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Why should copyright depend on the length of a piece of work ? You can't measure value by size. The standard definition of what's copyrightable is based upon

by ig1 17y ago

Why should copyright depend on the length of a piece of work ? You can't measure value by size. The standard definition of what's copyrightable is based upon creativity. So the shortest expression of a statement of fact is unlikely to enjoy copyright due to it's lack of creativity. But even a single worded creative expression on the other hand would likely enjoy protection (reasonably I believe). Remember that copyright is unlike patent or trademark law, in that if two people independently come up with the same creative work then they'll both own the rights to it. I'm a strong advocate of fair use (in that I've actively been involved in political lobbying on the issue). But there's no fair use case here, taking an entire work of creativity (a "tweet") in it's full and reproducing it for commercial gain just isn't fair use. You could argue that there's been an implicit agreement on the authors part to allow redistributing (i.e. re-tweeting), and indeed such an argument has been used successfully historically in comparable situations (i.e. Usenet)

ahoyhere 17y ago
Of course copyright should have a minimum length of expression. There's a reason why quote compilations don't get their publishers sued... by famous people, who actually say serious and meaningful things. When the twitter shirt debacles happened, quite a lot of lawyers came forth to give their opinions that tweets are simply too short to constitute original works. Repeating someone's tweet is no more copyright violation than quoting Hemmingway's 6-word novel, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." And a damn sight less moving, I bet. Oops, I copyrighted violated again. And I bet Hemmingway never ran a Tumblr full of somebody else's photos. And quotes. And videos. What we're seeing with the "outrage" over the book is not anger at being quoted, which of course happens all the time (and is perpetrated by the twitterers in question) -- but the sneaking suspicion that SOMEBODY IS MAKING MONEY! Which, of course, is faintly ludicrous.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  I don't believe the author has any legal right to payment for someone copying their tweet (their tweet log is a different story), as you said quote compilations get away with it all the time. However, copyright still stands and the author of the tweet has the legal right to be attributed alongside the quoted tweet, but as the 'work' would unlikely be sold for profit then the author wouldn't get a penny from a judge anyway. The difference between a tweet and Hemmingway's 6-word novel is that he could (and did IIRC) make money off of it.
- ig1 17y ago
  In what language ? Does it mean if we can compress a text to below a certain size it stops being copyright ? The international convention is on originality/creativity - the US copyright office has taken the stance that the creativity requirements can't be met by short phrases. But many courts around the world have provided rulings based upon the same international conventions protecting snippets of text. For example 11 words were considered protectable in: http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/gettext.pl?lang=en&num=79909283C19080005&doc=T&ouvert=T&seance=ARRET&where=() http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/gettext.pl?lang=en&#38... Last year the Australian High Court rules that slogans were copyrightable: http://www.simpsongrierson.com/assets/publications/oym/OYMApril09.pdf http://www.simpsongrierson.com/assets/publications/oym/OYMAp... In many country sports statistics are also often considered copyrightable, even though they contain even smaller amounts of information than a sentence of text.
  - gte910h 17y ago
    > the US copyright office has taken the stance that the creativity requirements can't be met by short phrases. Actually, in the US, meaningful short phrases sometimes can. Some guy (who's name currently escapes me) has had a court confirm his copyright on his epigrams (he sells books of them or somesuch).
decode 17y ago
IP law can vary significantly between Europe and the US, and the publisher of this book is in the US. This is the take of a US IP lawyer on whether or not tweets are copyrighted: http://www.canyoucopyrightatweet.com/ http://www.canyoucopyrightatweet.com/ Essentially, he says it's very unlikely. Perhaps if you write a short poem, it could be construed as copyrighted, but otherwise you don't have much of a chance.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  From my understanding quoting a single tweet, due to its length, wouldn't constitute a violation. However if you copied anyones twitter log, then yes that would be a gross violation of copyright. The whole is worth more than the sum of its parts, which is frequently how copyright law views the use of small pieces. I can legally use someone else's artwork in a collage or in my own non-derivative work (although derivatives basically don't exist in artwork, but for the sake of argument they do as they are still legally recognized) and I am at no legal risk because my collage of 1,000 pieces of artwork creates a whole new piece of art in itself. The book in question is likely a lazy assed crowdsource, likely much of which was written by average Joe's. However the real question here regardless of country is did the author make something new in their book? I remember reading a correspondence book that mixed multiple anonymous letters together to create a chapter, but no two were destined for the same person and it completely cleared any question of copyright infringement, however I doubt this book of tweets was artfully crafted together to evade copyright on the merits of its own work. From what I read of it, its simply hoping to avoid copyright on the duration of material, which it is likely going to do but legally speaking it shouldn't if it really is a lazy crowdsource compilation.

by ig1 17y ago

ahoyhere 17y ago

Of course copyright should have a minimum length of expression. There's a reason why quote compilations don't get their publishers sued... by famous people, who actually say serious and meaningful things. When the twitter shirt debacles happened, quite a lot of lawyers came forth to give their opinions that tweets are simply too short to constitute original works. Repeating someone's tweet is no more copyright violation than quoting Hemmingway's 6-word novel, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." And a damn sight less moving, I bet. Oops, I copyrighted violated again. And I bet Hemmingway never ran a Tumblr full of somebody else's photos. And quotes. And videos. What we're seeing with the "outrage" over the book is not anger at being quoted, which of course happens all the time (and is perpetrated by the twitterers in question) -- but the sneaking suspicion that SOMEBODY IS MAKING MONEY! Which, of course, is faintly ludicrous.

electromagnetic 17y ago
I don't believe the author has any legal right to payment for someone copying their tweet (their tweet log is a different story), as you said quote compilations get away with it all the time. However, copyright still stands and the author of the tweet has the legal right to be attributed alongside the quoted tweet, but as the 'work' would unlikely be sold for profit then the author wouldn't get a penny from a judge anyway. The difference between a tweet and Hemmingway's 6-word novel is that he could (and did IIRC) make money off of it.
ig1 17y ago
In what language ? Does it mean if we can compress a text to below a certain size it stops being copyright ? The international convention is on originality/creativity - the US copyright office has taken the stance that the creativity requirements can't be met by short phrases. But many courts around the world have provided rulings based upon the same international conventions protecting snippets of text. For example 11 words were considered protectable in: http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/gettext.pl?lang=en&num=79909283C19080005&doc=T&ouvert=T&seance=ARRET&where=() http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/gettext.pl?lang=en&#38... Last year the Australian High Court rules that slogans were copyrightable: http://www.simpsongrierson.com/assets/publications/oym/OYMApril09.pdf http://www.simpsongrierson.com/assets/publications/oym/OYMAp... In many country sports statistics are also often considered copyrightable, even though they contain even smaller amounts of information than a sentence of text.
- gte910h 17y ago
  > the US copyright office has taken the stance that the creativity requirements can't be met by short phrases. Actually, in the US, meaningful short phrases sometimes can. Some guy (who's name currently escapes me) has had a court confirm his copyright on his epigrams (he sells books of them or somesuch).

decode 17y ago

IP law can vary significantly between Europe and the US, and the publisher of this book is in the US. This is the take of a US IP lawyer on whether or not tweets are copyrighted: http://www.canyoucopyrightatweet.com/ http://www.canyoucopyrightatweet.com/ Essentially, he says it's very unlikely. Perhaps if you write a short poem, it could be construed as copyrighted, but otherwise you don't have much of a chance.

electromagnetic 17y ago
From my understanding quoting a single tweet, due to its length, wouldn't constitute a violation. However if you copied anyones twitter log, then yes that would be a gross violation of copyright. The whole is worth more than the sum of its parts, which is frequently how copyright law views the use of small pieces. I can legally use someone else's artwork in a collage or in my own non-derivative work (although derivatives basically don't exist in artwork, but for the sake of argument they do as they are still legally recognized) and I am at no legal risk because my collage of 1,000 pieces of artwork creates a whole new piece of art in itself. The book in question is likely a lazy assed crowdsource, likely much of which was written by average Joe's. However the real question here regardless of country is did the author make something new in their book? I remember reading a correspondence book that mixed multiple anonymous letters together to create a chapter, but no two were destined for the same person and it completely cleared any question of copyright infringement, however I doubt this book of tweets was artfully crafted together to evade copyright on the merits of its own work. From what I read of it, its simply hoping to avoid copyright on the duration of material, which it is likely going to do but legally speaking it shouldn't if it really is a lazy crowdsource compilation.