Good Twitter comedy is impressive because it works within the strict limitation of 140 characters. Making someone laugh by saying so little is no small feat, which is why when you write one, the website uses such highbrow language as “Compose new Tweet.”
The problem is that Twitter is on the Internet—a place where plagiarism runs rampant and people’s original “compositions” are stolen all the time. There are even whole Tumblr pages devoted to the most nefarious offenders. This kind of “calling-them-0ut” retaliation was all victims of plagiarism could do—until now.
Slate reports that Twitter has started taking down plagiarized tweets, replacing the copied text with language stating that the “tweet from @[offender] has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder.” Take that, frauds!
It started with Olga Lexell, a freelance writer in Los Angeles who noticed that a recent joke of hers was tweeted by others who weren’t giving her credit. She then reached out to the site and asked that the plagiarized tweets be taken down. Justice was swift, and the aptly titled account @PlagiarismBad spotted a number of redacted instances of plagiarism.
BREAKING NEWS: Twitter is hiding tweets reported stolen. And it’s referring to the author as a “copyright holder” pic.twitter.com/DkteWMZ7zg
— Plagiarism Is Bad (@PlagiarismBad) July 25, 2015
“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),” Lexell later tweeted. “I then explained that as such, the jokes are my intellectual property, and that the users in question did not have my permission to repost them without giving me credit.”
The fact that tweeting is part of Lexell’s career may have helped her case, but either way, if you think you’ve been ripped off, you can let Twitter know here.
(via Slate)
