Lumen, formerly Chilling Effects, is an American collaborative archive created by Wendy Seltzer and operated by the

Berkman Klein Center for Internet & 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 University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. It allows recipients of cease-and-desist notices to submit them to the site and receive information about their legal rights and responsibilities. The archive was founded in 2001 with several law school clinics and the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

to protect lawful online activity from legal threats. Originally located in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, California, Lumen later moved its operations to

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

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, th ...

" on free speech. The archive got a boost when

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

began submitting its notices to the site in 2002. Google began to do so in response 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 business, or a new religiou ...

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 that published criticism of the Church of Scientology. It was launched in 1996 by Norwegian Andreas Heldal-Lund, and maintained by him until his death in 2024. Opera ...

, 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 ...

(DMCA) 512 takedown notices, 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 has criticized Lumen for republishing lists of

URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...

s 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.

Criticism

Lumen has attracted both praise and criticism in debates over transparency and Internet governance. On one hand, the project is recognized for its efforts to document copyright enforcement activities and to promote public access to takedown data, which benefits researchers and policymakers. On the other hand, certain issues have prompted criticism from different quarters. One significant concern is related to data privacy. Despite measures such as redacting full URLs, some observers argue that the database may still indirectly reveal information about reported content, potentially compromising the privacy of the parties involved in disputes. Additionally, critics point out that individuals affected by takedown notices have limited avenues to formally challenge the inclusion of their content, as the system does not offer a structured mechanism for public response or appeal. Independent review platforms provide a varied picture of Lumen's performance. For instance, reviews on Trust Reviews highlight that users’ opinions are generally balanced, with many reviewers offering normal assessments of the database's process. At the same time, a number of reviews acknowledge concerns over objectivity in some takedown listings. Similarly, commentary found on Trustpilot ranges from supportive to critical, with reviewers noting both effective transparency measures and occasional perceptions of bias or overreach.

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 (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

George Washington University Law School The George Washington University Law School (GW Law) is the law school of George Washington University, a Private university, private research university in Washington, D.C. Established in 1865, GW Law is the oldest law school in Washington, D. ...

* Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic,

Boalt Hall The University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Berkeley Law) is the law school of the University of California, Berkeley. The school was commonly referred to as "Boalt Hall" for many years, although it was never the official name. This cam ...

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. Santa Cla ...

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 toget ...

Stanford Law School Stanford Law School (SLS) is the Law school in the United States, law school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% i ...

University of Maine School of Law The University of Maine School of Law (UMaine Law or Maine Law) is a Public university, public law school in Portland, Maine. It is accredited by the American Bar Association and is Maine's only law school. It is also part of the University of Ma ...

* 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 La ...

References

External links