After Celebrity Photo Leaks, 4chan Introduces DMCA Policy

davidshenba writes In the wake of leaked private photos of celebrities, 4chan has added Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown policy to its rules and policies. Under this new policy, the site will remove any notified and verified "infringement." It is not clear how effective this could be, or how 4chan is going to handle the inflow of notifications to restrict the content provided by users.

Comments

April's Fools Early?

[The-Forge]

When I saw this I had to make sure it wasn't April 1st and that the article wasn't from The Onion.

Doesn't this pretty much kill 4chan?

[Wycliffe]

I thought the whole purpose of 4chan was that "anything goes".
If they start censoring it then all the people that are there will just move somewhere else that is not restricted.

Re:Doesn't this pretty much kill 4chan?

[fermion]

Like Usenet, it really isn't anything goes. Stuff that most people don't like is pushed off to alternative locations, there, bug not where anyone has to deal with it. What would kill 4chan, because evidently it runs with no significant budget or profit, would be a single lawsuit. By creating a belated DCMA policy, the site is protecting itself from such an event. Look at it this way. If Arthur Anderson had created a policy stating the conditions and intervals that documents would be destroyed, it might still be in existence today. But it did not, and panicked, and is gone. It is good that 4chan is being more forward thinking.

Re:Doesn't this pretty much kill 4chan?

[Anonymous Coward]

This. So basically 5 minutes until 4chan popularises a link to software which subtly changes an image to change the hash and other identifying features.

You're welcome, Internet.

to clarify what this means.

[nimbius]

many people think 4chan is a place where 'anything goes.' thats not the case. the /b board is where the most shocking content submission and conversation happens, and its arguably been the one 4chans owner moot (christopher poole) has had the most trouble handling in the past. Poole determined rather early on that he was willing to sacrifice 4chans freedom of speech so long as someone was willing to foot the bill for his posh new york condo and hipster pedigree. He used to at least make a passing attempt at participation by dredging up old 4chan memes like 'crescent fresh' but lately its mostly mods and ops in his name that enforce the christmas hat overlays and such. Its nothing new though, 4chan has had a DMCA policy for nearly a decade and will gladly redact link content and ban users for posting torrents.

poole has always done the DMCA shimmy because while leaks like this draw traffic, they also have the ability to draw him into protracted litigation and harm his advertising revenue stream. hes worried about celebrities in this case growing a pair and sending him to court personally, or attacking his advertisers.

This probably won't work.

[Sasayaki]

This probably won't work, because either:

1) The influx of content will overwhelm 4Chan's very few mods.
2) Trolls will flag every single image and overwhelm 4Chan's very few mods.
3) 4Chan's very few mods will not care.