Twitter Gets Serious About Plagiarism; Deletes Stolen Jokes

Micro blogging site, Twitter has started deleting copyright materials and is cracking down on users who steal any material created by the original user. Twitter will now hide and delete those tweets that have been stolen from the original user, according to reports.

The company is using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to justify its initiative to delete jokes, which are reported as stolen, reports Digital Trends. Twitter has withheld several tweets that had stolen a joke that was originally written by a freelance writer based in Los Angeles (LA), named Olga Lexell, reports NDTV Gadgets.

Lexell confirmed through a tweet that she had filed a request to the micro blogging site to have the tweets removed. “I simply explained to Twitter that as a freelance writer I make my living writing jokes (and I use some of my tweets to test out jokes in my other writing),” a report on Verge quoted freelance writer Olga Lexell, as saying. Lexell explained that the jokes are her intellectual property and the users did not have her permission to report them without giving her any credit. She also told the publication that she had filed similar requests for other jokes written by her and the personnel at Twitter removed the other tweets within few days without asking her any more questions.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Twitter provides a system for its users where they can report instances of copyright infringement, reports Yahoo News. Tweeters can report about their stolen material and submit a claim using a dedicated online form. Once the users fill this form, Twitter staffers will go through the claims and decide on the one, which appears valid and once the staffers decide to follow the request, they remove or delete the tweet. As per the company’s policy, the offending users then get ten days to file a counter notice.

(For feedback/comments, mail the writer at pragyan.ibtimes@gmail.com)