2020: Jan 1 – Jun 30

Notes

• The table above indicates the number of copyright infringement notices we received during each month of the reporting period. Each notice may cover more than one site and/or piece of content. Some notices identify dozens of allegedly infringing materials. In the future, we’ll aim to provide more specific data on the number of sites affected and items removed, as those numbers are substantially greater and more accurately represent the impact of DMCA notices than the number of individual notices received.
• The “percentage of notices where some or all content was removed” includes those notices which were formally complete, but the site was suspended for a separate violation of the WordPress.com Terms of Service (spam or warez sites, for example). If we instead counted these as rejected notices, the “percentage of notices where some or all content was removed” would be much lower.
• We carefully review each notice to ensure it’s formally complete, and includes all information required by the DMCA, before taking action. Notices that don’t meet the requirements of the statute are included in “notices rejected as incomplete.”
• We also may decline to remove content if a notice is abusive. “Abusive” notices may be formally complete, but are directed at fair use of content, material that isn’t copyrightable, or content the complaining party misrepresents ownership of a copyright. You can see some examples of notices we’ve rejected on grounds of abuse in our Hall of Shame.
• We forward all formally complete notices to users, regardless of whether we process them.
• Under the DMCA, a user can formally challenge a notice of copyright infringement by submitting a counter notice. When we receive a counter notice, we forward a copy to the individual who submitted the original DMCA notice and restore access to the content if no further action is taken. During this reporting period, only 0.35% of the valid DMCA notices we received were later subject to a counter notice.
• In March and April, we started seeing duplicate notices targeting content we already removed (or where we asked for clarification), but the complainants failed to respond. (183 and 112, respectively.) In May and June, those types of notices increased to 306 and 413, respectively. All of these were tacked onto the stat reflecting incomplete notices.

Notes

The numbers above represent the total notices submitted by different organizations over the relevant period. These are grouped by the originating e-mail address, and so the total number of notices submitted per copyright holder may be greater than shown above if multiple e-mail addresses were used for the submissions – though we do our best to group complainants together. Please note that the notices received may be sent on behalf of a number of different copyright holders utilising a shared third party agent, and relate to a number of different websites.

Notes

• Unlike the DMCA for copyright infringement, there isn’t a statutory prescribed process for notice/take-down of alleged trademark infringement, nor is there a statutory safe harbor for hosting alleged TM infringement.
• For each report of trademark infringement we receive, we evaluate whether or not the trademark is used in an infringing manner.
• Simply referencing a company, brand, product, or service in a WordPress.com post does not constitute infringement. Anyone is free to use a trademark if it’s necessary to identify a company, brand or product for the purposes of criticism or commentary.
• Most of the infringement allegations we see are from trademark owners attempting to censor a user’s comments or criticisms of their brands or companies. We reject these complaints and forward them on to users so that they can make fully informed decisions regarding the content.
• “Percentage of requests where some or all content was removed” does not include cases where content was removed for violating our Terms of Service. For example, after viewing the site, we may remove it for reasons relating to spam regardless of the validity of the trademark claim.
• Unique complainants are grouped by the complainant’s e-mail address, and so the total number of notices submitted per unique trademark may differ.