The image board 4chan where naked celebrity pictures were leaked earlier this week has altered its copyright policy to comply with American law on stolen content.
Content owners will now be able to have illegally distributed material removed from the site, in line with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Infringing items will be removed on the basis of a good faith notice, with both the poster and content provider notified, while serial offenders will be barred from the site.
4chan has previously avoided removing content because of the quick expiration of the posts on the site, which on some sections takes only a few hours.
The DMCA, passed in 1998, prohibited the bypassing of digital rights management, as well as increasing the penalties for copyright infringement on the internet.
Like similar boards which take a loose approach to moderation the site has been resistant to impositions on its users, which mostly post anonymously, but has taken steps to remove child pornography in the past.
