The time has come for the bi-annual update to our transparency report, covering January 1 to June 30, 2017. As usual, we’ve shared updated data about national security requests, government requests for user information, government demands for removal of content, as well as notices of copyright and trademark infringement. We’ve included some of the most […]
Read more →Our latest transparency report is hot off the press, complete with data and details about the intellectual property infringement notices, government takedown demands, and government requests for information we received between July 1 and December 31, 2015. You can view our updated report here. Taking a closer look at the numbers, you may notice that […]
Read more →We’ve said it time and time again: user privacy is important to us. We’re vigilant about protecting it on WordPress.com, and we’re always on the lookout, ready to weigh in on policy proposals that might curtail the privacy that we and our users value so highly. Today, our focus turns to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names […]
Read more →We’re pleased to release our second, biannual transparency report and even more excited to announce a few new additions to the report. In addition to updates to the data we provided on user information requests and government takedown demands in our inaugural report, our latest report includes: Data about the intellectual property related complaints we […]
Read more →Janet Jackson is a fine recording artist, but seems to have employed some overly aggressive lawyers, bent on removing or controlling all references to her name on WordPress.com. Here are a couple of examples of the improper takedown demands we’ve received: Trademark infringement: The mention of Janet Jackson in a post about dinner conversation topic “What would your WWE […]
Read more →Kern’s Kitchen, the company exclusively behind “the one and only Derby-Pie® chocolate nut pie,” asserted its trademark against 32 bloggers on WordPress.com who had the nerve to title their recipes “Derby Pie.” Between the link to trademark information displayed prominently on their site and the many lawsuits they’ve filed, it’s clear that they take this pie business seriously. They’ve rightfully earned their place […]
Read more →Over the years, founder of Bikram Yoga, Bikram Choudhury, has been under considerable public scrutiny for alleged sexual harassment. In what we believe was an attempt to censor critical speech, several different individuals (supposedly) submitted five DMCA notices against a single blog post that touched on these accusations. After we rejected the first four DMCA notices because we had good […]
Read more →After a less than ideal experience with Dorra Slimming, our user took to her blog to post about it. The company sent us a complaint alleging that her post was infringing on the copyright protected Dorra Slimming logo. After looking at the post, the only instance of the logo we could spot was in this photo that our user took: Because the […]
Read more →The New York State Department of Economic Developments holds a trademark over the iconic “I Love NY,” but we never expected them to go after someone using this logo to promote bicycling in their lovely state: We rejected the claim on the grounds of fair use.
Read more →Automattic’s mission is to democratize publishing, and a fully informed citizenry is the foundation of any functioning democracy. We’ve always aimed to keep our users and the public fully informed about our policies for responding to government requests – and now, more than ever, candor in this area is vitally important. In keeping with these […]
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Transparency Report 