Twitter Inc (TWTR)

[MissionIR]

Court Rules that Tweet Embeds Could Infringe Copyright, as Twitter Seeks to Simplify its Offerings

http://ibn.fm/Fg0i8

So this could be a problem - a New York district court has ruled that embedding a tweet on a webpage could violate copyright.

The case relates to an action filed by photographer Justin Goldman who, back in 2016, posted an image he’d taken to his Snapchat story of NFL player Tom Brady walking with Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge. At the time, The Celtics were trying to woo free agent Kevin Durant, so naturally, the image was of significant interest - and as such, it was subsequently screenshotted and shared via various social platforms, including Twitter.

Once the image was on Twitter, those tweets were then embedded in several related news stories, including content published by Breitbart, Yahoo, and Vox Media. Seeing his image being used without permission or payment, Goldman sued these outlets for breach of copyright, raising another case of questionable fair use, and potentially setting a new legal precedent.

There are various areas of legal interpretation in the case - with the publications embedding a tweet, as opposed to hosting the image themselves, does that exempt them from usage regulations? Did Goldman’s Snapchat post effectively put the image in the public domain? Would this content qualify under existing ‘fair use’ standards for issues of public interest?

In this case, the judge ruled in favor of Goldman, which could have significant implications for content embeds moving forward, if it's upheld (the decision can, and likely will, be appealed).

This comes at the same time as Twitter outlines its plans to simplify and improve its products – specifically its ad offerings – in order to make the platform easier to use and encourage further adoption.

At the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference this week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that the platform is still too difficult for users to get a full grasp of.

"One-third of the two million new people who come every day come with expectations of what [Twitter] should be, then get disappointed when they can't find what they want. It's a lot of work right now."

To counter this, Twitter’s looking to improve its algorithm and data matching to provide more personalized on-platform experiences, while they’re also, according to CNBC, “working on making it easier for users to express themselves much faster and with something other than text posts.”

Click the link for complete article.