Who Owns Your Tweets?
Many websites with user-generated content use an implied terms of service contract which grants ownership of user’s content to the website owners. Twitter’s terms of service is different in that it doesn’t provide Twitter ownership over your content, but provides Twitter with a “worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense).” So, it gives Twitter the right to use and distribute your tweets free of charge and allows them the right to provide that same license to third parties. Twitter requires the right to sub-license your content in order to legally provide the content to third parties through their API.
What does this mean?
This means that you are free to not only repurpose your tweets but also provides you the ability to license them to other parties since Twitter’s license for your content is not exclusive. Twitter retains
How long does this license last?
Twitter’s terms of service don’t provide a duration to the license. In most jurisdictions, this means that the license and any sub-licenses can be revoked at any time. A way to revoke this license would be to send Twitter a letter saying that you would like to terminate your account and revoke their license to your content.
Technically, this would terminate their license to use your content and they would likely eventually remove your content from their systems, but what about third party developers? There is no system in place to notify third parties of revocation of your license. Your content would persist outside of Twitter’s domain.
Why should I care?
Intellectual property law is important. There are many works of art which do not have a clear owner and cannot be used as a result of this. While you may not consider your tweets important today, someone in the future could think they are. Without an explicit license to use your tweets, your intention for licensing your content cannot be inferred and thus your content could not legally be used.
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