Copyright & Takedown Policy

1. Policy Summary

If you believe content on bincollectionguide.org/ infringes your copyright, you can send us a written notice using the procedure on this page. We respond promptly to valid notices, removing or disabling access to the material at issue while we investigate. We also let the person who posted the material respond, and we restore content where a counter-notice or our own review shows the original complaint was not well founded.

This policy applies to any kind of allegedly infringing content — text, images, photographs, illustrations, video, audio, or compilations. It is the formal route for intellectual-property complaints. For factual corrections, fairness concerns, or general feedback, the Contact page is the right place.

2. UK Legal Framework

The primary statute governing copyright in the UK is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA). It gives the author of a qualifying work the exclusive right to copy it, issue copies to the public, communicate it to the public, and adapt it. Use without permission, outside one of the statutory exceptions (for example, fair dealing for criticism, review, news reporting, or quotation under sections 30 and 30A), can be infringement.

The UK Intellectual Property Office at gov.uk/government/organisations/intellectual-property-office publishes plain-English guidance on copyright, designs, patents, and trade marks for rights holders and users.

Where the alleged infringement is also an issue of database rights, performers’ rights, or moral rights, the same notice procedure applies — please tell us which right you are asserting.

3. DMCA Framework

bincollectionguide.org/ is operated for a UK audience but is indexed globally and uses third-party infrastructure that may be located outside the UK, including in the United States. As a matter of practical operation we also handle complaints in the form of a US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) §512 notice. A complainant can use either the UK notice format or a DMCA-style notice; we treat them as equivalent for the purpose of triggering the takedown procedure on this page.

If you are submitting a DMCA notice and are based outside the UK, please include all of the elements listed in Section 6 below; the additional sworn-statement element required by 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3) is welcome where applicable.

4. Before You Send a Notice

A copyright notice is a serious legal document. Before sending one, please consider:

• Are you the rights holder, or formally authorised to act for them? The notice procedure is for owners and their authorised agents. Third parties without standing should ask the rights holder to send the notice.
• Is the use actually infringing, or might it fall within a recognised exception? Quotation, news reporting, criticism and review under sections 30 and 30A of the CDPA, and similar fair-use principles in other jurisdictions, can authorise some uses without permission.
• Is this the right body to ask? If you believe the alleged infringement appears on a council’s own website that we link to, that is a matter for the council, not us. We can only act on material we host.
• Is the issue actually a different one? Out-of-date facts, opinions you disagree with, or commercial disputes are not copyright issues and the notice procedure is not the right tool. Use the Contact page for those.

5. How to Send a Notice

Send your notice by email to info@bincollectionguide.org with the subject line “Legal — takedown.” If a postal address is required for legal service, please email us first and we will provide one for the purpose.

We acknowledge takedown notices within five working days. We assess them within ten working days. Genuine, well-formed notices are usually acted on much faster than that — often within 48 hours.

6. Required Elements of a Valid Notice

To act on a notice we need enough information to identify the work, the alleged infringement, and you. A valid notice should include all of the following:

1. Identification of the copyrighted work. Describe the work and, where possible, point us to where it can be seen on your own site or in your records — for example, a photograph at example.com/originals/photo.jpg or an article published in your magazine on a specific date.
2. Identification of the allegedly infringing material. Give the exact URL on bincollectionguide.org/ where the material appears, plus the specific element (a paragraph, an image filename, a section). Notices that say only "your site copies my site" cannot be acted on without specifics.
3. Your contact information. Your full name, postal address, telephone number, and email address. If you are acting as agent, include the rights holder’s name and your authority to act for them.
4. Good-faith statement. “I have a good-faith belief that the use of the material described above is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”
5. Accuracy statement. “The information in this notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury (where applicable), I am the owner of the copyright at issue or am authorised to act on the owner’s behalf.”
6. Signature. Your physical or electronic signature.

7. What Happens After You Send a Notice

Where a complaint is genuinely arguable — for example, where the use looks like fair dealing for the purpose of news reporting or quotation — we may decline to remove and instead invite the complainant to set out why the exception does not apply.

8. Counter-Notice Procedure

If material you authored has been removed under this policy and you believe the removal was a mistake or based on a misidentification, you can send a counter-notice. The counter-notice should include:

• Your full name, postal address, telephone number, and email address
• Identification of the material that was removed and the URL it appeared at before removal
• A statement, made in good faith, that the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification
• Your consent to be contacted by the original complainant (we will share your contact details with them as part of the counter-notice process; this is the standard mechanism in both UK and DMCA practice)
• Your physical or electronic signature

On receipt of a valid counter-notice we will share it with the original complainant and explain the next steps. If the complainant does not commence court proceedings within a reasonable period, we may restore the material.

9. Repeat Infringer Policy

We do not knowingly host repeat infringement. If a contributor or commenter has had multiple separate items of content removed under this policy and a pattern of infringement is established, we may suspend or terminate their access to the Site permanently. Decisions are made on the totality of the record, not mechanically on a strike count.

10. Trade Mark Complaints

Trade mark complaints follow a similar process but are handled separately from copyright. Send your complaint to info@bincollectionguide.org with the subject line “Trade mark complaint.” Include:

• The mark in question and the registration number(s), with jurisdiction
• Where on bincollectionguide.org/ the alleged infringing use appears (specific URL and element)
• A statement of why the use is, in your view, infringing rather than legitimate descriptive use
• Your full contact information and authority to act

Local authority names, logos, and trade marks are owned by the relevant council. As explained on our Disclaimer page, we use council names solely to identify the area each page covers — the practical and necessary use of a place name to write about local services. We do not reproduce council logos. If a council believes our use is misleading or improper, please write to us and we will respond promptly.

11. Defamation and Other Legal Complaints

For complaints about defamation, harassment, breach of confidence, or other tort claims under the laws of England and Wales, please email info@bincollectionguide.org with the subject line “Legal — defamation” (or the relevant category). Tell us what statement you say is defamatory or unlawful, where it appears, and why. Section 5 of the Defamation Act 2013 sets out the framework that may apply where a complaint is about user-generated content posted by an identifiable person; we will respond consistent with that framework.

Anonymous complaints, complaints from unidentifiable parties, and complaints that do not identify the specific statement at issue cannot be processed effectively.

12. Misuse of This Process

We pay particular attention to:

• Notices that target legitimate criticism, review, or news reporting and that appear to be attempts at reputation management dressed up as IP claims
• Bulk, automated, or boilerplate notices that do not engage with the actual content at issue
• Notices from purported “rights holders” of generic public information — bin colours, council names, or government schedule data are not protectable on those grounds

13. Contact

For all takedown and intellectual-property correspondence:

• Email: info@bincollectionguide.org
• Subject line: “Legal — takedown” (copyright) or “Trade mark complaint” (trade mark)
• Acknowledgement: Within 5 working days
• Assessment: Within 10 working days of a valid notice

Other types of complaint are routed via our Contact page. Privacy and data-protection concerns are handled under our Privacy Policy.