Forum posts on Twitter

sodukoman

barmonkey wrote: »

does not look like MSE Andrea is ever going to come back with any answers

They'll have had a chat in MSE Towers and decided there will be minimal flack on this and ignore. Similarly with the Arena flowers ASA ruling (MSE didn't appeal the final ruling). MSE recommended Crown Currency...what happened there?

Teflon MSE?

Tigsteroonie

barmonkey wrote: »

does not look like MSE Andrea is ever going to come back with any answers

MSE Andrea has finally replied in the Grabbit Twitter thread, but not in any of the others AFAIK - wonder why the Grabbit thread got special treatment?

The response is pretty much that as our posts can be found by a Google search and there is nothing to stop a 3rd party finding & quoting them, then MSE aren't contravening any T&C or moral rights by also reproducing our posts on Twitter. Oh, and if we don't like it, we know where the door is.

jamesd

One potential approach that an author can use is an assertion of moral rights under Section 77 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act requiring attribution of the author using the pseudonym specified in the notice for their works when published on Twitter.

The pseudonym can be selected to be different from whatever is normally used, such as simply "anonymous", and can be constrained only to specified publications if desired.

Whether the Twitter portion would be "substantial" enough to trigger the right would depend on the usual rules for being sufficiently substantial. A deal without the link to use the deal probably wouldn't be substantial, but say "65.8% relief for salary sacrifice pension"* may be because it contains the essence of that content.

But MSE wants to use the text to push people here, so they already have an incentive to try not to use sufficient substance not to reveal the essence of a post.

If you wish to consider using this method I strongly recommend contacting MSE saying you are considering doing it and saying what you are considering using as the notice, so that you give MSE a chance to discuss the matter with you.

However, I suggest that you don't do it but instead change your user name here. MSE is undoubtedly happy to accept that, while they may have more practical difficulty complying with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

But that's not something that should be necessary and it's definitely undesirable for anyone having to deal with it on either side of the discussion. It's not hard to check a profile here and see whether there is a request not to tweet. If there is such a request, it's easy enough to tweet some types of content without referring to the post, or to attribute it to any specified pseudonym. It's a low overhead way of trying to keep as many people as possible happy.

jamesd

Is there any prospect at all that MSE might republish on Twitter content containing any material critical of another person or company, political party or other party of any sort?

My concern with this is that it may greatly expand the audience for content that might be considered defamatory and significantly increase the legal risks to the poster because of the broader audience both increasing the readership and making the content more likely to be noticed by someone who may object to it. I expect a good deal more reputation monitoring tools to be running on Twitter than on the MSE forums.

On the forum here it's relatively easy to deal with that: if a complaint is made to the poster they can expeditiously remove the content, add a note, correction or response or act in whatever way seems appropriate. But MSE controls the Twitter content, so the author can't adjust that, potentially leaving the content around when it would otherwise have been removed and increasing the duration of any potential harm to the reputation of those involved.

I think that MSE is likely to have decided not to do this anyway but it's worth asking.