Peru’s music copyright takedown rules now give platforms three business days to remove infringing audio, and only a defined set of rightsholders can start that clock.
The rules come from Legislative Decree 1724, published in the official gazette El Peruano on 7 February 2026. It bolts a new Title XIV onto Legislative Decree 822, Peru’s copyright law, and writes a notice-and-takedown procedure into statute for the first time.
The recitals name the reason: paragraph 29 of Article 16.11 of the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, in force since 2009, obliged Peru to create liability exemptions for service providers. Seventeen years later, it did.
What the decree actually does
Safe harbour means a platform is not held liable for what its users upload, provided it meets stated conditions. DL 1724 sets those conditions separately for internet access providers (Art. 209) and for digital service providers covering caching, hosting and search (Art. 210).
Article 208.2 is the part rightsholders should read twice. A provider’s safe harbour is not conditioned on it monitoring, controlling or actively searching its service for infringing activity. There is no filtering mandate here.
Nothing gets found unless somebody sends a notice. Article 210.2(c) at least makes that easier: every hosting or search provider must publish a named contact for receiving notices, with email address, telephone number and postal address.
The clock, in days
- 3 business days from receipt of a notice: the provider verifies the notice meets the requirements and then removes or disables access to the content (Art. 212.1.a).
- 7 calendar days: an optional “programmed execution” the sender can request instead, which warns the uploader and gives a window to remove the file voluntarily (Art. 212.1.b).
- 5 business days after a counter-notice is forwarded: the content goes back up, unless the original sender shows it has started a judicial or administrative proceeding (Art. 212.1.c).
- 90 calendar days from 8 February 2026: the adaptation window providers were given to build all of this, which closed in May.
That last date matters. The regime is live now, not pending, as the European Commission’s IP Helpdesk noted in February.
Who is allowed to send the notice
Article 211.1 lists them exactly: the author or related-rights owner, whoever holds an assignment of those rights, whoever holds an exclusive licence, or the collective management organisation that represents them. A collective management organisation, or CMO, is the body that licenses uses and collects on behalf of its members.
Indecopi’s Copyright Directorate can also issue notices on its own initiative. Writing in El Peruano’s Juridica supplement, Alexandra Espinoza Montero of Benites, Vargas & Ugaz argues the regime still needs proportionality standards to keep blocking measures reasonable.
Now read that list against your distribution agreement. Most artist-facing distribution deals are non-exclusive, or exclusive only as to delivery, rather than an assignment or an exclusive licence of the recording right.
On those terms, a distributor is not a party that can validly start the three-day clock in its own name. It needs a written authorisation to act for the owner, which Article 211.2(b) contemplates and which most catalogues have never papered. This is the same gap that shows up in DDEX’s catalogue transfer standard: the rules name parties, and your distributor is often not one of them.
The paperwork that makes it usable
Article 211.2 sets the notice requirements: identification and address of the rightsholder, reasonable evidence of ownership, enough information to identify the works, the exact URL, a good-faith statement, and a signature, electronic signatures accepted.
One provision saves real time. Under Article 211.2(c), where many works sit on a single site or system operated by one provider, a representative list may be submitted instead of itemising every track.
For a label chasing one bootleg channel, that is the difference between filing a single notice and filing two hundred. It also makes enforcement viable for Peruvian cumbia catalogues, whose audience and revenue already sit on different platforms, and for the export-weighted repertoire behind Peru’s recorded music market.
The takeaway for anyone holding Peruvian repertoire: get ISRC-level ownership evidence and a signed enforcement authorisation on file before you need them. The clock only runs for senders whose paperwork already qualifies on the day they hit send.
