Twitter Removes Plagiarised Jokes

Twitter has removed plagiarised jokes on copyrights grounds.

16:37 28 July 2015

Some people retell humorous jokes on Twitter that aren’t theirs. To protect other people’s work, Twitter has removed plagiarised jokes on copyrights grounds.

 

The joke that pushed Twitter to make a move went like this:  "Saw someone spill their high end juice cleanse all over the sidewalk and now I know god is on my side.” The joke was written by Olga Lexell, a freelance writer in Los Angeles. Lexell tweeted the joke in July and the joke was copied and pasted by other accounts with no accreditation.

 

Duplicate tweets have since been hidden by Twitter – replaced with the message "This tweet has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder.”

 

Olga Levell later tweeted an image, which read "I simply explained to Twitter that as a freelance writer I make my living writing jokes (and I use some of my tweets to test out jokes in my other writing). I then explained that as such, the jokes are my intellectual property, and that the users in question did not have my permission to repost them without giving me credit."