Texas has its share of subscription content creators, and the question that reaches Texas lawyers is rarely abstract. A creator finds that material she sold to subscribers is being redistributed on websites she has never heard of, sometimes with her name in the address. She wants to know whether this is a copyright problem, a criminal matter, a civil claim, or all three, and in what order to proceed. Federal and Texas law offer different tools that reach different defendants, and using them in the right sequence is the difference between a problem that is contained and one that spreads.
Ownership is federal, and it belongs to the creator
Copyright is exclusively a matter of federal law, and Texas cannot create or narrow it. Under the Copyright Act, the person who takes a photograph or records a video owns the copyright the instant the file exists, whether or not it is ever registered. A creator who works with an agency should check her contract: an assignment or work-for-hire clause can move ownership to the agency, which then becomes the party entitled to notify and sue. Absent such a clause, the creator owns the work, and the fact that she sold access to it does not diminish her rights. A subscriber who paid to view the content bought a license to view, nothing more.
The federal route: Section 512 notices to hosts and search engines
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 512, is the workhorse. It gives hosting providers a safe harbor from money damages on condition that they designate an agent with the Copyright Office and remove infringing material expeditiously once they receive a notice that meets § 512(c)(3)(A): the owner’s signature, identification of the work, the location of the copy, contact information, a good-faith statement, and a sworn statement of authority to act. A separate provision, § 512(d), applies the same structure to search engines, which is why Google accepts legal removal requests for specific addresses and drops them from its results.
The federal route has two strengths and one weakness. It works against any host that wants to keep its safe harbor, wherever the uploader is, and costs nothing to send. Its weakness is that it does nothing to the person who uploaded the material and nothing to prevent the next upload, so it must be repeated as copies reappear. Creators who fall behind that volume often turn the monitoring and filing over to an OnlyFans leak removal service, which also leaves a dated record of every notice that can serve as evidence in a later claim. Suing the uploader for damages remains possible but requires registering the work under 17 U.S.C. § 411(a) and, for statutory damages, doing so within the window set by § 412.
The Texas route: Penal Code § 21.16 and Chapter 98B
Texas addressed intimate-image distribution directly in 2015 with the Relationship Privacy Act, which created two provisions. Penal Code § 21.16 makes it a state jail felony to knowingly or intentionally disclose intimate visual material without the effective consent of the person depicted and with intent to harm that person, where the material was obtained or created under circumstances in which that person had a reasonable expectation it would remain private, the disclosure causes harm, and it reveals the person’s identity. The statute was narrowed by amendment in 2019, survived a facial First Amendment challenge before the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2021, and remains enforceable.
Chapter 98B of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code supplies the civil counterpart. A person depicted in intimate visual material that was disclosed without consent can sue for actual damages, including mental anguish, together with court costs, reasonable attorney’s fees, and exemplary damages, and can obtain an injunction. Chapter 98B also reaches a defendant who knowingly promotes such material on a website it owns or operates, which extends liability beyond the original uploader.
The fit for subscription content is the honest caveat. Both provisions were written for material that was private when created. Where the creator produced the material for sale and voluntarily delivered it to subscribers, a defendant will argue there was no reasonable expectation of privacy and that consent was given. The argument is not always right, since consent to show a paying subscriber is not consent to public distribution, but it is a real dispute, and the Texas route works best where the uploader is identified and the material was never meant for a paying audience.
A practical order of operations
Because the two routes reach different parties, sequence by what can be recovered quickly and what must be preserved for later.
- Preserve evidence first: full-page captures with the address and date visible, the direct file addresses, and your originals with metadata.
- Send § 512 notices to each host’s registered agent and a removal request to Google for every address, then re-check whether each was actually removed.
- If a specific person is responsible, report the disclosure to law enforcement under § 21.16 and consult a Texas attorney about a Chapter 98B claim and an injunction.
- Register the works with the Copyright Office if a damages action against an identified infringer is realistic.
Where the two routes meet
The federal route stops the bleeding; the Texas route assigns blame. A creator who does only the first will keep the problem manageable but never see a wrongdoer held to account. A creator who pursues only the second may win a judgment while the copies keep circulating. The practical answer for most Texas creators is to run the administrative process continuously and reserve the criminal complaint and civil claim for cases where a defendant can actually be named and served. Both bodies of law are available; the skill lies in knowing which one you are using and why.
