First, a disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and don’t pretend to play one on this blog, or in any other venue of commentary.

With that out of the way … what if retweets are an infringement of US copyright law?

That fascinating prospect was raised by attorney Glenn Manishin (@GlennM) during the “Public Policy & Law” panel discussion at last week’s 140 Conference in Los Angeles.

The argument that Glenn laid out for the potential illegality of the retweet went something like this:

1) In its official terms of service, Twitter says users own and “retain rights” to their content. (Users also grant Twitter royalty-free rights to distribute that content)

2) If users own their content, then that content–as long as it’s an original expression and not simply a fact or idea–can be copyrighted.

3) A retweet is often a verbatim reproduction, or close to 100% in “amount and substantiality” of the original work, meaning it may not fall within the acceptable boundaries of the “fair use” doctrine.

Result = retweets of original works are copyright violations?

I grabbed Glenn at the end of the 140 Conference for a quick video interview, and asked him to explain his  line of reasoning in further detail.

(RSS readers: You may need to click through to the original blog post to see the embedded video below).

Twitter is set to incorporate the retweet into its standard functionality. Any chance the company should take one last pause and rethink that decision?

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