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Comment by retube | Hacker News Reader

Legal definitions of "public domain" aside, if you're putting something onto twitter you presumably want it to be shared. Isn't that the point of twitter? If you do retain the copyright, does this mean that people have to pay for retweeting?

This image only became famous but virtue of the fact that it went viral on twitter and the wider web. If she'd not tweeted it - and as someone with no press contacts - had attempted to sell it directly to media organisations I'm betting she wouldn't have had much success.

I think it's pretty hypocritical to try and leverage free services like twitter for self-promotion and personal brand-building then completely back-track on that ideology and claim some kind of restriction on a particular post cos it suddenly has been delivered to a wider audience and may suddenly have value.

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Putting an image onto Twitter or other such services is clearly putting the image for distribution, but under the common terms of that service; you're saying the image is available to see as you posted it.

The issue here is separate, for-profit redistribution in other media, which definitely requires prior consent from the originator.

Sure. Selling it for cash I can understand the argument against that. But has anyone done that? And why would anyone pay given that it's available anyway?

So you can make the argument that publishing the image forms part of a publisher's content proposition from which they benefit (more viewers, more magazine sales or whatever). But you can make the same argument for twitter itself: twitter's value and the wealth of it's owners is derived exclusively from content it's users post. So can a user claim compensation from twitter for the value it has derived from their posts?

The same argument applies to say StackOverflow. I've spent countless hours answering questions and helping people out. SO sell ads against this content, and my content drives search engine click-throughs. Do I have a claim against SO?

Sorry, but you're wrong.

> But has anyone done that?

Good examples of paid-for TwitPic photos include pictures in the wake of the Haiti earthquake, or the pictures taken of the Boeing which emergency-landed in the Hudson.

> Whey would they pay, given that it's available anyway?

Because they have to—the user only relinquished part of her rights on the picture, namely distribution on the Twitter/TwitPic medium, not her entire rights. If you think that were the TOS to change, the users would still upload pictures, you're so very wrong—see the TwitPic debacle recently and how MobyPicture gained a few k users because they state in their TOS that they can't sell their users' pictures without prior agreement.

You seem to think that your analogy is good, but I don't think it is. Were a magazine to publish SO answers in a Q&A section in a paid magazine, I think SO would be subject to licensing fees. In that case, the relationship between SO and you is governed by their TOS. Check them out, you'll have your answer.

I'm not trying to make an argument that fits within or agrees with current legislation. I am making a purely logical argument - I'm sure for example there's stuff in twitters ToS that give them rights over whatever you post so that you couldn't claim compensations from them, and ditto SO.

> I'm sure for example there's stuff in twitters ToS that give them rights over whatever you post so that you couldn't claim compensations from them, and ditto SO.

Gives them. If you're posting pictures on Twitter or putting comments on SO, you can hardly fault them for displaying those.

But when AP starts selling your twitter pictures or SO comments on its feed, it's a whole different bucket of filth, and a very, very different situation.

We're discussing the second case here, not "I put a comment on news.yc and news.yc displays it".

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