

Can You Copyright a Tweet? - edd
http://www.canyoucopyrightatweet.com/

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bena
Interesting enough. But let's take a step back. Sure, a single tweet may not
be copyrightable, but what about timelines?

Couldn't someone consider their Twitter timeline to be a body of work? Think
about Fake Micheal Bay, Darth Vader, or other fake users who exist solely for
entertainment purposes. No single tweet is important, however the image they
convey of the character is described in these 140 character chunks. Pretty
much a work of fiction.

It would be like trying to say that words and sentences can't be copyrighted
because they are too small to comprise anything substantial, but ignoring
books, songs, plays, etc.

A case for missing the forest for the trees.

~~~
CodeMage
In this case, I'd say that the author is trying to stop people from staring at
the trees, so that they can tour the forest.

~~~
bena
He never makes that claim. He focuses on whether or not a tweet is
copyrightable as a body of work. He never brings up or implies that a person's
timeline might be something more than the sum of the individual tweets.

His answer to the question is no for various reasons. He never delves into the
higher levels. He takes the question simply at face value. If asked whether
words or sentences are copyrightable, his answer would be the same for all of
the same reasons. However, we intuitively know that words and sentences are
not the end product of writing and don't base copyrightability on the basis of
words and sentences being copyrightable.

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mustpax
Let's rephrase the question: can you copyright aphorisms? Because Tweets are
no different than other bodies of written work except for their length.

The author seems to pick out a bunch of straw-men, or, ahem, straw-tweets if
you like, to point out as un-copyrightable. He then moves on to say that he
has yet to see a single copyrightable tweet. It would be more interesting if
he picked out genuinely interesting tweets and argued why even they didn't
pass muster.

Yeah, you can't copyright facts. But you can copyright certain stylized
restatements of facts. You're copyrighting the specific and unique utterance,
not the fact itself.

The author even concedes that you could possibly copyright a tweet if it was a
haiku. I've seen plenty of tweets that embody the same kind of concise harmony
as haikus.

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eelco
Note that this partly specific for US law, not all countries require
registration for copyrighted material.

~~~
swolchok
I was definitely under the impression that your work is still protected even
if the copyright is not registered. It is interesting to know that
registration is necessary to bring a lawsuit. If you can't protect your
copyright, does it really exist?

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gojomo
No doubt, most individual tweets don't rise to the level of copyright
protection.

But he hides the strong counterexample until his second-to-last paragraph:
established law confirms tiny poems, specifically haiku, are copyrightable.

And he ignores the interesting question about related strings of tweets.
Individual letters aren't copyrightable; string enough together and you have
everything else that is copyrightable.

He spent all his words on the trivial matters!

