Home » TakeDowns » Etsy TakeDown Process

Etsy has a standard form process that goes through a series of screens to get the take down request sent. Etsy allows people to sell items through their stores and like many places that allow this, people have found opportunity and anonymity in hiding behind fake identities. Due to most sites privacy policy they are not by law entitled to give out user information. There are no real great complications and this post will show the process to get a good result. The process highlights one option that we couldn’t understand, and there was no real help on the form to discuss the logic behind the request, but this will be discussed when we arrive at that point. The takedown form can be found here!

The first step of the take down process is in declaring who is actually making the claim. In the case of this tutorial, and in most cases, we will assume that your are the rights owner. So you simply select the top option “you own the rights to” , which will open up the notice shown below. The in the lower part of the form, select “Begin Report“.

This will open up the form slider that has four steps. The first step is the standard Personal information form. You simply add all the necessary details in the required fields. For the Company and Job fields you can add your trading name and something like ‘creative’ in Job.

The next step is to declare the type of claim you are making. As an artist reporting artwork infringement the best choice would be to select the ‘Copyright‘ option. Regardless of whatever you may read to the contrary, copyright is inherent to the creature in every country of the world. Laws may vary in each country, but as soon as you create something your are protected by copyright. The next part is to add the rights owner, which in this case we will assume is yourself. Now, this is where the form gets a little confusing. We selected ‘No‘ here, as there is no understanding of what they are trying to say regarding the ‘educational resource‘. The form still gets processed regardless, as it’s not a required field.

Under this section a new section appears. This is where you actually name the artwork or design you are reporting. It’s all standard information, but make sure the name of the copyrighted work is the same as the name you have released to the public. After that you select ‘An item and/or a design‘ or ‘Video, image, audio and/or other media‘ demanding on the type. For artwork it’s the second option. Then as with all the other forms, place links to where they can see the artwork you created. Making sure it’s best to have an official site or recognised portfolio site. Avoid Facebook pages, etc as they seem less credible. As stated above, the artwork doesn’t need to be registered (usually in the US it helps), so select ‘No‘. If it is, then select the other option.

Then a quick jump to a small option screen that asks what type of Material on Etsy is being reported. If it’s an item for sale that is or contains your designs/artwork then it’s ‘Listing‘.

The next page selection after pressing ‘Next‘ is the location of the listings. This can be a little tricky to find. But basically the easiest way to find the listing ID is by looking in the address bar in the web browser and locating the long number after the etsy.com/listing/ part (shown here as ‘XXX’) https://www.etsy.com/listing/xxxxxxxxx/{name of image/product}?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query={name of image/product}&ref=sr_gallery_1 you can simply copy the number over into the box and press ‘Add listing‘, and it will automatically populate the area below, with an image of the listing

If you get the number correct, then you should get an image appearing like the one in the image below. There is an option to add more, but that process is just a repeat of the one above.

This then leads on to the final stage, which is the declaration part. All you need to do is tick the two boxes and type your digital signature in the form. This will then activate the ‘Submit this form’ section, and you can send in your request for the takedown. This will result in a notification email stating they have received the form. Good luck!