Every takedown notice and removal request in the Lumen database is there because one of the parties involved with the sending or receipt of the notice (usually, but not always, its receipt) has chosen to share a copy of that notice with Lumen. That being the case, Lumen has only the information the sharing entity has chosen to share with Lumen regarding that notice, and different companies and individuals have chosen to share different types of information. On this page are more details regarding what information a given notice contains, on both a source-by-source and notice type-by-notice type basis.

If the text of a notice shows “[redacted]” somewhere in its fields, this means that the content in question was either not shared with Lumen in the first place -- redacted by the source that shared it with Lumen, or was removed by Lumen as part of its general redaction processes and protocols. For obvious reasons, Lumen is unable to give out more information about what information Lumen redacted from notices.

Who is Involved With A Notice

All notices have a sender and a recipient. The sender of the notice is the person or company who sent the notice, or request or order to the recipient, seeking the removal of some material from online or from search results.

The recipient is to whom the notice or request or order was directed, the person or company that the sender thinks has the ability to take the material down. Examples are Google, Meta, Vimeo, Medium and others.

Often, the sender of a notice is also the person or company whose rights are at stake. For example, an artist might send a DMCA complaint, or a person might send a court order regarding defamation. However, larger rightsholders sometimes use third parties, such an agency or lawyer, to manage their copyrights, and in that case it will be those third parties who send the notice. For such notices, the person or entity whose rights are at issue will be listed as the principal, while the agent who actually sent the notice will be listed as the sender, and as having sent "on behalf of" the principal. For notices where the principal and the sender are the same, they will not be listed separately. You can see an example of a notice with both a principal and a sender here.

The submitter of a notice is the person or company, almost always the latter, responsible for sharing a copy with Lumen. Most often, but not always, the submitter is the notice's recipient. The submitter is listed separately for clarity, even if the same as the recipient or sender.

Notices that have other involved parties may list them, such as plaintiffs, defendants, or courts in the case of court orders like this one. These other involved parties' labels should be largely self-explanatory.

General Redactions Performed by Lumen

Lumen makes a good faith effort to redact out all personally identifying information (“PII”) contained within notices other than the name of the sender or rightsholder, and the country of origin of the notice. Our automatic redaction processes seek to identify and remove the following:

• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Other forms of ID number (e.g. Social Security #s, national ID #s)

Lumen also makes a good faith effort to not display the street addresses of individuals who are the Senders or Recipients of notices if that information has been included in a notice. Lumen will generally remove such information, as well as other PII, on request if it is inadvertently included in notice fields by a notice Sender.

PLEASE NOTE: Lumen generally does NOT remove the names of the individual or entity who holds the right(s) at issue that the notice is seeking to exercise. This is typically the notice’s Sender and/or Principal, but sometimes only the Principal, in the case of notices sent by a 3rd party, such as a lawyer or agency.

If the Sender of a notice is such a 3rd party individual, Lumen makes a good faith effort to redact out the Sender’s name. Lumen does not generally redact out the names of 3rd party companies, law firms or other agencies.

URL redactions

• If a piece of text that Lumen redacts as a matter of policy, such as an email address, national ID number, or name of someone alleging they have been defamed, occurs within a URL, Lumen will typically redact that text from within the URL itself
• If a URL is from a domain that has been previously identified as highly likely to host sensitive content, such as defamatory language or images, non-consensual intimate imagery, or deepfake pornography, Lumen may make the full text of such URLs available only to its affiliated researchers.

Types of notices found on Lumen and the redactions performed on them

DMCA notices

In general, when Lumen receives a DMCA notice, it displays the notice as it was received by Lumen, subject only to the automatic redactions as described above. This means Lumen displays the name of the rights-holder making the request in the form that it originally appeared on the notice as sent. Lumen also generally displays the URL location(s) of the material complained of, although truncated to the top-level domain of the URL text. We include complained-of URLs as raw text only, and use robots.txt to request that the URLs, as well as the entire content of notice pages, not be indexed by search engines. Without the location of the complained-of material and the identity of the complainant, the notices are meaningless from a public transparency or research perspective, to say nothing of offering no insight as to possible misuse of takedown notices as a vehicle for censorship or other ends.

Defamation notices

Lumen displays defamation notices that it receives in the form that it receives them, but makes a good faith effort to remove any allegedly defamatory language that may have been included, and will generally remove inadvertently included allegedly defamatory language on the request of the notice Sender. In addition to these general redactions by Lumen, different companies that share notices with Lumen share different aspects of Defamation notices, see below for further details.

Private information

Lumen displays private information notices that it receives in the form that it receives them, but makes a good faith effort to remove any PII that was included, other than the name of the Sender, (see above) and will remove any remaining PII on the request of the notice Sender.

Court Orders

Orders from United States courts are publicly available documents, and Lumen therefore generally shares them in the form in which they were received, with no redactions. For court orders issued from jurisdictions other than the United States Lumen makes a good faith effort to redact them in a way that matches the relevant legal restrictions of the jurisdiction in question.

“Counterfeit” notices

These notices are those sent seeking the removal of material having to do with counterfeit goods. Lumen treats these in the same manner as the DMCA notices it receives.

Other notices

For notices in any categories other than those listed above, Lumen performs redactions as if the notice was a DMCA notice.

What happens when the OSPs that share notice copies with Lumen change what data they share.

From time to time, an OSP that shares notice copies with Lumen will change its internal policies on the types of notices or types of information within a notice that it shares with Lumen. All notice copies submitted to Lumen after such a policy change is made will reflect the change. Whether the changes will be made retroactively to notices copies already shared with Lumen is a decision made on a case by case basis by the OSP in question.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Notice submitters

The following is an alphabetically ordered list of the notice submitters with whom Lumen works or has worked in the past - the notice recipients and senders that have chosen to share copies of their notices with Lumen. More specific details regarding each submitter follow below.

Different submitters submit notices within different notice categories. It is possible that the details of a a notice may qualify for more than one category, but each notice will fall only within the single category chosen by the submitter when sharing with Lumen. For example, a court order might be regarding defamation.

Most of the submitters with which Lumen works submit only notices they have received under the guidelines of the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) but some submit other categories of notices, including notices having to do with trademark and patent, court orders for removal from both U.S. domestic and foreign courts, notices having to do with private information or allegedly defamatory content, as well as other types. Lumen is never the original sender or recipient of the notices in its database, and for any given notice, has only the information that the submitter in question chose to share with it.

Lumen does not have any additional information regarding a notice or its provenance beyond what is visible on the Lumen website, and any further questions about a given notice, including requests for retraction or changes, should be directed to the notice's sender or recipient or both. Lumen cannot provide contact information for any of its data partners.

Data Submitters

• Automattic/Wordpress [not currently sending]
• Cloudflare
• Counterfeit Technology [no longer sending]
• DuckDuckGo [no longer sending]
• Google
• GitHub (sending paused for Github-internal privacy assessment)
• IndyBay Media
• The Internet Archive
• Kickstarter
• Medium
• Meta
• Periscope [no longer sending]
• PGPSMedia [not currently sending]
• Proxy.sh [no longer sending]
• Reddit [not currently sending]
• Stack Exchange [ no longer sending]
• Stripe [no longer sending]
• Tucows [no longer sending]
• Tuebl [no longer sending]
• Twitter [not currently sending]
• The University of California
• Vimeo
• Wikia [not currently sending]
• Wikipedia/Wikimedia
• YouTube [not currently sending]

______________________________________________

Automattic/Wordpress (Not currently sending)

Automattic is the parent company for wordpress.com and Tumblr, and the host of many WordPress blogs. It shared with Lumen copies of the non-DMCA removal requests it receives from governments or agencies.regarding content it hosts. You can see an example of an Automattic notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/10783920

Cloudflare, Inc.

Cloudflare, Inc. is an American web infrastructure and website security company that provides content delivery network services, DDoS mitigation, Internet security, and distributed domain name server services. Cloudflare's services sit between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare user's hosting provider, acting as a reverse proxy for websites. Cloudflare shares with Lumen copies of DMCA notices and court orders sent directly to Cloudflare regarding their products.

Counterfeit Technology

Counterfeit Technology is a rights management company that sends DMCA notices on behalf of its clients. It shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices it sends to others. You can see an example of a Counterfeit Technology notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/12506014

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo "is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo distinguishes itself from other search engines by not profiling its users and by showing all users the same search results for a given search term," and that shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA requests it receives.

Also of note, when DuckDuckGo receives a DMCA notification regarding a disputed text or thumbnail search result, it directs the complainant who sent the DMCA to Yahoo! Search or Bing, with the following response:

Thank you for your email. If you are requesting removal of content in DuckDuckGo search results, please note that we do not store or host the content. We syndicate that content from industry partners, including Verizon Media/Oath/Yahoo! and Microsoft/Bing. You should direct your request to Yahoo! at https://policies.oath.com/us/en/oath/ip/index.html and/or to Bing at https://www.microsoft.com/info/Search.html. DuckDuckGo search results will automatically and promptly (within about 10 days) reflect their takedown actions. Thank you.

GitHub (paused)

Github shares with Lumen copies of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and government takedown requests that it receives and processes.
Github also places copies of those notices in a public repository in real time. See, e.g., https://github.blog/2022-01-27-2021-transparency-report/

GitHub does not provide information regarding the sender of DMCA notices.

You can see an example of a GitHub notice on Lumen here:

Google

Google is Lumen’s largest submitter, by both total volume of notices and number of possible notice types. Below is an up-to-date list of the types of notices Google has chosen to share with Lumen, arranged by notice type ( DMCA, Defamation, Circumvention, etc.) and a list of the various Google product (Search, Blogger, Images, etc.) regarding which Google may receive notices that it then shares with Lumen.

Google offers a help center article which details its relationship and sharing practices with Lumen, as well as more information for Google users about Google's work with Lumen under the “Transparency at our core” section of the Legal Removals Help Center. Further, Google users who access the Legal Removals troubleshooter and select that they have a legal issue are notified about Google's sharing practices.

NOTE: *Google shares with Lumen copies of the takedown notices that Google receives regardless of the action that Google takes on a given notice or on specific URLs within that notice. The presence of a notice originally sent to Google within Lumen's database does not mean that a removal took place.*

Types of Notices that Google Shares With Lumen

• Copyright notices, incl. DMCA
• Circumvention
• Counterfeit
• Court Orders
• Government Requests
• Defamation
• Notices based in laws outside the USA - “Local Law”

A Partial list of Google Products Regarding which Lumen may have related notices (Non-exhaustive)

• Blogger
• Drive and Docs
• Google My Business Listings
• Groups
• Image Search
• Search
• Sites

Relevant Google Notice Types

COPYRIGHT NOTICES ( including DMCA)

As described above, copyright notices from Google, are published in the form in which they are originally sent. Lumen makes a good faith effort to redact out personally identifying information other than the Sender’s name, which will be displayed in the form in which it was shared with Lumen.

CIRCUMVENTION

Circumvention notices that Lumen receives from Google are published in the form in which they are originally sent. Lumen makes a good faith effort to redact out personally identifying information other than the Sender’s name, which will be displayed in the form in which it was shared with Lumen.

COUNTERFEIT (as of June 2020)

Google’s help page on this topic describes these notices as follows:
“Upon notice, Google will remove web pages selling counterfeit goods from our search results. Counterfeit goods contain a trademark or logo that is identical to or substantially indistinguishable from the trademark of another. They mimic the brand features of the product in an attempt to pass themselves off as a genuine product of the brand owner.

This policy only applies to specific web pages selling counterfeit goods and does not apply to non-counterfeit trademark issues. Failure to limit complaints under this policy to web pages selling counterfeit goods may result in restrictions on sending future complaints. "

COURT ORDERS

Google shares with Lumen copies of court orders for removal that it receives, from both U.S. domestic and foreign courts. As described above, U.S Court orders, unless sealed, are public records, and those court orders are presented (or not) on Lumen in the form in which Lumen receives them from Google. If Google is prohibited from sharing the contents of a court order it has received, that will be explicitly stated in the text of the notice.
Google does not share with Lumen court orders attached to notices originating in the EU or EUA.

Lumen makes a good faith effort to redact foreign court orders that are shared with Lumen in a manner according to whatever local law is applicable in the order’s jurisdiction of origin. These redactions will typically include names, addresses, and other forms of PII, and may include aspects of the URLs in question. What other redactions are present within a document may vary on a country-by-country basis.

GOVERNMENT REQUESTS

When possible, Google shares with Lumen copies of requests for removal that it receives from governments or divisions of government other than courts. Some examples include takedown notices from Russia's ROSKOMNADZOR, India's Ministry of Electronics and Information, or South Africa's Ministry of Justice.

DEFAMATION NOTICES

As a matter of Google's internal policies, Google does not share with Lumen the names of the Senders of Defamation notices. Further, if the name of a defamation notice Sender occurs in some form within one of the complained-of URLs that are the subject of the notice, or within any text within the notice, that text will be redacted out as well. For notices originating in the EU, Google will not share the explanation that accompanies a notice unless the notice is a government request or if Google has determined there is a high public interest in the case.

For instance, an original URL of

https://www.blogger.com/JohnQPublicisthe worst.com

would be shared by Google with Lumen as

https://www.blogger.com/[redacted]isthe worst.com

Further, Google does not share with Lumen the text entered by a complainant in the field on Google’s webform. with the following instuctions

“In order to ensure specificity, please quote the exact text…”

Text entered by a complainant in the field on Google’s webform with the instructions below

“Please explain in detail why you believe the content on the above URLs is unlawful, citing specific provisions of law wherever possible.”

is shared by Google with Lumen and displayed as part of the notice on Lumen as is, subject to Lumen’s automatic redaction processes..However, this information is not shared in EU countries.

Please note that if the subject of the alleged defamation is not the sender of the notice, that subject's name will not be automatically redacted from the notice. Please notify Lumen if the name of an allegedly defamed person is still present within a notice.

NOTICES SENT TO GOOGLE REGARDING LAWS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES - “Local Law”

Notices in this category are those sent to Google regarding local laws -- laws other than those covered by other categories, such as copyright. The content within these notices is typically governed by the local law of the country of origin. In such cases, in addition to Lumen’s standard good faith effort redactions, redactions are made according to whatever local law is applicable in the order’s jurisdiction of origin. These redactions will include names, addresses, and other forms of PII, and may include aspects of the URLs in question. What other redactions are present within a document may vary on a country-by-country basis as well as according to Google’s internal policy decisions, to which Lumen is not privy.

OTHER TYPES OF NOTICES

*** Please note that Google does NOT, at this time, share with Lumen notices that

• it receives from EU citizens as part of either the EU's General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") / the “right to be forgotten" (“RTBF”) or,
• notices submitted through Google’s form for reporting nonconsensual sexually explicit images, which can be found here.*** https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061#ts=2889054%2C2889099

Google sometimes indicates, via reference to a “placeholder” notice on Lumen, when it has received requests to remove material about which it cannot share more information.

1. https://lumendatabase.org/notices/18516

2.https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/9415 [Germany]

3.https://lumendatabase.org/notices/10929 [UK]

4.https://lumendatabase.org/notices/11062657 [France]

5.https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/15710816 [for notices not yet available in Lumen]

6.https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/17158812 [Canada]

7.https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/13678481 [Privacy torts]

8. https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/18639436 [AU]

9. https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/18639403 [NZ]

10. https://lumendatabase.org/notices/20174812

IndyBay Media

https://www.indybay.org - The San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center (Indybay) is a non-commercial, democratic collective of Bay area independent media makers and media outlets, and serves as the local organizing unit of the global Indymedia network.

You can see an example of a notice sent to IndyBay here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/28852353

The Internet Archive

The Internet Archive shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices it receives. You can see an example of an Internet Archive notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/17259951

Kickstarter

Kickstarter shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices it receives re: material on Kickstarter. You can see an example of a Kickstarter notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/11043108

Medium

Medium shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices it receives. You can see an example of a Medium notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/10180036

Medium's copyright policy, including mention of Lumen, can be found here

https://policy.medium.com/mediums-copyright-and-dmca-policy-d126f73695

Meta (Facebook)

Meta shares with Lumen copies of some of the takedown requests that have been sent to Meta by governments and courts.(court orders).

You can see an example of a Meta notice here. https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/37750821
Meta will share a copy of such a notice with Lumen if they can do so while conforming to the following principles.

"1. Maximise Transparency
In the interest of informing public discourse, facilitating research and journalism, and enabling people to hold their governments accountable, we will endeavour to publish copies of all government and court takedown orders received by Meta, except where doing so would contravene one of the other principles below. Each published order will be accompanied by a summary of the actions Meta took in response.
We will seek to prioritize based on the criteria of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights of scale, severity and remediability.

2. Safety First
We will not publish orders or information contained within them if doing so is likely to compromise the safety of any person (including any person who uses our services, any member of the public, or any Meta employee). Whenever possible, we will aim to publish orders containing information that may pose a safety risk after redaction of all such information.

3. Respect Privacy
Prior to sharing with the Lumen project or publishing copies of orders, we will redact orders to ensure that they do not contain information on either a Meta user or the individual reporter of the content (e.g. names, personal email addresses, street addresses, phone numbers, etc.) and that only public URLs are shared.

4. Prioritise Public Interest
We plan to publish all takedown orders that meet the rest of these principles in a timely manner and will expedite the publication of those with the highest public interest. In doing so will consider whether the content at issue: forms part of the wider public agenda, relates to sensitive or volatile political events or issues, is about or authored by political figures or parties, has received major news coverage, is from an entity of public prominence, eg: a news source or verified page of a public figure. We will also consider the reach, engagement, virality and age of the content.

5. Respect our Legal Obligations
We strive to respect the law in countries where we operate and publish bi-annual Transparency Reports since 2013 because we strive to be open and proactive in the way we safeguard users’ privacy, security and access to information online. In some instances, we may be legally prohibited from publishing orders or certain information contained within them. In such cases, we will aim to publish as much information as possible about the order and its existence.
In line with our Corporate Human Rights Policy, when faced with conflicts between domestic legal obligations and our human rights and transparency commitments, we will seek to honor the principles of internationally recognised human rights to the greatest extent possible. In these circumstances we seek to promote international human rights standards by engaging with governments, and by collaborating with other stakeholders and companies."

Periscope

Periscope was a live video streaming company owned by Twitter, that was active until March 31, 2021, and that shared with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices that it received regarding Periscope streams. You can see an example of a Periscope notice here. https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/12885741

PGPSmedia

PGPSMedia is a company that controls the rights to a variety of audio-visual media, typically having to do with adult content. It shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices that it receives. PGPS has a very low volume of notices shared with Lumen, and has not sent any recently. You can see an example of a PGPS Media notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/10492640

Proxy.sh

Proxy.sh wass a proxy service company located in the Seychelles. It shared with Lumen all the requests it receives to remove its proxy links, which requests were typically grounded in a DMCA complaint. You can see an example of a Proxy.sh notice here. https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/1632673

Reddit

Reddit is a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Between May, 2015 and October, 2015, Reddit shared with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices it receives regarding content on Reddit. It also maintained its own sub-Reddit of these notices. You can see an example of a Reddit notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/10802471

Stack Exchange/ Stack Overflow

Stack Exchange is a network of question-and-answer (Q&A) websites on topics in diverse fields, each site covering a specific topic. Stack Overflow (which focuses on computer programming, is one of it's most popular sub-sites. Stack exchnage sent copies of DMCA notices to Lumen until 2017. You can see an example of a Stack Exchange notice here.

.

Stripe

Stripe is an online payments company. In 2012, Stripe shared with Lumen a copy of a takedown request alleging that a Stripe user had violated the DMCA and thereby also violated Stripe's Terms of Use. That notice can be found here.

Tucows

Tucows Inc. is an American-Canadian publicly traded Internet services and telecommunications company, originally founded in 1993 as a shareware and freeware software download site. Until 2013, Tucows shared with Lumen copies of takedown notices that it received. You can see a copy of a Tucows takedown notice here.

Tuebl

Tuebl, now resolving to http://ebook.bike/, was a site offering ebooks to the public. In its previous incarnation, Tuebl shared with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices it received regarding content on Tuebl. You can see an example of a Tuebl notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/11404489

Twitter (now known as "X")

NOTE: As of April 15th, 2023, Twitter/X stopped sending data to Lumen while Twitter/X reviews its 3rd party data sharing policies.

Twitter shared with Lumen the following categories of notices that it received. These include:

• DMCA notices

These are published in the form in which they are received. Lumen makes a good faith effort to redact out personally identifying information other than the Sender’s name, which will be displayed in the form in which it was shared with Lumen.

• Court Orders

U.S Court orders, unless sealed, are public records, and those court orders are presented on Lumen in the form in which Lumen receives them from Google. Foreign court orders are shared with Lumen After Twitter has performed its own redactions according to whatever local law is applicable in the order’s jurisdiction of origin. These redactions may include names, addresses, other forms of PII, as well as aspects of the URLs in question.

[NOTE: There is a known and reported bug where many of the DMCA notices Twitter shared with Lumen did not contain Sender information.]

University of California

The University of California shares with Lumen de-identified copies of the DMCA notices it receives regarding content hosted on berkeley.edu sites.

The University of California’s institutional repository, escholarship.org, shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices it receives.

You can see an example of a UC notice here

Wikia

Wikia is a free wiki hosting service that shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices regarding content hosted on Wikia sites. You can see an example of a Wikia notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/12692916

Wikimedia, Inc

Wikipedia’s parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices it receives regarding content on Wikipedia. You can see an example of a Wikimedia notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/13216910

Vimeo

Vimeo shares with Lumen copies of the DMCA notices it receives regarding content on Vimeo. You can see an example of a Vimeo notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/12720178

YouTube

[YouTube does not currently share copies of notices with Lumen]

YouTube historically shared with Lumen copies of removal requests that it received regarding Defamation, Trademark, Private Information, and an “Other” Category.

NOTE: At no time did YouTube share with Lumen copies of any DMCA notices that it received, nor did it share ContentID-based removals.

You can see an example of a YouTube notice here: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/1379834