AWS Guide

How to Submit a DMCA Notice to AWS

If infringing content is hosted directly on AWS infrastructure (an EC2-hosted site, an S3 bucket, and similar), AWS's Trust & Safety team handles copyright complaints, but only through a very specific plain-text email process, not a web form.

🕑 Guide last reviewed: July 2026. AWS's own process can change; the official link above is always the source of truth.

AWS is unusually strict about formatting: it will not open attachments under any circumstances, so your entire DMCA notice, including any supporting details, has to go directly in the body of a plain-text email.

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Step-by-step process

1

Confirm the content is actually on AWS

Check WHOIS/hosting lookup results for AWS IP ranges or an amazonaws.com subdomain before filing.

2

Prepare your complete DMCA notice text

Following the required elements under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c): signature, identification of the work, identification of the infringing material, contact info, and the good-faith and accuracy statements.

3

Email it in plain text

Send to trustandsafety@support.aws.com with everything in the plain-text body. No PDFs, screenshots, or attachments of any kind.

4

AWS acknowledges and investigates

You'll get an automated acknowledgment, and for complete, valid notices, AWS contacts its customer to remove or disable the infringing content.

AWS DMCA Notice Process (via AWS re:Post) →
⏱️ Typical response time: not publicly fixed; AWS is legally required to act “expeditiously”
Evidence Checklist

What to have ready

  • Your complete notice text, written in the email body
  • Links and descriptions in plain text
  • No attachments. AWS will not open them

Need the notice text?

Use our free generator to draft the actual copyright notice or cease-and-desist language, then paste it into AWS's report form above.

Generate Your Notice →

Common Mistakes That Delay This Process

Attaching a PDF, screenshot, or any file to the email is the single most common reason an AWS notice gets rejected outright, since AWS will not open attachments under any circumstances. Notices that skip one of the statutory elements under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c), like the required good-faith statement, are also treated as incomplete rather than partially processed.

What Happens If AWS's Customer Doesn't Comply

Once AWS forwards a valid notice to its customer, the account actually running the infringing service, that customer is expected to remove or disable access to the material. If they don't, AWS's own terms of service give it the ability to suspend or terminate the underlying account for repeated or unaddressed policy violations, separate from the DMCA process itself. Because AWS's customers range from individual developers to large companies running infrastructure for many end users, a single AWS account can host content belonging to multiple unrelated parties, so a notice about one infringing site typically doesn't affect anything else running on the same account.

Frequently Asked Questions About AWS Takedowns

No. AWS will not open attachments under any circumstances. Describe everything directly in the email body instead.
No. If you send your notice in the body of the email itself, that counts as your signature.
Check the site's hosting provider with a WHOIS/IP lookup first; a misdirected report just causes delay.
You don't need to know the specific service. Confirming it's on AWS's IP ranges through a WHOIS or hosting lookup is enough to send the notice to the right team.
AWS generally acknowledges receipt of a complete notice, though the level of follow-up detail on the customer's response can vary.
No, you send the notice to AWS's Trust & Safety team, and AWS handles forwarding it to the responsible customer internally.
Include the full URL as you found it. AWS's investigation process identifies the responsible customer account internally based on the infrastructure details you provide.
File a new notice with the current URL if the content relocates. AWS's process is tied to the active infringing material, not a fixed original location.
AWS's Trust & Safety process handles various policy violations, but the plain-text DMCA email process described here is specifically for copyright claims under 17 U.S.C. § 512.

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Need to report infringement somewhere else? See the full Platform Guides directory.