If You Compile a Book of Tweets from Other People Should you Ask for Permission?
There was some discussion a ways back as to whether tweets are copyrightable, whether Twitter has a license, and what this all may mean to everyone's ability to exploit tweets. (Here's a link to a post from Evan Brown on the topic, and a whole blog devoted to it: "Twitterlogical . . . the misunderstandings of ownership".)
I don't have the energy to wade back into that (interesting) discussion at the moment, but recently came across an example of what could happen here. Let's say hypothetically you don't need to ask for permission. Is it a good idea to go ahead?
An author named Suzanne Schwalb apparently took this approach and compiled a book of tweets from other people. It seems like she didn't ask for permission.
For her efforts, she and her publisher earned some scathing reviews (including this particular one that stood out), endless negative publicity, and Amazon's coveted one star rating.
You can probably tell where I'm coming from as far as whether I think it's a good or a bad idea.
Related: great program this weekend from On the Media on how the world of comedy relies on the informal system of enforcement rather than on copyright rules ("Take my Joke, Please "). Techdirt had a recent post on this as well: "How Social Mores Often Work Better Than Copyright Law in 'Protecting' Works".
(h/t Don Cruse)
Added: Here's a post from William Carleton comparing the terms of various services/networks in the space.
I don't have the energy to wade back into that (interesting) discussion at the moment, but recently came across an example of what could happen here. Let's say hypothetically you don't need to ask for permission. Is it a good idea to go ahead?
An author named Suzanne Schwalb apparently took this approach and compiled a book of tweets from other people. It seems like she didn't ask for permission.
For her efforts, she and her publisher earned some scathing reviews (including this particular one that stood out), endless negative publicity, and Amazon's coveted one star rating.You can probably tell where I'm coming from as far as whether I think it's a good or a bad idea.
Related: great program this weekend from On the Media on how the world of comedy relies on the informal system of enforcement rather than on copyright rules ("Take my Joke, Please "). Techdirt had a recent post on this as well: "How Social Mores Often Work Better Than Copyright Law in 'Protecting' Works".
(h/t Don Cruse)
Added: Here's a post from William Carleton comparing the terms of various services/networks in the space.
I looked recently at the TOS of Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare and Gowalla, and was a bit surprised to see that FourSquare was unique in having thought about this topic, or written something in their TOS to address it. As I recall, they say that, by using FourSquare, you grant a license to other users of the service to use the content you post, though the license is limited to “personal, non-commercial use" (probably not for a book of cool places in XYZ City, or some such).
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William,
Thanks for flagging that. It will be interesting to see how this plays out when everyone ratchets up the exploitation (if they do).
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I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun was probably my first real "that's not right" commercial compilation of user generated internet content. I think grabbing a load of content that's been produced by other people and then publishing it as a book is ethically iffy if you don't include the people who did it for you.
I think the same thinking has to apply to publishing books of tweets.
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