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Chilling Effects is a collaboration between several law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to protect lawful online activity from legal threats. Their website, chillingeffects.org, allows recipients of cease-and-desist notices to submit them to the site and receive information about their legal rights and responsibilities. It was created by Wendy Seltzer. The archive was founded in late 2001 / early 2002 by Internet activists who were concerned that the unregulated, private practice of sending cease and desist letters, seemed to be increasing and was having an unstudied but potentially significant "chilling effect" on speech. The archive got a significant boost when Google began submitting its notices in 2002. Google began to do so in response to the publicity generated when the Church of Scientology convinced Google to remove references and links to the anti-Scientology Web site Operation Clambake in April of 2002. The incident inspired a large number of vocal Internet users and groups to complain to Google, and the links to the Clambake site were restored. Google subsequently began to contribute its notices to chillingeffects.org, archiving the Scientology complaints and linking to the archive. Researchers have since 2002 begun using the ChillingEffects.org clearinghouse to study the use of cease-and-desist letters, primarily looking at DMCA 512 takedown notices, non-DMCA copyright, and trademark claims.
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