Author: Molly Osadjan
Last fall, I tweeted about a local natural disaster. A while later, I found my tweet had made it to the pages of a local media outlet's website. This occurrence made me think: is this action legal? Appropriate? Or even ethical in social media etiquette standards? What are the standards?
Since I had so many unanswered questions, I started to do some research on the topic. Instead of finding answers, I became more and more confused about the rules surrounding the media's use of Twitter users' tweets beyond the profiles of Twitter.
I did find some blog posts on this and similar subjects, including Blog of Mr. Tweet, but the posts I found didn't really answer my questions. Are there any rules? Are Twitter users' protected? Is what you tweet "copyrighted" in some sense, and who owns what content?
Reading Twitter's terms of service and privacy policy were interesting, but it didn't give me all of the information I was looking for on third party usage.
A few of my coworkers and I attended a social media and law session (#legalsm) at the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce in December. The panel included two local attorneys, one from Minor & Brown and one from Townsend and Townsend and Crew, who spoke about social media and copyright issues, in terms of photo usage and employer/employee conduct. Even though the session was very interesting, neither of the attorneys discussed whether or not you can copyright a tweet or if someone else has permission to post your tweets beyond the profiles of Twitter.
After all of this research, I still don't have a clear answer and I am back to my original question: Does anyone know if the media can legally publish your tweets beyond the profiles of Twitter?
