Think twice before embedding a tweet

If you thought you can easily embed any tweet without anyone’s permission, you need to think again as a new rule passed rules embedding a tweet as copyright infringement.

Nowadays, it is common for blogs and news sites to embed content by third parties whether it is any video or tweet. Few days ago, Google removed the ‘View Image’ button in order to protect copyright laws. Now, a New York district court ruled that embedding a tweet on a webpage can violate copyright laws.

The issue started when numerous renowned websites including Time, Yahoo, Vox Media and others published stories that embedded tweet containing an image of NFL star Tom Brady. The tweet was posted by another party but the photographer, Justin Goldman, who captured it, accused the sites of copyright infringement for embedding it. The court’s judge approved stating that their actions ‘violated plaintiff’s exclusive display right’, reported Engadget.

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“The Court agrees with plaintiff. The plain language of the Copyright Act, the legislative history undergirding its enactment, and subsequent Supreme Court jurisprudence provide no basis for a rule that allows the physical location or possession of an image to determine who may or may not have ‘displayed’ a work within the meaning of the Copyright Act,” wrote Judge Katherine Forrest.

The result of the case was granted in favor of Goldman. “[When the] defendants caused the embedded tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff's exclusive display right. The fact that the image was hosted on a server owned and operated by an unrelated third party (Twitter) does not shield them from this result,” ruled Judge Forrest.

Copyright holders such as Getty Images supported Goldman and were satisfied with the verdict. However, The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) believes that this verdict will put millions of regular internet users at risk.

EFF wrote, “Rejecting years of settled precedent, a federal court in New York has ruled that you could infringe copyright simply by embedding a tweet in a web page. Even worse, the logic of the ruling applies to all in-line linking, not just embedding tweets. If adopted by other courts, this legally and technically misguided decision would threaten millions of ordinary internet users with infringement liability.”