Digital Millennium Copyright Act Compliance
1. Commitment to Copyright Compliance
Passings LLC (“Passings”) respects the intellectual property rights of others. We comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (“DMCA”), 17 U.S.C. §512, and respond promptly to valid notices of alleged copyright infringement.
Passings provides a Document Vault, Media Library, Legacy Locker, and Obituary/Memorial Pages where users may upload, store, or publish personal content. Future memorial features (collaborative Memorial Pages, Living Memorial pages, QR memorial products) are planned for a future release, are not available at launch, and are not yet governed by this policy. We do not proactively monitor user-uploaded content for copyright infringement. If we receive a valid takedown notice, we will act promptly to remove or disable access to allegedly infringing material.
2. Designated DMCA Agent
Passings’ designated agent for receiving DMCA takedown notices is:
Name: Jason Cahill — Sole Member/Manager
Entity: Passings LLC
Email: [email protected]
Mailing Address: 2501 Chatham Rd, Suite R, Springfield, IL 62704, USA
3. Mobile Application IP Claims
For claims of intellectual property infringement relating to the Passings iOS or Android mobile application itself (such as the app code, interface design, or trademark), notice may be submitted to Passings’ designated agent at [email protected] at any time, or, for App Store-distributed applications, to Apple’s copyright agent at www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/appstorenotices/. Claims submitted through either channel will be handled in accordance with the DMCA and applicable law. See Terms of Service §4.5 for additional mobile application provisions.
For claims of infringement relating to user-uploaded content within the Passings Service (including content in the Document Vault, Media Library, Legacy Locker, or Obituary/Memorial Pages), submit notice to Passings’ designated agent as described in §4 below.
4. Filing a Takedown Notice
If you believe content hosted on Passings infringes your copyright, submit a takedown notice to our designated agent at [email protected] with the subject line “DMCA Takedown Notice.” Under 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3), your notice must include:
A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or an authorized person.
Identification of the copyrighted work(s) claimed to have been infringed.
Identification of the infringing material with information sufficient for Passings to locate it.
Your contact information (name, mailing address, telephone number, email address).
A statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
5. Counter-Notification
If you believe content was removed in error, submit a counter-notification to [email protected] with the subject line “DMCA Counter-Notification.” Under 17 U.S.C. §512(g), your counter-notification must include:
Your physical or electronic signature.
Identification of the material removed and its location before removal.
A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good faith belief the material was removed by mistake or misidentification.
Your name, address, and telephone number.
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 your address is outside the United States, the Central District of Illinois, where Passings is located), and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided the original notification or an agent of that person.
Upon receipt of a valid counter-notification, we will forward it to the original complainant. We will restore the removed content no less than 10 and no more than 14 business days after receiving the counter-notification, unless our designated agent first receives notice that the complainant has filed a court action seeking to restrain the allegedly infringing activity.
6. Obituary/Memorial Page Content; Standing for Counter-Notice
6.1 Obituary/Memorial Page Content
Obituary/Memorial Pages (see the Platform Primer glossary) display user-uploaded content — including biographical text, photographs (Cover Photo and any photo embedded within obituary text), and other media. This DMCA Policy applies in full to Obituary/Memorial Page content: a copyright owner (or authorized agent) who believes that material appearing on an Obituary/Memorial Page infringes the owner’s copyright may submit a takedown notice in accordance with the procedure described in §4.
Trust & Safety Policy §A separately describes the non-DMCA removal procedures applicable to Obituary/Memorial Page content for non-copyright concerns (right of publicity, harassment, falsity, and Acceptable Use Policy violations). A removal request that could proceed under either the DMCA Policy or the Trust & Safety Policy may be submitted under either or both; submitting under the DMCA Policy is required to invoke the safe-harbor and counter-notice procedures of 17 U.S.C. §512.
6.2 Counter-Notice Standing for Obituary/Memorial Page Content
Where content that has been removed from an Obituary/Memorial Page is the subject of a counter-notification under §5, and the person who originally uploaded that content is living, that original uploader may submit the counter-notification. Where the original uploader is the deceased Plan Principal, or is otherwise unavailable, the Passings Successor designated for the Plan — the single fiduciary role that our Terms of Service authorize to act where a matter requires a single legal signer — may submit the counter-notification on the Obituary/Memorial Page’s behalf.
Where no Passings Successor has yet been designated for a Plan whose principal has died, a counter-notification may be submitted only once a Passings Successor has been designated through the process described in the Terms of Service; a surviving Co-Author who operates the Obituary/Memorial Page may initiate that designation. If a Plan has no surviving Co-Author eligible to be designated as Passings Successor and the original uploader was the deceased, no counter-notification is available for the content, because no person is authorized to make the certifications that 17 U.S.C. §512(g) requires under penalty of perjury.
Provider-published Obituary/Memorial Pages. Some Obituary/Memorial Pages are published by a professional services provider on a family’s behalf without a Plan (see Shared Access Terms §B.11). Such a page has no Plan, no Co-Authors, and no Passings Successor, so the standing chain above does not reach it. For content on a provider-published Obituary/Memorial Page, the publishing Provider — the party that uploaded and published the content, and the subscriber of record for purposes of 17 U.S.C. §512(g)(3) — may submit the counter-notification with respect to content it published. A family member or other authorized representative of the deceased retains standing to submit a takedown notice under §4 (for copyright claims) and to pursue the non-DMCA removal procedures of the Trust & Safety Policy (for non-copyright concerns); the family’s route for objecting to provider-published content is takedown and Trust & Safety review, not counter-notice.
Any counter-notification submitted under this §6.2 must satisfy all requirements of §5 and 17 U.S.C. §512(g). No other Co-Author or operator of a Plan is authorized to submit a counter-notification with respect to Obituary/Memorial Page content; for a provider-published Obituary/Memorial Page, no person other than the publishing Provider is authorized to submit one.
7. Repeat Infringer Policy
Passings maintains a policy of terminating accounts of repeat copyright infringers in appropriate circumstances. An account is subject to termination after receiving three valid takedown notices within any 12-month period. A notice counts toward this threshold unless it is withdrawn by the complainant, successfully resolved by a counter-notification (a proper counter-notice is filed and the complainant does not bring a court action within the period allowed by 17 U.S.C. §512(g)), or determined by Passings to be invalid; a bare or unresolved dispute does not, by itself, prevent a notice from counting. Passings may terminate at its discretion before that threshold is reached where the violations are sufficiently serious.
Strike allocation. A valid takedown notice counts against the account of the person who uploaded the identified material: for material uploaded by a living user, that user's account; for material uploaded by a deceased Plan Principal, the notice is recorded against the deceased's account and does not attach to the personal account of any surviving Co-Author or of the Passings Successor; and for material on a Provider-published Obituary/Memorial Page (Shared Access Terms §B.11), the publishing Provider's account.
Effect of termination on surviving family. Termination under this §7 ends the terminated account holder's own access. It does not, by itself, unpublish or delete an otherwise lawful Obituary/Memorial Page, and it does not extinguish the access of surviving Co-Authors, Collaborators, or family members to Plan content they are otherwise entitled to operate or view under the Terms of Service; material identified in valid takedown notices remains removed. Passings may nonetheless remove any content or page where required by law or where its continued publication would itself infringe.
8. Limitations
For zero-knowledge encrypted vault documents, Passings cannot access or evaluate the contents of files. If a takedown notice identifies an encrypted vault document, we will follow DMCA procedures to the extent technically possible, which may include disabling access to the file or suspending the relevant account. We cannot decrypt files to evaluate infringement claims.
For an Obituary/Memorial Page published by a Provider on a family’s behalf without a Plan (Shared Access Terms §B.11), the publishing Provider bears responsibility for infringing content, as set out in Provider Agreement §10.5.
9. Good Faith
Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material is infringing, or that material was removed by mistake, may be subject to liability under 17 U.S.C. §512(f), including damages and attorneys’ fees. Please consider whether material is actually infringing before filing a notice.
10. Contact
DMCA notices: [email protected] (subject: “DMCA Takedown Notice”). General support: [email protected].