Federal Court Rules Embedding a Tweet Could Violate Copyright Law
A federal court ruled yesterday in New York that sites, like ClintonFitch.com, could be held liable for copyright law violation for embedding a Tweet or other content. The ruling involved a photographer and several news organizations who embedded a Tweet. The photographer filed a copyright infringement case against the companies for embedding the Tweet and won.
The ruling upends a decade old ruling which protected sites like mine when it came to embedding Tweets. In the case Perfect 10 v. Amazon in 2007, it was ruled that the hosting company was liable for copyright infringements, not the company or individual who embeds or links to it. Thursday’s ruling is in direct contrast to this case and now throws a lot of questions and concerns for anyone, especially site owners.
Details about the case and the rule can be found at the Electronic Frontier Foundation site… and no, I’m not going to embed their Tweet.