Final Research Paper Proposal

Twitter has become one of the next biggest fads to hit the multimedia world. It’s a free social-networking site where people can read and send messages. It works much like sending a mass text message, by using the Twitter website or by using applications accessible on cell phones. Twitter is basically based on the question, “What are you doing now?” In 140 characters or less people are able to answer this question, with a “tweet”, allowing people that they know or do not know, known as “followers”, to read the answer. This newest craze is around three years old and currently has about six million users. Anyone can use Twitter, from celebrities, professional athletes, journalists, to doctors, professors, and students. Big and small businesses alike use Twitter to announce their company’s latest news and for their customers to easily interact with them. It is an efficient and effective communication tool used to send any kind of information.

There are a variety of reasons why people use Twitter, and as Twitter becomes more and more popular the idea of multimedia ownership becomes a relevant question to address. Is a “tweet” copyrighted? Some feel that because a “tweet” can only be 140 characters long that there can be an exception to it not being copyrighted. If someone likes what your status says should they ask your permission first to use it? Sites like www.longestpoemintheworld.com select anonymous people’s statuses to aggregate a poem that rhymes. Who, if anyone, has given this site permission to select these statuses? This site illustrates various anonymous people’s pieces of work coming together to form a larger collaborative piece of art. My question here is who takes credit for this poem, the website itself, Twitter.com, or each individual person?

Not only are people creating websites and using statuses to form such pieces of work like poems, writers and novelists have actually begun releasing their full novels via “tweets”. On July 14, 2009 Matt Stewart announced he was going to release his entire novel, “The French Revolution”, entirely via tweets. This means 140 characters of his novel at a time. Stewart is certainly not the only writer to start doing this, various other authors have been attempting the same idea. Will releasing a novel via Twitter have the same copyrights as releasing a published novel in stores?

Along with novels being released via Twitter, there was recently a book published and released in bookstores called “Twitter Wit”. It was edited by Nick Douglas, who compiled together the “wittiest” tweets he received. Contributors of this book received no royalties, just a free copy of book. In this case who gets credit for this book? How is it right for the editor and HarperCollins to make a profit off of others’ “tweets”?

With Twitter becoming more widespread on a daily basis there are various questions to start considering regarding multimedia ownership. Although “tweets” are only 140 characters long, they are still a person’s thoughts, ideas, and words and ultimately belong to that person. Through my research project I would like to address the idea of who do these individual “tweets” actually belong to and in the end who will receive credit for what.

I will use the following websites:

Crumb, Michael. "Twitter Opens a Door to Iowa Operating Room - ABC News." ABCNews.com - Breaking news, politics, online news, world news, feature stories, celebrity interviews and more - ABC News. 1 Sep. 2009. 14 Sep. 2009 http://i.abcnews.com/US/wireStory?id=8465346.

Grigar, Dene. "The 24 Hr. Micro-Elit Porject." The 24 Hr. Micro-Elit Porject. 14 Sep. 2009 .

Publetariat. "Interview With Doyce Testerman - Twitter As A New Medium In Authorship, Pt. 3 www.publetariat.com." www.publetariat.com . 14 Sep. 2009 http://www.publetariat.com/write/interview-doyce-testerman-twitter-new-medium-authorship-pt-3.

Stewart, Matt . "Matt Stewart: Why I'm Releasing My Novel on Twitter." Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. 14 Sep. 2009 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-stewart/why-im-releasing-my-novel_b_231385.html.

Tate, Ryan. "You Wrote My Twitter Book, Now Promote It! - Twitterwit - Gawker." Gawker — Gossip from Manhattan and the Beltway to Hollywood and the Valley. 14 Sep. 2009 http://gawker.com/5345292/you-wrote-my-twitter-book-now-promote-it.

The Longest Poem in the World." The Longest Poem in the World. 14 Sep. 2009 http://www.longestpoemintheworld.com/what-is-this/.

"Twitter." Twitter. 14 Sep. 2009 http://twitter.com/.

"West Virginia University on Twitter Home West Virginia University." West Virginia University on Twitter Home West Virginia University. 14 Sep. 2009 http://twitter.wvu.edu/.