Microblogging service Twitter has a zero tolerance policy for joke thieves, it has recently been discovered that Twitter will treat a DMCA complaint about a stolen joke in the same way that it treats other copyright infringement requests. Once it’s established that the joke really was stolen that particular tweet will be withheld to comply to a report from the “copyright holder,” that’s what the author of the joke is going to be called.
Joke theft is actually pretty common on Twitter and it’s one of the tactics used by people who create spambots and parody accounts to generate a strong following, which can then be used to send traffic to dubious websites.
It’s possible to file a DMCA complaint with Twitter regarding a stolen joke as freelance writer Olga Lexell did when a joke she came up with and tweeted was copied by various accounts. She explained to Twitter in the report that since she makes her living writing jokes they were her intellectual property and the users in question didn’t have the authority to post them without her permission.
The issue here isn’t that the joke was shared, it’s that it was copied. If the accounts had simply retweeted her tweet which would have given Lexell due credit Twitter wouldn’t have withheld those tweets, but instead they straight up stole her work.
According to Lexell the requests are complied with “within a few days” without having to send any follow-up questions to Twitter.
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