(continued)

MCCOLLUM: I just started writing a column now; it's a political column. And there's some other writing work coming up, obviously. With the fall season here, and January coming up, people have been talking to me about doing something, possibly. So we'll see.

ESKAY: On the one hand I have record labels stuffing my in-box, and on the other hand, I get a cease and desist. The entertainment industry, the music industry, it's this place that doesn't know what to do with the Internet. It kind of had me in the middle of this tug-of-war, but you know, as far as cease and desist—if you don't want it there, I'll take it down; it's your loss.

ANGEL: It's free publicity. What is the problem?

RADAR: Have there been any retaliatory scenarios with celebrities or otherwise?

DONALDSON: It actually got where someone took me on Judge Judy. He sued me for $3,000 for emotional distress. He said that he suffered severe emotional distress from his picture being up on hotghettomess.com, but I won. To me, it's a very powerful statement against a stereotype when someone from that community is saying, "Come on, let's get it together." If I can sit there and say, "We gotta do better," then this is a mess, this a problem.

ANGEL: Earlier, Tyra Banks tried to sue me, said I started a sex tape rumor. But actually it was Media Take Out. It was all this drama with her lawyer trying to say we started it, because I guess we were getting more hits than MTO at the time. They had no basis on it. We're having the same thing as Eskay, where Atlantic Records will send you a song or something, and then someone from the same company will say "take this down" or "cease and desist." I'm like, why did you send us this and then tell us to take it down? It makes no sense.

MCCOLLUM: I think probably by the nature of our site, I tend to get less of that. We're more newsy and more political. But certain incidents have come to mind that were legal, such as gay innuendo or rumor stories. One was a recording star, and what was really interesting was there was this article about an artist and their album, and that's it. The legal team and their management were like, it should be removed, and I've never heard of such a thing. I was like, I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm not gonna take it down. Then they had someone else contact me about the photo. They said it was copyrighted, but I even put up a noncopyrighted photo. The bottom line was the artist was on a gay website and they didn't like that.

The other big deal was when 50 Cent's autobiography came out—I had this ongoing inside joke going that 50 Cent is gay—so anyway, he has his autobiography come out and he said things that you could kind of take either way. Because he had this thing about when he was locked up in prison he was named "The Slut," and okay, so we had excerpts from his autobiography and snarky commentary under it. It was all obviously in fun. But anyway, the ratings, the numbers soared and everyone picked up on it and someone from his team contacted me like, "It was not true, and him being named a slut is just a joke," and all that type of stuff. They promised me an interview, but it never happened. And they were very concerned about any joking in that type of manner.

Music and television, I know what the rules are with fair use. And if it's fair use, it's fair use.

RADAR: What's the biggest temptation in terms of "selling out"?

ESKAY: For me, it's posting something on my site that I don't like or has no merit. I may not like a particular artist. I could easily post that stuff, like I could say it's an exclusive, but I don't and other sites post it. That's the only means of selling out I could do, and I refuse to do that, so I think it's healthy in the long run. People respect you.

ANGEL: I'm with him. I started selling out a little bit, I started doing that. I was like, you know, doing posts with, "Can you post this? Can you put this up?" But I was like, it's my blog, what am I doing? Recently, I was like, we only post what we want to post. Don't send us an e-mail like, "Why haven't you posted about this? This other site wrote about it." We don't want to post about it. It's our site. Go to that site.

READ MORE
• The New Radicals: Radar salutes this year's renegades and rule breakers
• Photos from Radar's New Radicals party in New York
• Today's Top Headlines