4Chan Introduces A New DMCA Policy Because Of ‘The Fappening’

After the recent iCloud leaks of A-list celebrities on the website 4chan, an official DMCA policy has been enacted by the website itself.

The Fappening, as it’s being called, began on August 31 when almost 200 private pictures of mostly female celebrities were leaked onto 4chan. This included Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and her boyfriend Justin Verlander, Mary Winstead, Kaley Cuoco, Victoria Justice, McKayla Maroney, Ariana Grande, and so on.

From another report by Inquisitr.com, it shows how the iCloud hack occurred and how the 4Chan hacker accessed it for the naked pictures.

Since then, the pictures have been disseminated throughout the web, showing up on Reddit, Imgur, and Tumblr. On torrent sites, the leaked pictures have reached over a million downloads. 4chan itself enacted a DMCA policy to shield it from possible copyright litigation. Now, a designated agent will be 4chan’s point on contact for copyright disputes, and DMCA notices will be filed against 4chan users who have violated the policy.

“Threads expire and are pruned by 4chan’s software at a relatively high rate. Since most boards are limited to eleven or sixteen pages, content is usually available for only a few hours or days before it is removed. Most times, the post was probably flagged as old and marked for deletion automatically, however in some cases it may have been removed by a moderator or janitor. We ask that users refrain from reposting material that they believe to have been deleted by the staff,” 4chan’s FAQ explains.

4chan’s Chris Poole told the Washington Post that the website has no “memory.” Posts are usually forgotten the next day. Regarding possible litigation, Poole said, “I don’t have resources like YouTube to deal with $1 billion lawsuit with Viacom. Don’t store what you absolutely don’t need. People are pre-disposed to wanting to store everything.”

If a post is removed from the website, 4chan states that it will “notify the content provider, member, or user that it has removed or disabled access to the material.” However, 4chan allows users to post anonymously, so the website may have difficulty contacting users if no identifying information, such as an email or phone number, isn’t provided.

While 4chan is protecting itself with a DMCA policy, many other sites still have no regard for copyright laws. The Pirate Bay is quite well known for its disregard for copyright laws and is still spreading the leaked pictures at a rapid rate. Another site Reddit has a fast-growing subreddit dedicated to The Fappening, and leaked pictures and still getting posted daily.