Who needs a unifying theme anyway?

mrgan:

Brock Shinen, an attorney, chimes in on the question of whether tweets are copyrighted or even can be. The summary: no, and probably not.

Copyright and Tweets is really about practicality. Many people believe they own everything they post online, be it Tweets, Facebook status, or whatever. The truth is that most people are most likely incorrect in their assumption.

One of the excellent points he makes is a minor thought experiment worth walking through whenever you find yourself wishing for the government regulation of something: do you even want to live in a world where X is not allowed? Should someone be able to copyright “that’s what she said”?

I quickly checked what I’d written earlier about TweetShirt back when it appropriated tweets without asking for permission. As I expected, I never called their behavior illegal; just douchy.

I’d love to see someone write a similar piece for jurisdictions that do not require registration for copyright to apply. I suspect that in those jurisdictions, the answer would be somewhat different – especially for the types of tweets likely to end up on a shirt –– effectively one-liners.

Would Henny Youngman’s jokes be afforded copyright protection? I suspect so, even though many of them are substantially lesser in length than 140 characters. So why not if they were expressed on Twitter? Because there is no expectation of financial gain? I’m not sure this argument flies, given the number of comedians/pundits who use twitter to draw people into their wider body of work.

Authors have moral and exploitation rights to their work, and I’m not sure it’s a workable argument to say that if you give away your work for free you lose those moral rights.

Again though, a good article, and I’d love to see one that dealt with jurisdictions other than the US.