We are pleased to announce that the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG) will be partnering with the Berkman Center for Internet Society at Harvard University as a Regional Hub for its internet censorship database ‘Lumen’. CCG along with the Nexa Center for Internet & Society in Turin, Italy and the Instituto de Tecnologia & Sociedade in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil will act as the Berkman Center’s regional partners to expand the outreach of the Lumen database to encompass global statistics of takedown requests.
In a communiqué to the Berkman Center, Chinmayi Arun, Research Director at CCG, said “We’re delighted to be a part of Lumen. We look forward to tracking and analysing the takedown regime in India, and to working on our findings with researchers around the world. We welcome this opportunity and thank the Berkman Center for opening Lumen to us.”
Formerly called the Chilling Effects project, Berkman Center has rebranded this project as ‘Lumen’ to better reflect its new scope and expanded mission. As the Berkman Center puts it, “The name [Lumen] borrows from the unit of measurement for visible light, highlighting the use of data for transparency reporting.” As the specter of internet censorship increases – the Berkman Center estimates that they collect approximately 4000 takedown notices a day compared to a few notices they used to collect in a week – this collaborative research partnership is an important step towards painting a true picture of internet freedom and illuminating instances of censorship, justifiable or otherwise.
The CCG Blog 