Blackout writes takedown notices one per rung of the escalation ladder you pick — the host, the registrar, the search index, the payment processor — and checks each one in Python afterwards against the statements that rung actually requires.
Nothing opens in this browser — this one takes a job and does the work on our own graphics cards in Oregon. The free allowance below is how you try it: 16 notices, no card and no payment, on the key you are issued.
Nothing is sent for you, and the ownership claim has to be stated explicitly before a notice is written.
The problem
A leak goes up on a tube site, an aggregator and three mirrors. You write to the host and hear nothing. The reason is almost never that they disagree — it is that the notice was missing a statement the statute requires, so it was never a valid notice and they were never obliged to act on it. Nobody writes back to explain that, and there is no way to tell a notice that was refused from one that was incomplete.
Every notice is written, then read back in Python against the statements that rung requires — the good-faith statement, the accuracy statement, the authority statement, the identification of the work and the location. A notice short a statement is rewritten, not sent.
One notice per rung of the ladder you pick: the host, the registrar, the search index, the payment processor. Each wants different things and each is a different document, which is why it is four notices and not one copied four times.
Blackout transmits nothing. No email, no form, no API. A notice is a legal statement made by you under penalty of perjury, and a program cannot make it on your behalf.
This is the gate, and it is not a formality. A takedown notice contains a sworn statement that you own the work or are authorised to act for whoever does. Blackout will not write that sentence from an assumption — you state the claim, it goes into the notice as your statement, and if you cannot state it then this is not your takedown to send. The programs that skip this step are the reason hosts treat the whole category as noise.
How it works
What the work is and on what basis you are entitled to act. Typed by you, in your words. Nothing is written until this exists.
How far you want to go: host only, host and registrar, add the search index, add the processor. Each rung is a notice, and each rung costs one unit, so a four-rung escalation on one leak is four.
Four complete documents with the required statements present and checked. You send them, from your own address, having read what you are swearing to.
What it will never do
Everything a takedown tool could do to get you in trouble involves acting on your behalf. Blackout cannot act at all.
Pricing
Sixteen free notices on every key is four complete four-rung escalations, which is not a sample. It is there because the first leak is usually a panic and the worst possible moment to be asked for a card.
Four complete escalations, start to finish.
Twenty-five escalations — a bad year, handled.
A studio chasing leaks as a matter of routine.
Per notice written. Nothing is priced against a takedown succeeding, because nobody can promise that and pricing against it would mean pretending to. Your licence key is emailed to you within two working days of payment.
Checkout is our own bitcoin server, not a card processor. The units you buy are added to your key: buy from the Buy more box inside the program and they arrive on their own once the payment confirms, or buy here and paste the invoice number from your receipt into that box.
Questions
Because the notice contains a statement made under penalty of perjury, and a program cannot make that statement for you.
It is also the practical answer: notices sent in bulk from a vendor's address are the ones hosts learn to filter. One sent from your own address, complete, reads as a person who knows what they are doing.
A host who ignores you is not the end of it. The registrar, the search index and the payment processor each have their own obligations and their own notice requirements.
Most leaks stop at the first rung. The ladder matters for the ones that do not, and the point is that each rung's notice is a different document rather than the same letter forwarded.
After the notice is written, it is read back by code looking for the specific statements that rung requires — not for tone or persuasiveness.
A notice missing one is rewritten before you ever see it. That check is why these notices get processed, and it is arithmetic rather than judgement.
No. Writing runs on Tower 1's own graphics cards in Oregon. There is no leak database on our side and no record kept of what you were chasing.
A key. One line of text, issued to you and shown exactly once — only its hash is kept here, so it cannot be looked up later and we could not tell you what yours is. Every key arrives with a free allowance already on it, which is the tier at the top of the pricing above, and the work starts the first time you send a job with that key on it.
Each job is metered in the unit named in the pricing, and a unit that fails — a file that will not read, a row the model held back — is not charged and is named in the job report rather than silently skipped. When an allowance runs out the next job is refused before any work starts, with the number it used printed on the refusal.
More units are bought in bitcoin. The checkout is a bitcoin server we run ourselves. Buy from the Buy more box inside the program and the units are added to your key on their own as soon as the payment confirms; buy from the plan buttons above and paste the invoice number from your receipt into that same box. Each payment adds its units once, to one key.
Not a trial. If you have a leak up now, this is the entire job for nothing — and the card question only ever arrives if it happens a fifth time.