Register a Copyright Agent and Display it on Your Website

NMAR has sent emails to members emphasizing the importance of registering a designated agent under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and posting the agent’s contact information on your website.

WHY HIS MATTERS

Here are the key reasons why registering a DMCA agent and posting the required contact info on your site is a smart — and increasingly necessary — step for real-estate firms, individual brokers, teams, and other online service providers:

  • The DMCA includes a “safe harbor” provision for online service providers (including websites that host user-content or third-party content) that helps shield them from liability for copyright infringement by others — but only if certain requirements are fulfilled. 
  • One of those key requirements is that the site must designate an agent for receipt of copyright infringement notices, register that agent’s contact information with the United States Copyright Office, and make that agent’s contact info publicly available (for example, on the website).
  • If you fail to register a designated agent and post the required contact info, you may be ineligible for the safe-harbor protection. That means your site could face greater risk of legal liability—even if the infringing content was uploaded by someone else. 
  • For brokerages and associations in the real-estate space, many MLS providers and IDX policies explicitly require that firms and their websites either rely on a registered DMCA agent or register their own agent and display the proper notice. 
  • Note that registration isn’t “once and done”: under the current rules, registrations expire (typically after three years) and must be renewed or updated when the designated agent’s information changes.
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO NOW

We strongly recommend that every brokerage, team website, and associated domain in your network take the following steps as soon as feasible:

  1. Select a designated agent: Identify an individual, department, or third-party entity who will serve as the DMCA designated agent for your firm/website.
  2. Register the agent with the U.S. Copyright Office using the DMCA agent registration portal.
    https://www.copyright.gov/dmca-directory/
    Include the correct legal business name of the service provider (your brokerage), the agent name, physical mailing address, email address, telephone number, and website domain(s).  https://share.google/6bDmtN8iV5TfZWVa1
  3. Post the agent contact information on your website: Create a page (for example “Copyright/DMCA Agent”) and include the agent’s name, address, email, phone number, and a statement that the agent is designated to receive notifications of claimed infringement under the DMCA. Place a conspicuous link (e.g., in your website footer). 
  4. Calendar a renewal/check date: Because registration validity may expire (three years in many cases), put a reminder in your compliance calendar to review and update the registration when required. 
  5. Ensure any separate legal entity is covered: If you operate under more than one legal entity (for example a team-business name or separate LLC) or have multiple domains (agent sites, team sites, etc.), confirm whether each entity/domain needs its own registration. Some IDX/MLS guidance indicates that separate legal entities posting the content may each need to register. 
GAAR WEBSITE EXAMPLES 

We have added a webpage with the required public information: https://www.gaar.com/about/dmca

On our footer, a link has been added to direct to the DMCA webpage.