[cc-community] Identi.ca - my new Creative-Commons-enabled microblogging service
Greg Grossmeier
greg.grossmeier at gmail.com
Mon Jul 7 15:13:49 EDT 2008
On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Matthew J. Agnello
<matt.agnello at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, BY does reflect the practical outcome of what microblogging
> services tend to do: people release their 140 character blurbs to the
> ether, and whoever wants to read it reads it. And if there were some
> creative project that brought together a bunch of posts from different
> Twitter users, I'm sure very few Les Twitterables would send a Cease
> and Desist letter. So you could certainly argue that BY would be the
> best license for microblogging. However, something in me still feels
> that forcing a BY license on a user would be wrong. I would rather see
> someone gladly not enforce their copyright than be forced to use a
> specific license.
There is also the issue of whether or not a creation of 140 characters
is in fact restricted under copyright (in US law, of course)[0].
However, one could look at your total postings as an aggregate "work"
and thus that is copyrighted.
My point being: it is murky if 140 character long message ARE
restricted by copyright, so a discussion of "what license is best"
might not even be worth our time.
Best,
Greg
[0] I don't know of a court case where the minimum character limit is
set for a copyrightable work, but general consensus is that overly
short writings (eg: My dog is tired) are not. Otherwise we all would
be infringing on someone else's copyright all the time.
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