grnyte grnyte

Reporting content

Last updated: 19 September 2026

This page says how to report content on grnyte and what happens after a report reaches me. I run two channels: one for content you believe is unlawful, and one for an objection about land, access or property.

1. Where to send a report

Both channels use one address, and a person reads it.

Email: report@grnyte.rocks

You can also write to the postal address in the imprint instead. Email reaches me faster. There is no form on this page, no ticket system and no support queue: one private individual reads the inbox.

Write in German or English. Name the channel your report belongs to in the first line, so it lands in the right one.

2. Reporting illegal content

This channel takes a report about content you believe breaks the law. Article 16 of the Digital Services Act (DSA) requires such a channel, and this is the one I run.

Use it for:

  • copyright infringement, including a scanned, photographed, traced or retyped guidebook page
  • a violation of your personality rights, such as a photograph or a video of you posted without your agreement
  • your personal data posted by somebody else
  • other content you believe is unlawful

Anyone can report. You need no account, and you need not be the person the content concerns. For an objection about land or access, use section 3 instead: it asks for different information.

2.1 What a report needs to contain

Three things let me act on a report, and a fourth is yours to choose:

  • the exact location of the content: a URL, or an in-app reference naming the region, the sector and the entry it sits on. If you cannot reach the content to get a link, describe it well enough that I can identify it, and that is enough
  • why you believe the content is unlawful, and the basis for that belief, such as proof that you hold the copyright or that the photograph shows you
  • a statement, made in good faith, that the information in your report is accurate and complete
  • your name and email address, if you want them known. This part is optional. Without a way to reach you I cannot confirm that your report arrived or tell you what I decided, and that is the only thing leaving it out costs you

Without the location, or a description that identifies the content, I have to write back before I can act, and that delays your report.

2.2 Copyright reports

A copyright report needs nothing beyond the four items in section 2.1. I have not registered a designated agent with the United States Copyright Office, the section 512(c) safe harbour is therefore not available to me and I do not claim it, and none of that changes what you send: write to the address in section 1 and I handle a copyright report the way I handle any other report about illegal content.

A private region does not change the copyright position, and neither does the fact that another member uploaded the photograph. Clause 6 of the terms sets out why, under sections 15(3), 23 and 72 UrhG.

2.3 What happens after you send it

Every report takes the same route, and the person who posted the content gets to answer it:

  1. I confirm to you that your report arrived
  2. I forward the substance of it to the person who posted the content
  3. They get a deadline to respond, stated in the message I send them
  4. If they do not answer by that deadline, I treat the report as justified and delete the content
  5. If they answer, I weigh both accounts, and any evidence I ask either side for, before deciding
  6. I tell you what I decided, the ground I decided it on, whether I used automated means in handling your report or in reaching the decision, and how to challenge the decision

Whichever way the decision goes, it settles what stays on the service and nothing else. Your route to court over the same content is untouched.

The deadline in step 3 is seven days, counted from the day the forwarding message goes out. The clock runs against the person who posted, not against me.

If a report is urgent, say so and say why, and I act before that deadline.

Your name and your contact details do not travel with the report. The member who posted the content hears what the report says and hears what I decide, not who wrote to me. Article 17(3)(b) DSA sets “strictly necessary” as the test for passing on a notifier’s identity, and I apply it before I decide anything. Most reports are about the content itself and can be answered without knowing who raised them. The exception is a report where who is complaining is part of the claim: a personality-rights objection from the person shown in a photo, or a landowner’s complaint about a location. There the member cannot respond without knowing who objects, so your identity goes with it. A copyright report sits close to that line, because the claim rests on who holds the right, so expect to be named. Beyond those, I pass your identity on only if you tell me I may, or if a law or a court obliges me to, and then I tell you.

Deletion is the outcome I can promise, and I promise nothing past it. Section 4 says why. If you and the person who posted the content both hold your positions, the dispute is between the two of you: I decide what stays on the service, and I decide nothing about who owns what. Neither of you loses the right to go to court.

2.4 If a report concerns your content

Where a report names your content, you hear the substance of it, and you hear the decision I reach.

Where I act against your content or your account, I tell you:

  • what I did, and which content or account it applies to
  • the facts I relied on, and whether a report or my own detection triggered it
  • the ground for the decision, naming the term of the agreement or the provision of law I applied
  • how to challenge it

Clause 12 of the terms sets out that statement of reasons, and clause 13 sets out the appeal. I look at an appealed decision again myself. There is no separate moderation team here and I will not pretend there is. Article 20 DSA, the internal complaint handling duty, binds online platforms, and a service whose regions are closed and whose members are admitted one by one is not one; clause 13 of the terms sets out why. The appeal is a product choice, and offering it does not turn it into a legal duty.

3. Land, access and property

If you own or manage land shown on grnyte and you object to an entry, this channel is yours, and I act on the objection rather than argue with it.

Tell me:

  • which sector, area or route the objection concerns, and where it is: a parcel, an address or coordinates
  • your connection to the land: owner, tenant, manager, or the authority responsible for it
  • what you object to: the location being recorded, an approach crossing your land, a photograph, or climbing there at all
  • what you want to happen
  • your contact details

A lease, a title extract or a letter on the authority’s paper settles the question of your connection to the land in one step. Send what you have. I do not ask a landowner to prove ownership twice.

3.1 What I do about it

A specific, credible objection from a person connected to the land is a reason to act, and I act on it.

I do not answer such an objection by pointing at my terms. The action the software has against one entry is deletion, so that is what I offer: I take the sector entry down rather than dispute whether it should stay. grnyte is not a way to climb where climbing is not allowed, and it is not a way to keep an entry alive against the person whose ground it describes.

There is no visibility setting on an area, a block or a route. I cannot narrow who sees an entry, hide it from part of a region, or lock it while it stays in place, and I will not promise any of those. Removal is the remedy that exists.

Where you would rather climbers read a restriction than have the sector disappear, say so and I record it in the entry instead. It goes in the description of the area, block or route, where every member of the region reads it alongside the rest of the entry.

3.2 How long it takes

I answer a land objection inside a stated window, and one person has to hold that window alone.

I decide within fourteen days of the report reaching me. Where the claim is credible, that decision is a takedown: it settles whether the entry stays up, not who owns the land.

If it will take longer, you hear that inside the fourteen days, with a reason. There is nobody else here to meet that window, so I would rather tell you than let it pass in silence.

If your objection is urgent, say so in the first line and say why: a seasonal closure, a nesting site, an ongoing dispute on the ground.

4. What I can do, and what I cannot

The limits below apply to both channels, and they are limits of the software and of my position, not a policy.

What I can do:

  • delete an entry, a photograph, a video, an ascent log or a comment
  • end an account, under clause 11 of the terms
  • add a warning to an entry, passing on what a hazard report tells me

What I cannot do:

  • hide an entry, restrict it, or limit who inside a region sees it
  • decide who owns a work, a photograph or a piece of land
  • open a region to you because you reported something: a report is not access
  • tell you that anything on grnyte was checked, because nothing on it is

Acting on your report is action on the entry you named, and it says nothing about any other entry. The disclaimer covers what that means for the data itself.

5. Reports made in bad faith

A report you know to be false can carry legal consequences for you.

That is why both channels ask for a good faith statement. I keep the report and the correspondence about it. A statement you knew to be untrue when you made it is not one I treat afterwards as a mistake. A report that turns out to be wrong is a different thing: send it, and say what you are unsure about.

6. What I record about a report

I log every report, in both channels.

The record holds what arrived, when, who sent it, what I decided, on what ground and when I acted. I keep it so a later dispute has a history, and so repeated reports against one account are visible: clause 11 of the terms ends an account after repeated upheld copyright reports.

Your report contains personal data, starting with your contact details. The section “Reports and moderation records” in the privacy policy covers what I hold about a report, how long I keep it, which processors touch it and what rights you have over it.

7. Reporting a hazard

A hazard on a route is not a report about unlawful content, and it reaches me at the same address.

Send the entry and what you found: a loose block above a start, a spinning bolt, an anchor somebody found damaged. Tell the people you climb with as well, because a warning reaches only the members who open that entry. The disclaimer sets out what I do with a hazard report and what a warning on an entry does and does not mean.

8. Related pages

The rest of the detail sits on these pages:

  • The terms set out clause 9 on reports, clause 10 on counter-notices, clause 13 on appeals and clause 14 on land complaints
  • The privacy policy lists what data I hold and what rights you have over it
  • The disclaimer describes where the climbing information comes from and what it cannot tell you
  • The imprint carries my name, my postal address and the contact points required by the DSA