Copyright and content notices

What is on this site, and who put it there

Most of what you see on a boat or operator page was published by the operator: the photographs, the description of the boat, the description of the business, and the contact details. BoatRental.com is a booking platform. It hosts what operators publish and puts renters in touch with them.

Two exceptions are worth stating plainly, because they change who a notice is really about.

• Some operator pages were compiled by us from publicly available information before the operator had an account here. If a page describes your business and you did not write it, that is why. Write to us and we will correct it or take it down — and if you would rather keep it, you can claim the listing and edit it yourself.
• Market pages and the articles in the Guide are written by us. A notice about those is a notice about our own work, and it reaches the people who wrote it.

Messages between a renter and an operator are private. They are not published anywhere on the site.

Where to send a notice

Send it to info@boatrental.com, addressed to Boat Rental INTL LLC. Put the exact URL of the page in the notice. A notice that does not say where the material is cannot be acted on, and the first thing we would have to do is write back and ask.

If you are sending the notice on someone else’s behalf, say whose behalf and in what capacity.

Copyright notices

A copyright notice under United States law — 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3)(A) — has six elements. Include all six. Leaving one out is the usual reason a takedown stalls.

1. 1.Your physical or electronic signature, as the owner of the exclusive right that is allegedly infringed, or as someone authorised to act on that owner’s behalf.
2. 2.Identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed. If several works on this site are covered by one notice, a representative list of those works.
3. 3.Identification of the material you say is infringing and that you want removed, with enough information for us to find it. In practice that means the exact URL of the page, and which photograph or which passage of text on it you mean.
4. 4.Your address, telephone number and, if you have one, an email address we can reply to.
5. 5.A statement that you have a good faith belief that the use of the material is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. 6.A statement that the information in your notice is accurate, and — under penalty of perjury — that you are authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Two of those elements are sworn statements, so read the notice before you send it. Under 17 U.S.C. §512(f), a person who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing is liable for the damages that misrepresentation causes.

What happens after you send one

The same sequence every time, for copyright notices and for the notices described further down this page.

• We confirm receipt in writing, without undue delay, to the address you wrote from.
• A person reads the notice and looks at the material. We do not use automated tools to detect infringement or to decide notices.
• If the notice is well founded, we remove the material — a photograph, a passage of text — or take the whole listing out of publication where the material cannot be separated from it.
• We tell the person who published the material what was removed and why, and we send them a copy of the notice, including the contact details in it. If you do not want your contact details passed on, do not send a notice.
• We write back to you with the decision and the reasons for it, including when the decision is that we are not removing anything.

If your material was removed

If you published material that we removed after a copyright notice, and you believe it was removed by mistake or because it was misidentified, you can send a counter notice to the same address. Under 17 U.S.C. §512(g)(3) it has four elements.

1. 1.Your physical or electronic signature.
2. 2.Identification of the material that was removed or disabled, and the location where it appeared before it was removed.
3. 3.A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake, or misidentification of the material.
4. 4.Your name, address and telephone number, a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the US Federal District Court for the district your address is in — or, if your address is outside the United States, any district in which we may be found — and a statement that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice, or from their agent.

We send a copy of your counter notice, with the contact details in it, to the person who sent the original notice. If they do not tell us within ten business days that they have filed a court action seeking to stop you using the material, we put it back — between ten and fourteen business days after we received your counter notice.

If the material was removed for a reason other than copyright, you do not need a counter notice. Reply to the message telling you what was removed and say why you think the decision was wrong.

Notices about other unlawful content

Copyright is not the only reason content can be unlawful. A listing may misuse a trade mark, use a person’s image without permission, defame someone, or breach the law of the country it is offered in. Notices of that kind go to the same address, and this is the notice and action mechanism required by Article 16 of the EU Digital Services Act, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065.

You do not have to be a lawyer and you do not have to cite the Regulation. Include four things.

1. 1.A substantiated explanation of why you consider the content to be illegal — which law it breaks, and why.
2. 2.The exact electronic location of the content: the URL, and where on the page to look.
3. 3.Your name and email address, so we can confirm receipt and tell you what we decided.
4. 4.A statement confirming that you believe in good faith that the information and allegations in your notice are accurate and complete.

We confirm receipt without undue delay, decide the notice by hand, and write back with the decision and the reasons for it. If you disagree with what we decided, reply to the same message and say why, and we will look at it again. Going to a court in your own country remains open to you, as does an out of court dispute settlement body certified under Article 21 of the Digital Services Act.

Operators can use this route too. If you are the subject of a decision — your listing was removed or taken out of publication — the reasons come to you in writing, and the same reply route applies.

Repeat infringers

Notices are kept on file against the account they concern. Where an operator or a user infringes repeatedly, we close the account and take its listings out of publication.

Sending notices that are not made in good faith is also grounds for us to stop acting on them, and to say so in writing.