Beyond DMCA: Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and ad-platform takedowns
A DMCA notice is for web hosts. When your image lands on a marketplace or in an ad, you use that platform's own IP process. Here is the route for each.
A DMCA notice is the right tool when your image turns up on a website with a web host you can contact. It is the wrong tool when the image lands on a major marketplace or inside a paid ad. Those platforms run their own intellectual-property processes, which are usually faster and purpose-built. Sending a generic DMCA letter where a platform expects its own form just slows you down.
Here is the route for each of the common cases. The exact names and steps change over time, so treat this as the map, not the turn-by-turn.
Amazon
Amazon handles intellectual-property complaints through its Report Infringement process, available to any rights owner. Brand-registered sellers get additional tools for monitoring and reporting. You identify the listing and the infringing content and submit your claim of ownership. As with any channel, a complaint backed by verifiable proof of ownership is harder to wave away than a bare assertion.
Etsy
Etsy has a dedicated intellectual-property reporting process for copyright and trademark. You submit the specific listing URLs and your ownership claim through their form. Etsy’s marketplace is full of original creative work, so they process these regularly, but they still need you to demonstrate the work is yours.
eBay
eBay runs the Verified Rights Owner program, known as VeRO. Rights owners report listings that infringe their intellectual property, and eBay acts on reports from verified owners. The emphasis, again, is on being able to show ownership.
Ad platforms
When your imagery appears in a competitor’s paid ads, you go through the ad platform’s own copyright process. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google both provide intellectual-property reporting forms for this. Reporting the ad through the platform is more effective than contacting the advertiser, who has every reason to ignore you.
The constant across all of them
Different forms, same requirement. Every one of these processes asks you, in some form, to show that the content is yours. That is the step a store owner is usually least prepared for, and it is the one that decides whether your report is actioned. The general principles are covered in what makes evidence admissible for a takedown.
If your images carry an invisible watermark, you can detect your mark in the marketplace copy and attach a verifiable ownership record to whichever form you are filling in. The same proof works across every channel, because it is tied to the image, not to one platform.
When the platform route is not enough
Some infringers relist the moment one listing comes down, operate across several marketplaces at once, or hide behind layers that make them hard to reach. At that point the per-platform approach stops scaling, and it is worth reading when to bring in a takedown specialist. For the website case specifically, see the DMCA takedown playbook for Shopify owners, and for the calm step-by-step once you find a copy, you found your stolen photo, now what.
Tilkie gives you the one thing every one of these routes needs: proof the image is yours. It watermarks your Shopify catalog invisibly so that wherever a copy surfaces, you can detect it and file with evidence in hand.