NY Times Asks Twitter To Shut Down Retweeting Feed

WesternActor writes "According to PCMag.com, the New York Times has asked Twitter to shut down the FreeNYT Twitter feed that basically retweets all of the Times' articles. Is this really possible? After all, the feed just points to a list of Times Twitter accounts, all of which can also be found on the Times' website. If the Times succeeds in shutting this down, it could have a chilling effect for Twitter and online free speech in general."

Comments

Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't people just create replacements using lists?

If NYT doesn't want their material tweeted, then maybe they should stop tweeting them.

shut out NYT

[fermion]

Just like the WSJ, and FT, this simply means that I won't be pointing any tweets to the NYT. No traffic driven to the site, no ad revenue. Maybe the $300 a year they want for an ipad subscription will generate sufficient revenue.

Re:shut out NYT

[couchslug]

No loss.

We can rely on Fox News instead. (runs)

erm

[cyberfin]

"it could have a chilling effect for Twitter and online free speech in general".

Eh, no. Just no. Stop it.

Re:erm

[kidcharles]

Who even mentioned the 1st Amendment? Free speech as a principle is bigger than just the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Just because something isn't technically in violation of that particular clause doesn't mean it isn't undermining the freedom of speech. As a hypothetical example, if Comcast decided not to allow any discussion of FCC regulatory policies to flow through their network infrastructure it wouldn't technically be a violation of the 1st Amendment, but it would quite clearly be a blow to free speech.

Re:erm

[Junior J. Junior III]

"Free Speech" only applies TO THE GOVERNMENT.

No, free speech is free speech. The constitutional protections of free speech are applicable to the government.

There is still plenty of sound argument and valid reasoning to want to have free speech that is protected from the actions of individuals and corporations.

In the real world, this becomes difficult or impossible to enforce. Hence the saying that free speech is not without consequences.

Nevertheless, it is in the interests of the people to advocate for a broad reaching, maximized freedom of speech, subject to practical limits of enforcement, and reason (let's avoid stupid logical paradoxes and fallacies in the pursuit of freest speech). There's some wiggle room for weasels in the concept of "practical limits" but clearly the guiding principle should be that the limits on speech should be kept as minimal as possible.

Corporate censorship may not be illegal, but it is still wrong and the good and righteous still ought to fight the good fight against it.

Re:They wont succeed.

[appleguru]

I should have looked it up before I rattled off a first post without being logged in, but it would indeed violate the standard TOS (unless NYT agreed to a custom version, which I doubt):

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

http://twitter.com/tos

Alternatives

[freakingme]

Luckily there are alternatives like http://identi.ca/ . Great joy for developers (lots of api access), and it's distributed, so they cant pull stunts like the ones twitter has been doing lately. Also, it can sync with twitter so you only have to type all your microblogs just once.

And this is a bad thing - why?

[Third Position]

If the Times succeeds in shutting this down, it could have a chilling effect for Twitter and online free speech in general."

Anything that has a chilling effect on Twitter can't be all bad!

Re:They wont succeed.

[appleguru]

Did you even *read* TFS? That's the problem exactly. The NYT *is* the ones originally posting the content (yes, largely headlines), on Twitter. And now they are asking for the retweeting of their tweets to be blocked. Absurd.

NY Times Asks Twitter To Shut Down Retweeting Feed

[zill]

Zill writes

"According to PCMag.com, the New York Times has asked Twitter to shut down the FreeNYT Twitter feed that basically retweets all of the Times' articles. Is this really possible? After all, the feed just points to a list of Times Twitter accounts, all of which can also be found on the Times' website. If the Times succeeds in shutting this down, it could have a chilling effect for Twitter and online free speech in general."

Factually Incorrect Title: There Is No Retweeting

[thehossman]

The twitter account in question isn't retweeting the URLs.

There is no automated bot in play here.

All this guy did was create a "Twitter List" of the ~40 official Twitter Accounts used by the NYTimes (they seem to have one per section of their site) ...

https://twitter.com/#!/FreeNYT/firehose/members

...if you follow that "list" you get access to all of those URLs.

You would get access to the same URLs if you followed each of those ~40 individual twitter accounts directly.

Essentially the NYT is complaining that someone is promoting the existence of their twitter accounts.

Twitter NEEDS to stop the re-tweet

[ChronoFish]

By stopping it at its source. So shutdown the NYTimes twitter account - that way there will be no way to re-tweet it.

-CF