Their real (not so secret) secret to success is flagrant copyright violation on almost everything they post (which is why they eventually went to a more "user posted" model--to be protected by the safe-harbor clauses of the DMCA). The same can be said of YouTube: there is tons of copyrighted stuff, a few short "America's Funniest Home Videos" style stuff, and then there is some excellent user-produced made-to-entertain content. But in regards to the latter, 90% of the time it is backed up by copyrighted music.
Yes, I totally agree. All of those t-shirts are flagrant copyright violations. ;-)
But more to your point: even if the copyright problems were as widespread as you claim, it simply demonstrates a gap in the market that exists. There is obviously a demand for this copyrighted content online, and it's not because people are suddenly getting it free (since it was essentially free before). Luckily, there is a new demand for user-generated content as well. Now that there is a more equal playing field between traditional and user-generated media, it will be very interesting to see if the demand for traditional media keeps up. My guess is that it will become too expensive to compete, since people only place a certain premium on quality.
In terms of CollegeHumor, they have a lot of original content and have maintained a very good grip on what college kids like and think is funny. It is a mis-characterization to attribute all of their success to simply stealing other people's work. Nobody gets a free ride like that.
