Source: PoeticPixel.info

Twitter's co-founder says your tweets belong to you. Now read the fine print.

For as long as there's been a World Wide Web, there has been debate surrounding the question, "Who owns what users post online?"

Adding fuel to the fire, popular sites like Facebook have written (and withdrawn,) controversial statements into their Terms of Service (ToS) that seemed to suggest that they were asserting ownership over users' content, including photographs, and it's users' "likeness and image". After a massive user outcry, and even some backlash, Facebook was forced to rewrite its TOS, and even allowed users to vote between two versions.

Now, in an apparent attempt to get in front of this kind of momentum, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced in a blog post that new changes to the company's ToS would assure that -- though Twitter is allowed to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" its user's Tweets -- "they are your tweets and they belong to you".

While basking in the warm and fuzzy feelings, I decided to give it a read. Thanks to some very helpful tips placed strategically throughout the document, it wasn't hard to find the right section. The specific paragraph to which Mr. Stone refers can be found below the heading, "Your Rights", and just above the sentence:

The paragraph in Twitter's current ToS reads:

"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)."

While "ownership" typically presumes a form of exclusive right or control, nowhere in the paragraph above does it even imply that "what's yours is yours", or that "you own your content". Instead, this paragraph grants, not only license to Twitter, but the right to sublicense.

The statements above are followed by a single paragraph, apparently discussing the rebroadcasting of Tweets via Twitter's Application Programming Interface (API), and then the following paragraph:

"...additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.

Which, both explicitly and implicitly, could entitle Twitter to an,

"...irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use the Share Service in order to link to, use, copy, publish, stream, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part), summarize, and distribute the content...". (Language removed from Facebook ToS.)

Ironically, when defending this language and in response to the uproar, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted the following statement on his blog:

"Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with."

Just a day after Zukerberg's blog post, PCWorld summarized their reaction to the statement in the following sentence:

"Something doesn't quite add up."

Yet, this morning PCWorld posted the following headline on their web site:

"Twitter: Your 'Tweets' Belong to You"

Followed by the statement,

"Twitter has modified the terms of service that govern the proper user of the microblogging and social-networking site to state unequivocally that messages posted belong to their authors and not to the company."

I wonder if PCWorld's author has ever actually read Twitter's ToS. I am well aware that, in order to provide the services that social networks provide, they need to have the right to distribute their users' content. (Though, perhaps not in perpetuity.) The issue that I have is not with Twitter, or even Facebook. It's with the tech media.

The endless posting and re-posting of particular events on social networks by the "citizen media" has, frankly, given many stories an undeserved and false sense of elevated, or "popularized" significance. But, I would hope that -- so long as they're employed -- those who do work for professional media services would make an effort to, at least, follow their own links before mindlessly re-posting corporate PR.

Of course, if you are a "citizen journalist" (or even if you aren't), please feel free to mindlessly re-post the heck out of this article.

Twitter: Your 'Tweets' Belong to You

In an ironically Orwellian move, on July 17, 2009 Amazon.com remotely deleted illegally-sold copies of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" from its customer's Kindle e-book readers.

This issue is unique to electronic goods, so it's important to parse the words carefully. The books were indeed sold illegally through, and by, Amazon.com. The legitimacy of the purchases, however, does not seem to be in question. The Kindle owners made a legal purchase, of an item that was not legal for Amazon.com to sell in the United States.

The electronic books that Amazon sold are in the public domain in Canada and Australia, but not in the United States. Effectively, works in the public domain belong to the public. What can be confusing, however, is that something in the public domain--or free to use-- in one country, may not be public domain in another.  Naturally, an Amazon.com purchaser might simply assume--considering that Amazon requires their billing address to make a purchase--that the item they were purchasing was neither free, nor illegal to purchase

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10290133-23.html

“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske.

According to Wired:

The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.

Wired: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/fcc-raid/

Wired
Judge: Copyright Owners Must Consider 'Fair Use' Before Sending Takedown Notice

"A federal judge rules that copyright owners must first consider "fair use" before sending takedown notices to online video-sharing sites like YouTube requiring removal of clips. Universal Music argued it could send a takedown notice even if a posting qualified as a fair use of a copyright."

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http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/topheadlines/~3/370400972/judge-copyright.html

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