LumenDatabase.org – LumenDatabase.org Topics | Lumen Privacy Policy

July 16, 2020

The LumenDatabase.org is the URL of the official website of the LumenDatabase. The LumenDatabase is a collaborative archive that collects and analyzes legal complaints and requests for the removal of online materials, helping Internet users to know their rights and understand the law regarding internet usage. The data that has been collected and present in LumenDatabase.org enables you to study the prevalence of legal threats and also lets internet users see the source of content removals. There are several features on the LumenDatabase.org available for you to make use of. Before I tell you about that, let us learn more about what LumenDatabase is really about.

LumenDatabase.org

The LumenDatabase.org is an independent research project studying cease and desist letters concerning online content which was created and founded by Wendy Seltzer in 2001. It was initially called the Chilling Effects focusing on the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Over the years, as the internet and the use of it began to advance, LumenDatabase.org broadens also, including complaints of all varieties (trademark, defamation, and privacy), domestic and international, and court orders. On November 2^nd, 2015, it was renamed Lumen.

The main aim of the site is to collect request to remove materials from the web and then analyze them. LumenDatabase.org educates the public, facilitate research about the different kinds of complaints and notices on requests for removal that are being sent to internet publishers and service providers which may be legitimate or questionable. The site can also provide transparency about the ecology of such notices in terms of who is sending them, why and to what effect.

Several known companies trust the works of LumenDatabase.org and have made voluntary submissions. These companies include Google, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Counterfeit Technology, Medium, Stack Exchange, Vimeo, DuckDuckGo, WordPress, and aspects of the University of California system.

The LumenDatabase.org has grown and now has partners working with it. Most of these partners are colleges, universities, and schools of law. The partners include;

DePaul University College of Law.
George Washington University Law School.
Santa Clara University School of Law High Tech Law Institute.
Stanford Center for Internet & Society.
Colorado Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic (TLPC).
USF Law School – IIP Justice Project.
UC Berkeley – Samuelson Law, Technology, & Public Policy Clinic.
University of Maine School of Law.
Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF’s work on Lumen is supported by the San Francisco Foundation.

The LumenDatabase.org is supported by a grant from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.

LumenDatabase.org Topics

There are several topics on the LumenDatabase.org that covers all the works and services it renders. The topics are more like the categories of complaints and voluntary submissions that users of the website may probably have. These topics or categories have sub-topics that are likened to groups under categories. Below, all the topics/ categories are given.

Copyright

The copyright topic area includes discussions of traditional copyright, fair use, reverse engineering, and the additions to copyright law made by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The sub-topics are;

Anti-circumvention (DMCA): the anti-circumvention provisions affect the way software engineers, computer scientists, and computer security specialist do their work. It also affects how librarians and educational institutions acquire new works, how internet users can protect their privacy, and even how journalists can report on stories involving technical protection measures.
Copyright and fair use: under the fair use doctrine, it is not an infringement to use the copyrighted works of another in some circumferences such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, or educational use.
Derivative Works: a work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations or other modifications which as a whole represents an original work of authorship is a derivative work.
DMCA Notices: these notices are usually DMCA requests asking that a content or material which is claimed to be copyrighted by the original owner(s) of the work be removed by the host of that material.
DMCA Safe Harbor: this is making use of a copyrighted material without knowing. Safe harbor is like a protection that covers the defaulter which could be a service provider or content host.
DMCA Subpoenas: this is an abuse on a service provider or site host when faced with DMCA notices without reasonable claim of copyright infringement.
Piracy or Copyright Infringement: the word piracy is slang for copyright infringement. This is an unlawful copying of the work of another, usually for the purpose of distribution or profit.
Reverse Engineering: this is the scientific method of taking something apart in order to figure out how it works and it has been used by innovators to determine a product’s structure in order to develop competing or interoperable products.

EU – Right to Be Forgotten

This has to do with Europe. This topic covers a ruling in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the case of Google Spain SL, Google Inc. v Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos, Mario Costeja Gonzalez. The implications of this case are typically referred to as having to do with a Right To Be Forgotten.

El Derecho Al Olvido: this is the Spanish version and translation of “right to be forgotten”.
O Pravu Osobe Da Bude Zaboravljena?: this is the Croatian version and translation of “right to be forgotten”.
“Recht auf Vergessen”: this is the German language version and translation of “right to be forgotten”.
Recht Om Vergeten Te Worden: this is the Dutch/ Belgian version and translation of “right to be forgotten”.
Правото да бъдеш забравен: this is the Bulgarian version and translation of “right to be forgotten”.

Patent

Patent law in the United States extends to almost anything under the sun that is made by man. Patents create a form of property right in new, unobvious, and useful inventions, including machines, devices, chemical compositions, and manufacturing processes. Software can also be protected by patent law.

E-commerce patents: focus on patents targeting “e-commerce,” including business methods and Internet display and delivery.

Must Read: United States Oil Fund – USO Etf Holdings

Trademark

Trademarks are used to distinguish between brands and products of different people. Trademark infringement is however inevitable and trademarks can be infringed on the net in many ways.

Domain Names and Trademarks: Your registration of this domain name, which is essentially identical to our client’s trademark, is likely to cause confusion, mistake, and deception, and hence constitutes an infringement of our client’s trademarks and copyrights, as well as constituting unfair competition. Under domain names and trademarks there are; Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) is a U.S. federal law enacted in 1999 to protect the owners of trademarks from abuse by domain name cyber squatters; Documenting your Domain Defense and Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP).
Protest, Parody, and Criticism Sites: There are several legal and administrative actions used to threaten writers who engage in protest, criticism, and parody on the Internet. While there is a lot of overlap in the legal issues in an attack on protest, criticism, and parody sites, there also may be some differences in the attack.

Defamation

This topic talks about the law of defamation balances two important and sometimes competing rights. They are;

The right to engage in free speech, and
The right to be free from untrue attacks on reputation.

The topic helps to explore the rules of, defenses to the tort of defamation and examine some special issues that arise when it is internet expression that is challenged by a defamation lawsuit.

Trade Secret

A trade secret is information which could be a formula, pattern, physical device or process that has two characteristics:

The information must be a secret (i.e., not generally known or readily ascertainable) that provides your business with a competitive advantage; and
The creator of the information must take steps to keep the information secret or confidential.

Other Topics/ categories are;

Court Orders: The court orders topic serves as an umbrella for court orders both in the United States of America domestic or international that mandates the removal of online content of whatever type.
Fan Fiction: Writing stories of characters from other stories, movies or TV shows in new situations or adventures are referred to as works of fan fiction. This could lead to being served with a DMCA notice or copyright lawsuit.
International: This category contains notices demanding takedowns from sites outside of the United States, invoking non-US law.
John Doe Anonymity: Under this category, open discussions can be held among shareholders, political dissidents, victims of domestic abuse, “whistleblowers,” and disgruntled employees with their identities be kept hidden.
Law Enforcement Requests: This category deals with the request that originated with a court of law. These requests being handled include both international and United States domestic courts. The requests usually have to do with privacy or defamation, but they are not restricted to these categories.
Linking: One may have received a cease and desist notice regarding hyperlink on websites. Some companies claim that linking to their websites requires prior permission, or allege that your links falsely imply that they sponsor or endorse your site.
Lumen: Lumen is an independent third party research project studying cease and desist letters concerning online content.
No Action: The “no action” category holds cease-and-desist complaints that were received but not acted upon.
Responses: under this topic, responses hold letters sent in response to cease-and-desist notices, DMCA counter-notifications, and other correspondence that is not cease-and-desists.
Right of Publicity: The right of publicity prevents the unauthorized commercial use of an individual’s name, likeness, or other recognizable aspects of one’s persona.
Counterfeit
Government Requests
Uncategorized: The topic covers categories of notices that do not fit into any of the above-mentioned topics and categories.

Research

This covers the several research links that LumenDatabase.org uses to help provide the necessary solution to the site host. And servers be faced with copyrights suits and requests to have the copyrighted materials taken down.

Legal

The LumenDatabase.org cannot provide individual legal advice. This means that the website does not provide every individual complaint summited to it with their own peculiar legal advice. But would give a piece of general advice that covers your complaint and other complaints similar to yours.

The information on LumenDatabase.org is written for a general audience without investigation into the facts of each particular case. For this reason, it is not legal advice. There is, therefore, no attorney-client relationship with you any other individual and

Licenses

All the data, text, and code that LumenDatabase provides and are seen on the official webpage of the LumenDatabase.org are all licensed. The text, data, code, and API are all licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 3.0), Public Domain (CC0), GNU General Public License (GPL), and API Terms of Use.

Lumen Privacy Policy

There are two kinds of information collect by LumenDatabase.org on their site. This information is; site and API usage for statistical purposes (traffic analytics) and information you choose to give to LumenDatabase.org by email. The polity od LumenDatabase.org are;

When you browse, read, or download information from the Lumen site, only limited, anonymous data is collected.
The Lumen project also invites users to submit removal requests or takedown notices in which they are the sender or recipient.

Researchers

There are several tools available for researchers to make use of. These researchers are usually users of this platform who want and are seeking the best legal information to use to proffer solutions or/ and a better understanding of the complaints, requests, and questions they may have.

The information available for the researcher’s page give a summary of how to go about the complaints you may have. And also has answers to some of the frequently asked questions (FAQ) on the site.