The leaking of nude celebrity pictures over the weekend has sparked a number of websites to change their stance on publishing such material – especially when faced with court action and legal penalties.

The primary location where the nude celebrities were posted, 4Chan, has now adopted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown policy to give them some buffer room in case something like that had to happen again.

It said that content under the Act will be removed when it receives a notification of an infringement, and that the poster will be contacted – or possibly banned.

“It is the Company’s policy…that repeat offenders will have the infringing material removed from the system and that the Company will terminate such content provider’s, member’s or user’s access to the service,” the policy on the website reads. In the event that there is a dispute, a counter-notice can be filed with 4Chan.

Posting in 4Chan is by default anonymous, so it is still uncertain how it would attempt to contact posters if their content has been removed – or how long it would take for the content to be vetted and then removed.

According to Ars Technica, co-founder Chris “moot” Poole said in 2010 that 4Chan is a “site with no memory” as the large amount of traffic often pushes content off the site in a matter of a couple of days.

[Source – Ars Technica]