Lawsuits Over Who Owns Tweets?
from the omgstop dept
It had to happen eventually. Apparently, there's a lawsuit going on over the "ownership" of a Twitter account that goes by the name OMGFacts, which (as you might have guessed, posts a bunch of random facts). It has nearly two million followers. Not bad. But there's now a federal lawsuit over who actually owns the feed. Apparently, there were two people who ran the account -- a 17-year-old student who started it and his 24-year-old "business partner" whose job it was to help develop the feed and get it more attention. The argument covers a bunch of ground on both intellectual property issues and contract issues. Basically, it seems like a business dispute where the end result is that perhaps neither party comes out of it happy. The Twitter angle just makes it that much more twisted. As Eric Goldman notes in a quote in the article:"We've had 600 years to develop the rules on books," Goldman said. "We've had less than five years to develop how those rules apply to tweets."
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Problem solved.
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Ownership
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Per Contract law....
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Re: Per Contract law....
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If your parents are keeping you from running a business IMO that's just cause for me... though in this case I might fight it as a parent for the sure stupidity of the claim.
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I may be wrong too, but contracts with minors are somewhat "one-way" enforceable. If the minor doesn't uphold their side, it's your fault for making a contract with a minor.
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OMGFacts
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It's called Broadcast
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and those rules turned out to be a complete failure. ie: look at 95+ year copy protection lengths.
"We've had less than five years to develop how those rules apply to tweets."
I hope the rules on tweets don't turn out to be nearly as much of a failure as the rules on books, but I won't hold my breath.
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The twitter TOS.
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