Looks like I’m toast.
If you’ve ever embedded a tweet on your blog, that could be a copyright violation, according to a New York federal court ruling. Numerous sites, including Time, Yahoo (which is part of Oath, Engadget’s parent company) and Breitbart published stories with an embedded tweet containing an image of NFL star Tom Brady. The tweet was posted by another party, but the photographer who took the photo accused the news sites of copyright infringement for embedding it. The judge agreed, saying their actions “violated plaintiff’s exclusive display right.”
Open internet advocate group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrotethat that effectively upends ten years of precedent from a 2007 Ninth Circuit ruling called “Perfect 10 v. Amazon.” In that case, the court ruled that the hosting entity is liable for copyrights, not the company or individual who embeds or links it. That’s because anyone links to the content might not know that it’s infringing, and can’t even be certain what the server will provide. You might embed one Facebook image, for instance, and then the user who is hosting it could edit the post and change it.
Here we go!
EFF on Twitter: “Have you ever embedded someone else’s tweet on your website? A judge just said that you could be liable for copyright infringement. https://t.co/Lgw3rTI55O / Twitter”
Have you ever embedded someone else’s tweet on your website? A judge just said that you could be liable for copyright infringement. https://t.co/Lgw3rTI55O
Don’t sue me, EFF!