Copyright, Twitter, the DMCA and Takedowns

Twitter is not a copyright free zone!

You can violate copyright on Twitter just as you can on your blog - or any place else.

This was made clear when Twitter announced that upon a complaint from a copyright holder, Twitter would take down tweets which were asserted to violate copyright. The policy is Twitter's effort to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The policy was recently modified when Twitter sent out the following tweet:

"We now offer more #transparency in processing copyright reports by withholding Tweets, not removing. Learn more: https://support.twitter.com/articles/15795 . "

I guess this would be classified as a Twitter tweaked tweet. 

But there is no humor in the policy.  Twitter will take down the purported offending tweets.  The tweet will not simply disappear into the ether, though.  Rather, the tweet will be "withheld" with a notice appearing instead of the tweet.

The full policy and procedure of Twitter is set out in the Twitter Help Center.  It is rather detailed, but not filled with a bunch of legal jargon.

The real lesson is that even in this era of social media, retweets, reposts, sharing, and even copy and paste, copyright laws still apply, whether its a photo, an article, or a 140-character tweet. 

I would set out the entire policy here . . . but there's that copyright thing.  So instead, just CLICK HERE to go to the Twitter Help Center's Copyright policy.

Photo under Creative Commons license.  photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobalt/7217055290/">cobalt123</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>