Are Tweets Copyright-Protected? July 2009 By Consuelo Reinberg Copyright and tweeting – the debate was bound to happen.
Can repeating a message on Twitter - a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets) – actually be construed as copyright infringement? This article, by Consuelo Reinberg, content editor, BP Council, was first published in the BP Council Note, June 18, 2009. A copyright debate that was already brewing positively boiled over when Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, was recently slapped with a US$25,000 fine by the National Basketball Association (NBA) for tweeting during a game about allegedly lousy officiating. (Copyright Twitter) As new communication technologies emerge, so do new copyright infringement questions. Content – Lawyer Brock Shinen’s article “Twitterlogical, The Misunderstanding of Ownership” focuses on a salient point: facts are not copyrightable.
Can a tweet ever be copyrightable? TweetCC. Would Twitter Be Liable For Links To Infringing Material? One of the issues that bothers many folks who pay attention to copyright issues is the growing belief by many copyright supporters that simply posting a link to copyright infringing material could itself be considered infringement.
From a technical standpoint, this makes little sense. As you copyright geeks should know, US copyright law grants some specific "exclusive rights" to copyright holders in Section 106: to reproduce, to prepare derivative works, to distribute, to perform and to display (with some added specifics based on what kind of work it is). Still, I'm at a loss to figure out what linking to a work does? It's not reproducing the work. It's not preparing a derivative work. Anyway, the reason why I'm asking this now is that it appears that Twitter is suddenly getting swamped with DMCA takedown notices lately.
The addition of Twitter struck me as odd. Twitter Taking Down Tweets Over Bogus DMCA Claims. You may recall the controversy over Google reacting too aggressively in pulling down music blog posts (or entire blogs) based on DMCA takedown notices.
Eventually, Google revamped its DMCA policy to better handle the situation, though there have still been some complaints. Tim Dickinson alerts us to a similar situation with Twitter -- except the details suggest it's much worse, and involves a clear abuse of the DMCA (which Twitter should be standing up to). The story involves a music blogger named JP, who runs the appropriately named JP's blog. Not surprisingly, JP also has a Twitter account, where he mostly seems to post links to his blog posts. One such post was about the leak of the new album by The National. Someone -- and it's not at all clear who -- apparently filed a DMCA claim over the Twitter message about the leak, and Twitter responded by taking down the tweet and sending JP a note:
Court Refutes Claim that Photos on Twitter Are Free For the Taking. Ah, Terms of Service - the legally-binding document we never read before clicking "accept.
" So when Agence France-Presse argued this fall that Twitter's ToS granted it free access to photos shared on the microblogging service, there was a veritable shitstorm of people saying, "Wait, what did I agree to? " Chilling Effects Clearinghouse: Twitter. Twitter uncloaks a year’s worth of DMCA takedown notices, 4,410 in all. On almost any given day, Twitter receives a handful of requests to delete tweets that link to pirated versions of copyrighted content—and quickly complies by erasing the offending tweets from its site.
That fact itself is probably unsurprising to people familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown process, which gives sites like Twitter a "safe harbor" against lawsuits related to user behavior and uploads—so long as the sites don't knowingly tolerate pirated material or links to such material. But Twitter has taken the unusual step of making DMCA takedown notices public, in partnership with Chilling Effects, a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several universities. The site shows 4,410 cease and desist notices dating back to November 2010. Scrolling through recent takedown notices, you'll see names like Magnolia Pictures, Simon and Schuster, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, among those of many other media companies.