I’m very active on Twitter, but I realise not everyone on this board is. Are we allowed to quote an entire tweet from a person in the public eye such as a reporter, pro athlete or a politician? Tweets are designed to be quite short, you’re allowed a maximum of 280 characters but most are much shorter. It’s difficult to determine what might be fair use with such a small amount of characters.
I’m not much of of Twitter user, but isn’t the whole thing pretty much designed for sharing?
It is and I retweet often on the Twitter app. I just didn’t know if the mods would consider it a copyright violation if I copied and paste an entire tweet to an SDMB thread.
I’ve done it regularly. It never even crossed my mind that it could be a copyright violation. I think Fair Use has you covered, but IANAL.
That’s exactly how I see it, news networks will often do it as well as sports networks.
I was going to quite the entire Tulsi Gabbard tweet in that thread in elections since it was quite shocking to me.
I think it’s fine.
I’d think it’d depend on the content. A tweet could very well, for instance, contain an entire poem, and so be just as protected as any other poem.
But a newsworthy statement by a presidential candidate? It’d be tough to discuss it without quoting it.
Maybe not an exact comparison, and not a legal ruling, but here’s a commentary on Haiku and the Fair Use Doctrine.
TL;DR If you’re commenting on it, or using it for comment, it’s probably okay. If you’re claiming it’s yours, it’s not.
Copy it to a message board, sure. Copy it into your book of literary criticism, fine. Copy it into a news article relevant to the tweet, OK. Copy it into your novel as an epigraph, no. That last would potentially be infringement.
Whether your use is a commercial interest comes into play, as does whether you are commenting on or criticizing the tweet. It’s also possible that the tweet isn’t original enough to merit copyright protection.
I clicked on this thinking it would be a legal ruling in haiku format. Sorely disappointed.