Message boards are often thought of as dinosaurs on the Web. Where once having a presence on message boards and forums was almost as ubiquitous as email and IM, message boards have fallen on hard times, pushed aside by blogs and social networking sites.
However, there are still many thriving communities on the Web that use [...]

With modern technology, anyone can be a published author. Print on demand services enable anyone to create a book and publish it without worrying about issues of distribution, storage and what to do with thousands of unsold copies.
The print on demand publishing industry has exploded in recent years, giving thousands of authors an opportunity that [...]

Advertising networks are very important allies in the fight against plagiarism and content theft. As one of the most popular revenue streams for scrapers and other spammers, they often unwittingly bankroll many of the content thieves who plague the Internet.
However, advertising networks are not covered by the DMCA. Since they are not hosts and are [...]

For the next chapter of the “DMCA Seven” series, we take a look at the port of last resort for many copyright infringement cases, search engines.
Ideally, one would only send a DMCA to a search engine after other steps, such as cease and desist letters and DMCAs to Web hosts, have failed. However, since much [...]

For the next chapter of the “DMCA Seven” series, we take a look at a different kind of hosts, domain hosts.
These differ from most of the other hosts we’ve covered in that they are not free services, but rather, paid hosts that earn monthly or yearly fees from their subscribers.
Despite the apparent conflict of interest, [...]

For the next chapter in the “DMCA Seven” series, we’re taking a look at one of the most common types of hosts out there, blog hosts.
Many of these hosts have been copyright headaches for Webmasters. They are prime targets for spam blogs and scrapers and some have played a huge role in rise of [...]

For the next segment in our “DMCA Seven” feature, we will take a look at the “Darlings of the DMCA” as I’ve come to know them, the video sharing sites.
These sites, many of which have been sued or are operating under the constant threat of being sued, have their very livelihood centered around whether or [...]

For the next segment in our “DMCA Seven” feature, we will take a look at the DMCA policy on seven of the largest social networking sites including Myspace, Facebook, Bebo and more.
In each case we will evaluate their policy, look for weaknesses and, as necessary, recommend steps for improvement.
However, as you can see [...]

Previously on this site, I reviewed the DMCA policies of the top 5 social news sites. I found, as might be expected, that the policies on the five different sites varied wildly both in terms of how they were implemented and how robust they were.
Differences between the sites became clear as sites with more money, [...]

Previously, I reported about how plagiarized content can create unique challeges on social news sites such as Digg and Reddit.
The article detailed a case involving the site Celebrity Hack, a celebrity gossip blog. The site had one of its articles, entitled “37 Famously Stupid Celebrity Quotes” submitted to Digg only to be buried for unknown [...]