Such was the argument that Twitter made when the startup donated its archives to the Library of Congress. Tweets are important. They should be preserved, archived and accessible to scholars.

But Twitter's recent announcement that it was no longer granting whitelisting requests and that it would no longer allow redistribution of content will have huge consequences on scholars' ability to conduct their research, as they will no longer have the ability to collect or export datasets for analysis.

That's the news that 140kit just had to break to its users. 140kit is an extension of the Web Ecology Project, a project that grew out of work at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and one of the very first research efforts into the cultural and political influence as expressed via Twitter. The group's research into Twitter's role in the 2009 elections in Iran was, in fact, one of the very first looks into how Twitter may both shape and reflect social and political upheaval.

140kit offered its Twitter datasets to other scholars for their own research. By no means a full or complete scraping of Twitter data, this information that the project had collected was still made available for download (for free) to researchers. But no longer.

As part of the new Twitter terms of service, 140kit like other organizations can no longer offer exports of Twitter data for any purposes - whether that's for profit or non-profit, whether that's for developers or scholars. You could be writing the next killer app. Or you could be working on the final chapter of your PhD dissertation. (And let me interject right here and say that having your access to research data shut down as a PhD student is beyond devastating.) It doesn't matter. Exporting Tweets now violates the TOS.

Shutting Off Researchers' Access to Data

These changes to Twitter's TOS mean that 140kit, as a service, can no longer provide its datasets wholesale, even for academic purposes. "For many of our users," the group says, "this effectively shuts them out of the ability to research the platform."

140kit has come to an agreement with Twitter, which according to Managing Director of the Web Ecology Project Devin Gaffney, means that some data will still be accessible to scholars. But not all the data. Rather than giving scholars the ability to download a particular dataset, 140kit will be able to offer researchers access to 140kit's analytics. That's not the same as having complete access, but as an academic group, it does sound as though 140kit will be as amenable as possible to scholars' needs and be willing to consider what sorts of analyses people need in order to complete their projects.

Nonetheless, Twitter's changing Terms of Service, without exception to scholars, creates an obstacle to research. "This decision is almost certainly going to shut some researchers out," says Gaffney. "Its a shame because Twitter's clearly thinking about money and operational stability, which are necessary, but they aren't considering the myriad number of PhD students that basically just lost their work, or the researchers that were close to saying something meaningful and now have no way to do it."

Gaffney says he sees a "rocky future" ahead for scholarship based on Twitter and says he hopes that the agreement he's made with Twitter "will last enough time for people to actually continue doing work until whatever comes next."

Furthermore, even though parents can cancel the service at any time, MouseMail still retains rights to users' content.

Terms of Service

These rights are part of the 5,500-word Terms of Service that parents agree to when they sign up for a MouseMail account. Clause 17 states:

"With respect to any Content or User Content that You upload to the Service or transmit through the Service, You hereby grant Safe Communications, Inc. a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publically perform, publicly display, and distribute that Content and User Content, the subject of the Content and other data. This license specifically survives termination of your account and is subject to our Privacy Policy."

Law Enforcement Notification

School Safety Partners cautions parents about these monitoring services, and not just for these privacy matters. While many parents opt to use monitoring software in order to have an early notification system, if you will, for online dangers, School Safety Partners notes that this doesn't mean that problems it finds will get to be resolved by parents. MouseMail reserves the right to turn over any personal information or messages to law enforcement agencies without first notifying parents or children.

These clauses are typical in the industry, according to School Safety Partners, which has examined the Terms of Service and privacy policies of dozens of similar software companies. And as is standard TOS language, they almost all reserve the right to change any of their terms or policies at any time without notice.

Monitoring children's online activities is complex and overwhelming - particularly when you consider the volume of messages that children send. But School Safety Partners encourages parents to think carefully about monitoring services and to ask themselves questions about privacy, storage and notification. Does the service provider acquire all rights to publish my family's private messages? Will my family's private information be accessible for investigations centered around other families?

And finally, should we all start paying a lot closer attention when we click "I agree" to Terms of Service?

Photo by Alan Cheaver

Well, rest easy. A U.S. District Court has decided that the AFP (and anyone else for that matter) does not have open rights to content you post to Twitter or photos to you post to Twitpic.

AFP argued that it did not need to pay up, as it had re-use rights to the photos because of Twitter's Terms of Service. According to the AFP lawyers, "this broad re-use is evidenced every day when Twitter/TwitPic posts are copied, reprinted, quoted, and republished by third parties."

U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley disagreed, and in his decision says that "the provision that Twitter 'encourage[s] and permit[s] broad re-use of Content' does not clearly confer a right on other users to re-use copyrighted postings."

Morel's copyright claim can now move forward (and content creators can be a little less panicky about what they've agreed to with Twitter's ToS).

EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann says, ""Some changes to terms of service are good for consumers, and some are bad...but Internet users are increasingly trusting websites with everything from their photos to their 'friends lists' to their calendar -- and sometimes even their medical information. TOSBack will help consumers flag changes in the websites they use every day and trust with their personal information".

We applaud the Electronic Frontier Foundation for providing a tool to keep us aware of these changes. We will certainly give this new product a try and will report on any TOS policy changes that we think are important for you to know about.

At this time, we have only heard from a handful users about their banning, but the general feeling among this group of outcasts is that StumbleUpon had actively hunted them down.

Although none of the banned users have received any sort of communication from StumbleUpon, some believe that they may have been kicked off for occasionally stumbling sites that had financial value. While that may be a big no-no on Digg, who prohibits such a thing in their Terms of Service (TOS), on StumbleUpon, it's much more of a grey area.

The reason why it's not as cut-and-dry as on Digg is because StumbleUpon features a ton of categories - to see what we mean, Stumble something today and check out that drop-down box of theirs. There, you'll find categories that very much fit in the "financial value" niche including options like Bargains/Coupons, Business, Daytrading, Entrepreneurship, Financial Planning, Investing, Marketing, and others. Clearly, StumbleUpon is OK with many more categories of sites than Digg.

In addition, the only reason StumbleUpon would terminate accounts according to their TOS is if the account was created with the primary intention to promote a product or service are considered "SPAM." In other words, the occasional accidental spammy stumble shouldn't get you kicked out.

That sentence goes on to say that those spam accounts are subject to termination unless expressly authorized in advance in writing by StumbleUpon. What? It's OK to use StumbleUpon for spamming purposes if you get permission first? That seems odd.

Banned Behind The Firewall

Others who have been recently banned from the site include Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing, who believes that he may have been banned because he stumbled behind a firewall at work. Everyone in his office showed up as the same IP address, making StumbleUpon question whether or not they were operating some sort of black-hat stumbling farm. Unfortunately, Lurie never heard back either thanks to SU's policy of not responding to their users (unless you have the clout of someone like the high-profile Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, that is).

Starting To Clean House?

Obviously, we don't have enough information just yet to know for sure if StumbleUpon is starting to clean house. These recent complaints brought to our attention could either be business as usual at StumbleUpon or could be indicative of a new trend.

Have you been banned or know somehow who has been banned from SU? Let us know in the comments.

Is it ok for service providers to require that they be exempt from the copyright norm of no re-use without explicit permission? We don't think it is.

Google's Response

Google responded today by removing the section in question from the Chrome Terms of Service (see below), but they defended its general applicability as part of the company's Universal Terms of Service. They claimed that they have to have a license like this in order to deliver content to consumers as part of the basic functioning of services.

Engineer Sam Greenfield isn't buying it, writing that Google includes permission to use content to promote services and demands "perpetual" and "irrevocable" permission for reuse. Both details don't jive with the companies current explanation of its actions.

It seems that overprotective lawyers are being overprotective lawyers here and a very different solution is needed. It's just disingenuous to claim that rights to reuse are being claimed just in order to perform basic delivery.

The Limitations of Copyright

Why can't Google ask permission of the people whose content they want to reuse for promotional purposes?

As is the case with people interested in reusing the content of others anywhere, it may be that asking for explicit permission just takes too long. That's one of the problems created by copyright law in the US, and increasingly around the world. Many people are open to having their content reused, but it happens legitimately far less than it might because its just too hard to get a hold of people, communicate with them about it, etc.

For a service provider to take its ball home and refuse to play unless users accept that "those copyright laws don't apply to us" is taking the easy way out. It also denies control over content to the people and the situations where reuse may not be appropriate. Passwords, financial information and browsing history were the examples that came up in regards to Chrome - but what about other "work" like user photos and videos? In some circumstances users would be happy to let a service provider reuse these things, in others they wouldn't.

YouTube's Terms of Use use very similar language and have faced similar questions from users. We covered these same types of issues again when Google Docs was released. This is an ongoing issue.

The Flickr Solution: Creative Commons

If you've ever visited the front page of Yahoo's photo sharing service Flickr, you've seen that the company highlights a different user photo each day. Do they email those users and request permission? No, they just select from photos that have already been given a Creative Commons license by the users that uploaded them.

Flickr hasn't been free from controversies of its own regarding copyright. API level access to non CC photos, for example, has rankled some peoples' sensetivities. The way that Flickr handles reuse of photos for promotion on the front page is great, though.

Creative Commons licenses are built on top of existing copyright law and communicate the conditions for future re-use of content. Our favorite CC license, the attribution license, says to anyone interested that they can reuse an item of content so long as attribution is given to the original creator. Other CC licenses grant permission to reuse content only in non-commercial settings, or so long as the content isn't altered. There are a variety of conditions that can be communicated ahead of time, making reuse quick and easy, with no explicit communication required.

How About Some User Education?

Flickr could do a better job of educating users about the CC licensing options they have when they publish their photos, but at least they make it relatively easy to do. Ought not all the services we use online make it easy for us to apply licenses beyond the simplest copyright by default to our content? We can't think of any better way for all parties to win.

Imagine an in-browser way to apply more flexible licenses to any content being published. That would make far more content available for reuse by everyone from individuals to giant companies like Google, but it would also keep control over content in the hands of creators.

Times Are Changing, Terms Need to Change With Them

It's a changing world we live in. The line between content creators and content consumers is far, far more blurry than it's been in recent history and things don't look like they're going to change back. Online service providers recognize that, but they aren't engaging with the situation in a way that suits the times and empowers the users legally like their tools are technologically.

CreativeCommons is just one option - the point is that the Terms under which we use these services online need a new paradigm. None of these services is irreplaceable and we don't need to grovel thankfully at whatever conditions are imposed on us as users.

It's time for a new Terms of Service regime that recognizes the way we're using these tools, facilitates collaboration and respects user rights. Wiggling a blank check for vendors into an otherwise impenetrable wall of copyright-by-default isn't really good for anyone.

Title image: Workbench Melee, CC by Flickr user Flattop341