4chan website introduces copyright mechanism after celebrity hacking; Guardian, 9/4/14

Alex Hern, Guardian; 4chan website introduces copyright mechanism after celebrity hacking:

"Internet image board 4chan has introduced a policy for complying with the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for the first time.

The site was the place where hundreds of naked selfies stolen from celebrities including actors Jennifer Lawrence and Mary Elizabeth Winstead were posted.

The policy sets out for the first time a procedure by which copyright holders can send a DMCA takedown notice to the site’s administrators. These inform a website hosting user-generated content that one of their users has uploaded copyrighted material illegally, telling them to take down the relevant content or face legal action.

A DMCA policy is important in helping a site gain “safe harbour” protection from lawsuits, deflecting responsibility for user-generated content that it has not explicitly approved.

4chan has named a DMCA agent for the first time and offers a postal address in Delaware – apparently a box at a professional services firm.

Up until now, 4chan has been relatively well shielded from the consequences of the DMCA because of the ephemerality of the site. Although almost every post on 4chan involves an image, most of which are not licensed for use, most posts are deleted within a few hours of creation because the site trims any board bigger than ten pages."