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

Twitter? Mystical? Hardly.

[geekmux]

...automatically assumed to have copyright attributed to the author?

I had no idea Twitter had some mystical "copyright-defeating aura" about its service.

The only thing about Twitter that is "mystical" is its ability to stay popular and relevant well past its 15-minute window...

Re:140 Characters?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

There are some things that can't be copyrighted.
For everything else, there's Lawyers.

(Accepted wherever greed is good)

Re:140 Characters?

[retchdog]

Here is an "anthology" of six-word-long short stories; maybe you'd agree that at least a few of them are art?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html

(Of course, there might be a problem with "derived works" here - Alan Moore and Darren Aronofsky independently wrote basically the same thing.)

Re:Copyrightable expression

[langelgjm]

You'll notice the conspicuous absence of the word "sentence" from what you quoted. Never have I read anywhere that a single sentence is ineligible for copyright. It's certainly not in Title 17. Part of the reason is that "sentence" is of an undefined length. Sentences can be very short. (like that one) Or they can be very long, like the kind you find in the last chapter of Ulysses.

My point is that if a haiku contains enough creative content to qualify for a copyright, a sentence of the same length, containing the same amount of creative content would also qualify.