rights. The claim is about the file, not about you. Its advantage is that it binds: a host that ignores a valid notice risks its safe-harbour protection. Its limit is that a photograph taken by somebody else is not yours to claim, however much you are in it.
NCII reporting. Covers intimate material you appear in, published without your consent, regardless of who pressed the shutter. Most large platforms and both major search engines run a dedicated route for it, usually faster than the copyright one and with a lower evidential bar. Where both apply, file both — they are handled by different teams and neither blocks the other.
GDPR Article 17. A data-protection right, not a copyright one. Available where you are in the UK or EU, or the site is directed at people who are. A controller has to answer, ordinarily within one month, and refusing gives you a route to a regulator. It is the only route on this list with a statutory response deadline.
Right of publicity. Covers commercial use of your name, face or handle. Coverage varies sharply between US states and between countries, which makes it a supporting claim rather than a first move — but it is the one that reaches fake profiles selling subscriptions in your name.
Where picking the removal route yourself stops working
Choosing between copyright, NCII, GDPR and publicity is a decision you make once and can make well with the descriptions above. What does not scale is everything after the decision.
Each route is a different queue with a different reply, or none. A copyright notice goes to a host's abuse desk. An NCII report goes to a trust-and-safety team. An Article 17 request goes to a data controller. Three filings on one URL means three threads to track, and two of them will not reply at all.
The right route changes per host. The same set of images can be copyright material on one site, an NCII case on a second and a data-protection matter on a third, depending on where each is operated from and what its policies say.
Re-uploads reset the decision. Every new copy is a new URL, on a possibly different host, needing the routing done again.
I did not take the photos. Can I still get them removed?
Yes. Copyright is only one of four routes. If you appear in intimate material published without your consent, the NCII route applies regardless of who holds the copyright, and on most platforms it moves faster.
Do I have to upload the images anywhere to report them?
No. Search and platform reports take URLs. Hash-matching services fingerprint the image on your own device and send only the fingerprint, so the image itself never leaves your phone or computer.
Can I file more than one route for the same page?
Yes, and it is usually the right move. The routes go to different teams, none of them blocks another, and a page that survives one review often does not survive a second on different grounds.
What if the material is an AI-generated fake of me?
Both major search engines run a removal route for involuntary synthetic explicit imagery, separate from the copyright one. Copyright generally will not help, because nobody owns a copyright in a face, but the NCII and publicity routes often do.
Is this page legal advice?
No. openDMCA files notices and is not a law firm. The routes described here are the ones platforms and search engines publish; which one fits depends on facts and on jurisdictions this page cannot see.