Are text comments on social media copywrite?

[HJW]

I get users on my site post a screen shot of a public comment on social media often.

Sometimes I get an angry comment by supposedly the person that wrote it that they want it removed and the site is breaching copywrite.

What do you do in situations like this?

 

[Mendalla]

Technically, I suppose it is but you'd have to see the lay of the law where your server is hosted (which is what would probably apply). It may not be in the letter of the law but you'd have to check into precedent as well. Even if the law doesn't specify that online comments are covered by copywrite, a judge could have ruled that they are.

Personally I have stories posted online that I would fuss about but I can't really see me fussing about forum posts (I don't post on non-forum social media much so forum posts are most of my online output).

 

[Mr Lucky]

re Twitter, yes you can own a copyright in a tweet:

Twitter’s Terms of Service state that as a user, “You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. What’s yours is yours — you own your Content (and your incorporated audio, photos and videos are considered part of the Content).”

But you also grant Twitter the right to re-use and to have copied vie retweets. So basically Twitter can copy it, but not some random person on a forum. So this would not cover somebody using that tweet outside of Twitter unless it was considered fair use, e.g. in a news item.

However in order to claim a copyright in your tweet, then content of the tweet must be such that a copyright can exist, e.g. that it is an original creative piece of writing.

Unlikely to go to court unless commercial interests are involved.

 

[Mendalla]

However in order to claim a copyright in your tweet, then content of the tweet must be such that a copyright can exist, e.g. that it is an original creative piece of writing.

This would be key. I get a lot of retweets, tweets of videos, and such in my feed on Twitter. Even many of the "original" ones are often hardly worth copyrighting or not copyrightable since their "originality" is dubious (old jokes and that sort of thing).