There have been 25 billion sent tweets on Twitter in 2010. This is how much involved we are in the Twitter world. What people twit includes mainly summed up original words of a user, a link, photographs, and videos. Are these copyrighted? Yes they are. As we all already know well by now, those uploaded tweets are protected by the United States Copyright Law. The law protects “original works of authorship.” Nevertheless for Twitpic, a website that helps facilitation of uploading of the photographs, it was never easy to draw a clear line but recently they have straightened up the copyright section of their terms of service. In the renewed section, there were some parts that are noteworthy and could start off a controversy.
First of all lets look at what Twitpic has done well. Twitpic states, “All content uploaded to Twitpic is copyright the respective owners. The owners retain full rights to distribute their own work.” This part of the terms of service sounds fairly generic and acceptable for Twitpic users. Then it states, “By uploading content to Twitpic you give Twitpic permission to use or distribute your content on Twitpic.com or affiliated sites.” This part seems to be acceptable as well. There is always a give and take. Twitpic provides the space for users to upload pictures, thus Twitpic should have permission as well. On the other hand, the controversy and uneasy feelings among Twitpic users arouse from this line:
“However, by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formants and through any media channels.”
I admit that it is a fairly long paragraph to look at but the wide range of Twitpic’s influence over a photograph you may have uploaded without giving much thought is scary. Twitpic can actually sell and gain monetary profit from what you have uploaded without giving much second thought.
One blogger has pointed out a fairly noteworthy part of the Twitpic’s terms of service. There is a part where Twitpic seems like it is overusing its power over what has been uploaded. It says “you are required to obtain permission from Twitpic in advance of said usage and attribute credit to Twitpic as the source where you have obtained the content.” Twitpic is requiring the content user to contact Twitpic for using the used content rather than the person who has uploaded the content. It may be a policy of Twitpic to become a mediator between the user and the original uploader with appropriate authorship of its picture, but some uneasy feelings of rightfulness lingers. There seems to be no controversial occurrences with Twitpic so far. If you do not wish to be the first one, think before you Tweet!
Bibliography
http://twitpic.com/terms.do
http://www.scribbal.com/2011/05/twitpic-updates-terms-of-service-you-own-any-content-you-upload-but-they-can-sell-your-photos/
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#what
