What to do if a screener leaked.
Contain it, find the copies, file the notices, then check access.

If the film was Unlisted, Public or Embed only, it could also be playing inside someone else’s page. Embed only does not limit which sites can embed a film. Password, Private and vaulted films do not play in an embed at all; the frame shows that the video is unavailable. So switching to Password or Private closes those embeds as well.

Two limits apply. A player that was already open keeps its playback link until that link expires, which can take up to two hours on the watch page and twelve hours in an embed. A copy that someone already downloaded or recorded cannot be pulled back by any setting. And renaming the film’s link does not revoke anything: the old address stops working, but the permanent short link and the embed link still reach the film.

Search video sites and web search for the title, alternative titles, the director’s name and a line of dialogue. Leaked copies are often renamed, so run a reverse image search on a few distinctive frames as well. For every copy, record the exact URL of the page that plays it (not the site’s home page), the date and time you saw it, and a screenshot. Every procedure in step three asks you to identify the specific location of the copy, so this list is what you will actually be filing from.

Then check your own film. If it was Unlisted, Public or Embed only, open its analytics: the top sources list the sites hosting its embed, or Direct link. An unfamiliar site in that list is embedding your film and streaming it from your file; switching the film to Password or Private stops that. The viewer timelines show where each viewer paused, rewound and stopped, labelled by city and device family.

Keep your original master untouched. You will need it to describe the work, and you may need it to show that a leaked copy is your film.

The Copyright Office lists what a notice must substantially contain: a signature of the copyright owner or an authorized agent, identification of the work, identification of the infringing material with enough information to locate it, your contact information, a statement of good-faith belief, and a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate. It also publishes a sample notice, which we link to but have not summarized here.

For a site that has no removal form, the Copyright Office runs a central, public directory of the agents that service providers designate to receive these notices. You can search the directory by provider name.

YouTube’s postal address, as its help page gives it, is Copyright Operations, YouTube (Google LLC), 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066. If a copy sits on a site Google does not run and also shows up in Google results, send one request to Google and a separate one to that site.

In Canada, the system is different. The Government of Canada describes a notice-and-notice regime: an internet provider that receives a notice of claimed infringement forwards it to its subscriber, for example by email, and tells the copyright owner that it has done so. The page describes forwarding, not removal. It lists what a notice includes: the claimant’s name and address, the work, its web or internet address, the claimed infringement, and the date and time. Since 13 December 2018, a notice must not include an offer to settle or a demand for payment or personal information. The page also says a provider must release a subscriber’s information if a court orders it. That page is written for people who receive notices, not for rights holders who send them, which is one more reason to get advice before relying on it.

Browser links carry no watermark. uncompressed.io adds no visible or forensic mark to a film on its watch page, in an embed or on a review link. If the leaked copy came from a browser link, nothing in its pixels points to a viewer, and this page will not suggest otherwise.

Vaulted films are different, because they never play in a browser. Vault includes encrypted local playback, supported capture restrictions, visible session identification and invisible per-person forensic marks in the macOS app. These are distinct controls; forensic detection depends on the recovered copy. These controls reduce risk; they cannot guarantee that footage never leaks or that every leak can be traced. If the copy you found came from a vaulted film, keep the best-quality version you can get: cropping, recompression and filming a screen all weaken recovery. Even when a mark is recovered, it can at most point to an issued copy. It does not, on its own, prove who redistributed it.

When you reissue access, give a new password only to the people who still need it, and leave the original download off unless someone needs the file itself.

For many screeners a password link with the download switched off is a reasonable level: a forwarded URL is not watchable without the code, though the code can be forwarded too. Where the viewer only needs to watch, never switch the download on. Where a leak would cost a sale or a premiere, use the vault. That means the viewer needs a compatible Mac and the app, which is a real cost, and some recipients will not accept it.

If what you need is a per-viewer forensic mark on a link that plays in any browser, uncompressed.io does not offer that, and you should use a service that documents it for browser playback. Anything a browser can play can be recorded, whichever service sends it.