The Copyrightability of Twitter Posts

TechDirt has an interesting look at some of the questions arising about the copyrightability of Twitter messages. I haven't seen any actual copyright lawyers weigh in yet, but it certainly will be interesting to watch the feathers fly until someone nails down the answer. "[...] it seems like there would be two issues here. The first is whether or not the content is covered by copyright — and, for most messages the answer would probably be yes (there would need to be some sort of creative element to the messages to make that happen, so a simple 'hi' or 'thanks' or whatever might not cut it). But, the more important question then would be whether or not ESPN could quote the Twitter message. And, there, the answer is almost certainly, yes, they could, just as they could quote something you wrote in a blog post."

Comments

140 Characters?

[morgan_greywolf]

140 Characters? You can copyright 140 characters? Maybe. Can you copy this post?

Copyright © 2009 Morgan Greywolf. All rights reserved.

Re:140 Characters?

[eln]

Strangely enough, out of all of those 664476756947807176715034333311766515110070489754984251115127044065335\
958723421280563932610202817364857562965301326676439580847882136233622\
470228337349221780394017946865300500917686923368657379455054140638838\
860621536007842505308434547056289460001 combinations, there are only about 23949324789628367456963242 that are actually worth copying, none of which have ever appeared on Twitter.

Re:140 Characters?

[TRRosen]

of course you need to eliminate all those that don't form words in some language. Those that make no sense. and only keep those that clearly no human has ever spoken before in the last 3000 years and billions of people talking for hours every day.

That should get it down to roughly 167.

"Hey I'm going to light my penis on fire with a blowtorch" I betcha nobody ever said that... opps 166.

Re:140 Characters?

[maxume]

"Znork's third edition, now with only 16 trillion characters per page!"

(It would still require ~1^187 pages...)

Re:140 Characters?

[Faylone]

So, everything on one page?

Re:140 Characters?

[PopeRatzo]

So, does that mean that all the music that's being put out by the music industry that nobody gives a shit about is not covered by copyright?

Re:140 Characters?

[TRRosen]

Actually I sorta stole it from a George Carlin bit. His estate's lawyers are at the door now!!!

Why?

[arizwebfoot]

Why are we all a twitter over something that was twittered when it should have been tweeted. Or are we tweeting over something that was twittered by using a twitter that refused to tweet?

Tweet tweet?

Re:Who really cares?

[$1uck]

Seriously... you're an idiot if you are going to twitter about taking a shit or a piss. If you're going to twitter something meaningful, like hey I'm on the subway and its being delayed b/c some jackass jumped off the platform and I'm going to be late to (wherever). Then supposing you're friends are following you they will know... where you are and why you're late.

Twittering is no more idiotic than instant messaging. Its like an email list for instant messaging. It has qualities a chat room lacks like a degree of permanence.

But hey lets make another joke about twittering your bathroom habits and maybe you'll get modded +5 funny and not just redundant.

Re:Who really cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm taking a huge green dump and I'll be late to the Meadows. Don't go in the bathroom in the Reddington station for awhile, it smells like a cow died in here.

Haiku

[Tokerat]

One-hundred forty;
that is all the space you get.
Haiku is covered...