Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

The "required" action to stop any infringer is to file a lawsuit with the US District Court in the district in which the infringer lives/operates or can be found (since this is an internet case, the "can be found" language gets a bit hairy). No cease-and-desist letter is actually necessary, but it is the general practice to send one because it looks good in a complaint opening litigation for plaintiff to be able to say "We tried; we sent a C&D letter but got no response."

The injured party has absolutely no obligation to contact you in the manner in which you want to be contacted.

The DMCA protects hosting services against suit for hosting an infringer. Thus, the infringed party would contact the host and demand that the infringing material be removed; the host then has a set period of time (and it's a pretty short time) to investigate and remove the allegedly infringing material; if they don't meet those time constraints, then the injured party can sue the host in a copyright infringement action. A DMCA notice can be sent whenever allegedly infringing material is found online, no matter what the intent to sue may be at the time.

If you post material that could infringe the copyright of others, you need to have a copyright attorney on retainer, because you are very likely to be sued and copyright law has teeth.

THIS POST CONTAINS GENERAL INFORMATION AND IS INTENDED FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. IT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE, NOR DOES IT CREATE ANY ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP. FOR LEGAL ADVICE ON YOUR PARTICULAR MATTER, CONSULT YOUR ATTORNEY.