When Is "Borrowing" a Tweet Wrong? Asking for a Friend

I have a friend who got caught "stealing" another person's tweet. It was funny tweet. Within hours it got thousands of retweets and likes. He was rather proud of that fact, and announced it on his Facebook page.  In fact, more than a week later, he is still getting people tagging him on Facebook celebrating the tens of thousands of likes and retweets.

 

The thing is, the next day, the originator of the tweet got very annoyed. So much so, that she somehow got a national periodical to publish an online article on my friend and his habit of "stealing" other peoples tweets. Her Twitter followers were incensed. They were using words like plagiarism. One went so far as to start an online shaming campaign, and even published a link to my friend's law firm's contact page.

Now my goal here is to shame anyone. I'm not mentioning any names. But I do have serious question. What is the online etiquette? Where is the line?

Look, we have all "stolen," or if you like him more innocuous word "borrowed," online content. I have seen photos and memes that I thought were funny, downloaded them, and posted them on my online accounts. This is how memes links to videos and funny pictures "go viral." In fact going viral, which seems to be the modern day equivalent of Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, is a coveted occurrence. Quite frankly, when I "borrow content" I figure all of my friends know I'm just not clever enough to come up with my own Joe Biden memes.

Plus there's that whole tradition of hearing a joke or funny line, finding it amusing, and repeating it to others. My grandfather did it all the time. Surely those of you who follow my Facebook account did not think that my comment that Mike Trout's winning of the MVP seemed fishy was original, did you? (Thank you Joe Corrado for your online joke. My repeating it was meant as a tribute to your wit, please don't sue me.)

And Twitter is a fairly unique platform. You're limited to 140 characters. It forces you to either be terse, witty or sarcastic. It takes a lot of thought to come up with something funny to write in just 140 characters. (It's a perfect platform for Haikus, by the way.) Some people who come up with the pithy jokes are understandably possessive of their intellectual property.

In this case my friend uses his Twitter account to brand his law firm. The person he borrowed the tweet from was also a lawyer. She also uses her Twitter account to brand her law firm. It is understandable that she could get annoyed that her work was picked up and used by somebody else, who is now getting the credit for being funny.  It'slike a stand-up comic stealing another comic's lines.

Sure, Twitter has a retweet button and a retweet with quote option.  You could do that if you wanted to be courteous and give credit to the originator. But people steal funny tweets all the time.

So where is the line? And when does the simple repeating of somebody else's joke turn into full-blown plagiarism?

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.