Twitter Is Deleting Tweets With 'Stolen' Jokes

Twitter seems to have had enough of people who steal others' jokes and tweet it as their own. The company seems to be cracking down on this behavior, having flagged and withheld several tweets that 'stole' a joke originally made by LA-based freelance writer Olga Lexell.

This is the first time Twitter has taken such a strong stand over a stolen joke - or content posted in text form, to be more precise. It is withholding these jokes on the grounds of copyright violation, as mentioned in a link overriding them. At this point is not clear if the company is taking action automatically or only when an original copyright holder reports it to them. It also remains to be seen if this is going to be company's policy on all 'stolen jokes' going forward.

Lexell took it to the social network to explain why Twitter complied with her request (via The Verge).

"For everyone asking, 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)," she said.

"I then explained that as such, the jokes are my intellectual property, and that the users in question did not have my permission to report them without giving me credit."

The move also reignites the debate over whether a joke can be copyrighted. While, in theory, a joke can be copyrighted, but given their nature of being inspired from abstract ideas, and possible roots in the past and pretty much anything at all, it becomes incredibly difficult to get a court judge to rule the verdict in your favour.

Furthermore, there seems to be a very thin line over the ownership of content a user posts on social media networks. Twitter, for instance, says that it owns 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."

Facebook says that it is committed to protecting original works of authorship on materials such as "books, music, film and art" but the company notes that copyright generally does not protect "facts and ideas." However, it could protect the "original words or images that express that idea," which is how some could describe a joke.