Cuban: Are Tweets Copyrighted?
Internet industry billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban posed a few interesting questions on his blog last week. Is a "tweet" -- a post via micro-blogging platform Twitter -- copyrightable? Is a tweet copyrighted by default when it's published? Can there possibly be a fair use exception for something that is only 140 characters or less? Is twittering the process of publishing or is it a private communication to those that follow you? He wonders if the same would apply to social networking site Facebook asking whether users really "own" their status updates.
"I got to thinking about this when I tweeted about an NBA game. I tweeted to the people who follow me. While I never asked that they not distribute it to other tweeters, I did not give anyone permission to republish my tweets in a commercial newspaper, magazine or Web site," he wrote. The NBA fined Cuban $25,000 for grumbling about referees on Twitter. His tongue-in-cheek tweet response: "Can't say no one makes money from Twitter now. The NBA does." Read Cuban's blog here and follow him on Twitter here.
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