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Tweet, Tweet

By Kyle-Beth Hilfer
November 30, 2009

The blogs have been atwitter. It all started when ESPN republished without consent a tweet by Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, that criticized the NBA referees. Cuban then posed the question on his blog whether copyright law protected his tweets. Legal experts joined the conversation, and the debate began. So is a tweet on the Twitter networking site protected by copyright law? The question is complex and without a definitive answer. The prevailing opinion is no, but with some possible exceptions.

A good starting place is the Twitter site's terms and conditions that as of the beginning of October, declare: “You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post, or display ' what's yours is yours ' you own your content.” Twitter is clearly stating that the author of the tweet owns any copyright in the tweet. Is there, however, any copyright to own? The analysis centers on two points: 1) Is a tweet, at no more than 140 characters, too short to be protected by copyright? and 2) Do tweets have sufficient originality to be protected by copyright?

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