Is there any feasible way of copyrighting my tweets? All my tweets are protected, I don’t have any followers, and are all my youtube links are unlisted.
It’s just in case anybody hacks my account again and gains access to my input.
Alasdair Taylor's Answer
Copyright automatically protects certain classes of creative work.
So, the question is: are Tweets the kind of thing that are protected by copyright?
And the answer is: some are, and some aren’t.
Tweets may be protected as “literary works” providing that they:
- are sufficiently original (in the sense of not merely being copied and being the product of your skill, labour and/or effort); and
- don’t fall foul of the de minimis rule.
If a Tweet is protected by copyright, the author of the Tweet will be the first owner of the copyright in the Tweet.
However, Twitter’s T&Cs provide the company with a generous right to re-purpose your Tweets:
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).
NB I’m not sure what any of this has to do with Twitter account hacking.
