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Twitter Yanks Tweets That Repeat Copyrighted Joke

Posted by timothy on from the head-scratcher-loaded-for-bear dept.

Mark Wilson writes at Beta News: Can a joke be copyrighted? Twitter seems to think so. As spotted by Twitter account Plagiarism is Bad a number of tweets that repeat a particular joke are being hidden from view. The tweets have not been deleted as such, but their text has been replaced with a link to Twitter's Copyright and DMCA policy. Quality of the joke itself aside -- no accounting for taste -- this seems a strange move for a site and service which is largely based around verbatim retransmission of other people's low-character-count declarations, recipes, questions, and Yes, jokes.

11 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Missing link... by wilsonmark · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... post seems to be missing a link to the article, so here it is: http://betanews.com/2015/07/25...

    1. Re:Missing link... by rhazz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's either really lame or I don't get it. I suspect it's really lame.

    2. Re:Missing link... by hackwrench · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's really lame. It comes from the perspective of someone who believes a juice cleanse is a waste of money so the person who bought one got punished for wasting money when they threw up.

    3. Re:Missing link... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Thanks for the explanation. This is not a joke then, just a quip.

      A "quip" is a witty remark. This is a banal remark.

      That someone owns the copyright to it is a huge black mark on our intellectual property laws.

      Here is an example of a quip:

      "I was walking down the street and Jehovah came up next to me and stuck his hand in my pocket, trying to steal my iPhone. This is how I know God is on my side. When I caught Him in the act, we had a laugh and decided to go laugh at the people coming out of the health food store after having a juice cleanse, knowing they'll die young, probably from being so gullible."

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. Huh? by Stephen+Chadfield · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The joke isn't funny.

    1. Re:Huh? by Megane · · Score: 4, Funny

      We here at JokeCo are sorry that the joke did not meet up to your standards. According to the terms of our warranty, we are providing you with a replacement joke:

      Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  3. Re:Twitter-its by Kokuyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And soon, so will be the English language because that blow you just dealt it sure looks fatal...

  4. Coming up with a joke is hard by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Creating a joke is truly a very creative innovative activity and jokes deserve full measure of copyright protection. Anecdotes are not data, but still: I have so far created less than 20 jokes in total in my life (if you don't count joining the threads like "Nate Silver is so geeky, when his code throws an exception, he catches it before the debugger").

    Having said that, most people would like their jokes to be told again, if possible with attribution. So unless the creator has gone through the process of copyrighting the joke and enforcing it, it seems to be an overkill to enforce it suo motu.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  5. Details by argStyopa · · Score: 5, Informative

    The joke is stupid; "Saw someone spill their high end juice cleanse all over the sidewalk and now I know god is on my side". Honestly, why anyone would want to claim that is beyond me.

    From digital spy:
    Olga Lexell, a freelance writer in LA, is allegedly the first person to publish this joke to Twitter. Tweeting this afternoon, she confirmed that she did file a request to get the messages removed.

    Well Olga, your shitty joke will now be an example of the Streisand effect.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:Details by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes but now everyone will associate that joke with its author, so she won't feel like nobody knows that the world's worst attempt at a joke was written by her.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  6. Re:Everything is copyrighted by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now you're REALLY in trouble:

    It's Turtles® all the way down.