Lumen, formerly Chilling Effects, is an American collaborative archive created by
Wendy Seltzer
Wendy Seltzer is an American attorney and a staff member at the World Wide Web Consortium, where she is the chair of the Improving Web Advertising Business Group. She was previously with Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. Se ...
and founded along with several
law school clinics and the
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...
to protect lawful online activity from
legal threat
A legal threat is a statement by a party that it intends to take legal action on another party, generally accompanied by a demand that the other party take an action demanded by the first party or refrain from taking or continuing actions object ...
s. Lumen is a "project" of the
Berkman Klein Center. Its website, ''Chilling Effects Clearinghouse'', allows recipients of
cease-and-desist
A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not disc ...
notices to submit them to the site and receive information about their legal rights and responsibilities. Founded in 2001 in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, California, it later moved its operations to
.
Inception
The archive was founded in 2001 by Internet activists who were concerned that the unregulated private practice of sending cease-and-desist letters seemed to be increasing and was having an unstudied, but potentially significant, "
chilling effect
In a legal context, a chilling effect is the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights by the threat of legal sanction. A chilling effect may be caused by legal actions such as the passing of a law, the ...
" on free speech.
The archive got a boost when
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
began submitting its notices to the site in 2002. Google began to do so in response to the publicity generated when the
Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a scientology as a business, bu ...
convinced Google to remove references and links to an anti-Scientology web site,
Operation Clambake
Operation Clambake, also referred to by its domain name, xenu.net, is a website and Norway-based non-profit organization, launched in 1996, founded by Andreas Heldal-Lund, that publishes criticism of the Church of Scientology. It is owned and ma ...
, in April 2002.
The incident inspired vocal Internet users and groups to complain to Google, and links to the Clambake site were restored. Google subsequently began to contribute its notices to Chilling Effects, archiving the Scientology complaints and linking to the archive.
Starting in 2002, researchers used the clearinghouse to study the use of cease-and-desist letters, primarily looking at
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
(DMCA) 512
takedown notice
Notice and take down is a process operated by online hosts in response to court orders or allegations that content is illegal. Content is removed by the host following notice. Notice and take down is widely operated in relation to copyright infri ...
s, non-DMCA copyright issues, and trademark claims.
On November 2, 2015, Chilling Effects announced its renaming to Lumen, as well as a number of international partnerships.
Reception
Lumen has been praised for providing and promoting
transparency on the use of copyright takedowns.
[
The ]Copyright Alliance
The Copyright Alliance is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(4) organization representing artistic creators across a broad range of copyright disciplines.
The Copyright Alliance's institutional members include more than sixty trade organizations, a ...
has criticized Lumen for republishing lists of URLs named in takedowns as part of its database. It argued that this defeats the purpose and intent of sending takedown notices to search engines in the first place, as they would subsequently be added to "the largest repository of URLs hosting infringing content on the internet.". While the Lumen database formerly used to show full URLs, in 2019 the URLs were redacted to only display the website names and the number of URLs from each site, with the full URLs only to be made available to authorised users.
Members
* Berkman Center for Internet and Society
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008 ...
, Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.
Each class ...
* Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...
* George Washington University Law School
The George Washington University Law School (GW Law) is the law school of George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. Established in 1865, GW Law is the oldest top law school in the national capital. GW Law offers the largest range of cou ...
* Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic
The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (commonly known as Berkeley Law or UC Berkeley School of Law) is the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. It is one of ...
, Boalt Hall
The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (commonly known as Berkeley Law or UC Berkeley School of Law) is the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. It is one of ...
* Santa Clara University School of Law
The Santa Clara University School of Law (Santa Clara Law) is the law school of Santa Clara University, a Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California, United States, in the Silicon Valley region. The School of Law was founded in 1911. The Jesuit ...
High Tech Law Institute
* Stanford Center for Internet and Society
The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is a public interest technology law and policy program founded in 2000 by Lawrence Lessig at Stanford Law School and a part of Law, Science and Technology Program at Stanford Law School. CIS brings togethe ...
, Stanford Law School
Stanford Law School (Stanford Law or SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, it is regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world. Stanford La ...
* University of Maine School of Law
The University of Maine School of Law (UMaine Law or Maine Law) is public law school in Portland, Maine. It is accredited by the American Bar Association and Maine's only law school. It is also part of the University of Maine System. The school's ...
* IIP Justice Project, University of San Francisco School of Law
The University of San Francisco School of Law (USF Law) is the law school of the private University of San Francisco. Established in 1912, it received American Bar Association accreditation in 1935 and joined the Association of American Law Sc ...
See also
* Censorship by Google
Google and its subsidiary companies, such as YouTube, have removed or omitted information from its services in order to comply with company policies, legal demands, and government censorship laws.
Numerous governments have asked Google to censor ...
References
External links
*
{{Scientology and the Internet
Internet-related activism
Internet-based activism
Freedom of expression organizations
Organizations established in 2001
2001 establishments in the United States
Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown incidents
Scientology and the Internet
Internet censorship
Information society