Visitors to 4chan may have noticed the site’s shiny new Digital Millennium Copyright Act policy page, apparently established in the wake of a large scale celebrity photo leak.
Over the past few days hackers were allegedly able to seize celebrity nude photos through an iCloud vulnerability. This leak has been popularized on sites like 4chan and Reddit as “The Fappening,” a portmanteau of “happening” and “fapping,” a slang term for masturbating.
The photos first appeared on 4chan, where an anonymous hacker was publicizing them in exchange for payment in pseudonymous cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Now that the FBI is investigating the leak, it’s unclear how long he, she, or they will stay anonymous.
See also: For Once, The Entire Internet Isn’t Blaming The Victims Of This Nude Celebrity Photo Leak
Now it appears that 4chan’s leadership is taking protective action for the site. Some time on Tuesday, TorrentFreak reports, the site initiated a DMCA policy. TorrentFreak noted that it is still unclear if the DMCA policy is in direct response to the leak that’s on everyone’s minds.
The policy page notifies visitors of a DMCA agent for 4chan, who will now become the point of contact for any takedown requests to the site. This agent will be the sole outlet for complainants who want to report copyright violations on 4chan.
Probably the reason 4chan has never had a DMCA policy before this week is because the site deletes old content at an expeditious rate to the point that 4chan threads are rarely available for much longer than a few hours.
“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,” the 4chan FAQ reads.
Logo via 4chan