How do you protect intellectual property on the Internet?

[yz]

If I start my own website on the Internet and have an idea that's really good what will stop others from taking it and using it for themselves? I know that patents can be purchased, but that's really costly so I was wondering if there were any other alternatives?

Also, if someone were to make another auction site like eBay or social networking site like Facebook, could eBay or Facebook file a lawsuit against them?

[lotsbull]

good luck its like the wild west

[Honestly, now]

There's nothing to stop someone competing with ebay or facebook. They just have such a large market share that it's pretty much impossible. They are monopolies.

As for intellectual rights, anything you publish on the net is automatically copyrighted. This goes for content, I don't know about structure of a website. But I assure you--you haven't discovered a way to assemble html code that hasn't already been done before.