Every day we receive a significant number of requests to have content removed from sites hosted on WordPress.com. Many of these involve alleged copyright violations making use of the DMCA takedown process, or the publication of sensitive private information. We review every single one by hand to ensure that the processes are not being abused for the purposes of censorship, and are constantly looking to improve how they are handled.
Before now, whenever content was removed from sites in these situations, there was no visual indication to explain why things may not be displaying correctly, with visitors confronted with a 404 page not found error instead. This was far from an ideal situation, and as part of our commitment to increased transparency, we are proud to be able to say that this is no longer the case.
From today, when content is removed from a WordPress.com site as the result of a DMCA takedown, or a private information complaint, a notice will be placed on the site in question to explain exactly what content has been removed, when, and why. In the case of images, a placeholder will be displayed. We hope this will help ensure that on those occasions where we are required to intervene, that the reasons for doing so are as clear as possible.
Read more about our DMCA policy here.
Read more about our private information policy here.
In addition to implementing this new process, we have also updated our documentation with new pages on how we approach the DMCA in general. You can find this at the following links:
Transparency Report 