Rights Complaints & Takedowns

This page describes a process, not the law. Some parts of it are still being finalised — where that is true, it says so. For a real dispute, talk to a qualified attorney; this guide is not legal advice.

A rights complaint is someone telling us that a public record on the site contains material being used without the permission it needs — most often a copyright owner (text, art, a distinctive stat block) or a trademark owner (a protected name, setting, or logo). Anyone can submit one through the rights-reporting form or by emailing support@thecrazygm.com. We ask a reporter for the record URL, the specific material at issue, their relationship to the rights involved, supporting information, and what action they want.

A complaint is an accusation, not a finding. We do not treat an accusation — or an automated signal — as proof on its own.

Every accepted report becomes a private record with an audit trail. An operator moves it through a fixed set of states — nothing changes public content automatically:

Each transition, and the reason for it, is recorded. Restoration and removal are both deliberate operator actions — a report sitting in the queue does not pull your content by itself.

• You may be asked for your side. Where the content came from, whether it is your original work or derived from Open Game Content, and what (if anything) you would change. The representation you accepted at publish time — that you will respond in good faith — is this moment.
• Your record may be paused during review. Temporary restriction is not a ruling against you; it is us not leaving a credible complaint live while we look at it.
• A cooperative contributor usually keeps their content. The most common good outcome is a small correction — a citation fixed, a referenced name disclosed, a paragraph rewritten — not removal.
• Repeated substantiated complaints have account consequences. We may suspend or terminate an account associated with multiple substantiated reports of infringement. We weigh the specific record, the reporter's information, your response, and the history of prior substantiated reports.

If you believe your material was restricted or removed by mistake, reply to the notice we send and tell us why; we can restore access when a report is withdrawn, resolved, or shown to be mistaken.

Because a site that hosts and redistributes user-submitted content has to. In the United States, the DMCA § 512 safe harbour gives a platform a defence against liability for infringement committed by its users — but only if the platform actually does two things:

1. Adopts and reasonably enforces a repeat-infringer policy. Courts treat a policy that exists on paper but is never enforced as no policy at all. That is why account consequences for repeated substantiated complaints are real, not theoretical.
2. Acts expeditiously on a proper notice to remove or disable the specific material identified, once it has actual knowledge of it.

For trademark there is no equivalent safe harbour — only a knowledge standard. A platform is on the hook only for specific infringement it knows or should know about, which is why our process acts on specific reports rather than policing content in advance. Tolerating an obvious pattern of infringing content is what turns “no reason to know” into “reason to know.”

The short version: the takedown process protects the site's ability to keep hosting everyone's homebrew. Without it, the whole compendium is exposed.

We are transparent about the edges that are still open:

• This is a general rights-reporting process, not a formal statutory notice-and-counter-notice procedure. We have not adopted a jurisdiction-specific process with a fixed counter-notification path and a guaranteed put-back window. If we do, this page will describe it.
• Specific timelines and thresholds are not published. How fast we act, and how many substantiated reports trigger account action, are decisions still being settled with counsel.
• Our designated copyright agent can be reached at support@thecrazygm.com. A dedicated agent page with the full Copyright Office registration details is in progress.