Tweets pepper the shoulders of the information superhighway. Technically, each still belongs to someone, but now, they’re just sitting there, out in the open, unattended, for all to see.
“Use us!” they implore, as traffic flies by.
In real life, we’d probably shy away from scavenging freeway litter, but recycling Tweets, online? Maybe… because it’s easy, clean, safe, and Twitter actually encourages us to do so in their Terms Of Service:
An excerpt from Twitter’s Terms Of Service regarding reuse.
Cool beans. Next, consider another excerpt:
An excerpt from Twitter’s Terms Of Service wherein you grant them a license.
So, we grant Twitter an unrestricted “right to sublicense” our Tweets, and Twitter states that they “encourage and permit the broad re-use” of them. Hmmm…
Does this mean that every Tweet issues forth with legal permission for anyone to do with it whatever they please?