An interesting ruling by the press complaints commission last week: Tweets are in the public domain and so can be used by newspapers in articles without being deemed an invasion of privacy. That kinda makes sense: if you publish something on t'internet and someone reads it or re-publishes it, it can hardly be deemed an invasion of privacy.
Perhaps Ms Baskerville should have looked at copyright law to stop her tweets being used by The Daily Mail. If newspapers claim the words they publish are copyrighted and so charge PR agencies ridiculous amounts to be able to clip stories, then why can't people charge newspapers for republishing their words in social media? It's the same principle, isn't it?
There is a big debate about whether tweets are copyrighted or not. I'm not sure people will be able to copyright their tweets, but what about blog posts or longer form content?
If newspapers can copyright the words they publish, then why can't people do the same?
Just saying:)
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1 comment:
This is an interesting side effect of/ the law catching up with citizen journalism.
Other interest legal issues arise from reviews (Duncan Bannatyne v TripAdvisor), or my pet issue - YouTube, where there are tens of videos of Premier League goals uploaded each weekend, all illegally.
The Internet needs to decide whether copyright has no place in the new world, or whether it needs to be aligned with the new world. Not both.
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