There’s a saying (well, there will be soon, because I’m about to say it) that the old jokes are still the best.
That’s because they’ve stood the test of time.
Or if they haven’t stood the test, they’ve at least withstood time.
To wit:
A pony goes into a bar and says, in a scratchy voice, “Ixxxd lichchchche uuuuuh glass of puuuuuluuuchchchchchct, please.”
The barman replies, “I didn’t catch that, I’m afraid.”
So the pony clears his throat with a big whinnnnnnnnnnnnny and a hacking [geddit?] cough, and apologises.
“I’m sorry, I’m a little hoarse.”
You’ve surely heard that joke before, probably in a dozen different guises in a dozen different places.
Indeed, you probably can’t remember where you first heard it.
But that’s all changing in the social media era, because the source of jokes can much more easily be found.
In fact, according to a professional joke-writer going by @runolgarun, Twitter is not only a good place for novel quips, it’s a good place to try out those quips for later use elsewhere.
I presume @runolgarun likes people retweeting her jokes, but what she objects to, understandably, is to people who copy-and-paste her jokes and tweet them instead.
So she’s started using Twitter’s “copyright infringement” reports to get cloned (rather than retweeted) jokes taken down:
The Verge has an example, where the original joke was apparently this:
saw someone spill their high end juice cleanse all over the sidewalk and now I know god is on my side
(No, I don’t get why that’s a joke, assuming that jokes are meant to be funny. But then I don’t know what a “high end juice cleanse” is, so perhaps there’s a risque or edgy angle I’ve missed.)
Searching for that joke on Twitter now produces results like this:
It doesn’t seem to have worked out too well for @runolgarun, though, considering that her Twitter account is now locked down so that only her followers can read it.
Whether that’s to stop people stealing her jokes, or because she’s been bombarded with messages from people who say they resent what they see as censorship is not clear.
Certainly, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), part of the 21st century’s protection against piracy and plagiarism, is not widely popular.
But quite why anyone would consider it “censorship” to stop person X from presenting person Y’s material as if it were their own original work is not clear.
Ripping off other people’s stuff, even jokes, is no laughing matter!
Image of horse courtesy of Shutterstock.
Anonymous
One more troll to add to the block list, cheers Paul.
I doubt based on the cause of this I’ll lose anything of value not seeing tweets from that account, and a block will protect my account from the apparent abuse of DCMA if I have ever said anything similar to this entity.
I suspect however their account went private too to prevent people retaliating with DCMA requests to remove most of their tweets as well.
Paul Ducklin
To be fair, the removed tweets weren’t “similar,” they were copied-and-pasted.
herzco
She is a bit heavy handed but most definitely not a troll. She is attempting to educate / maintain a protocol of protecting her intellectual property. Not easy in this day and age, (and likely complicated further bc of sexism too I would guess).
SumGuy
She is obviously a troll. Not much is useful is on twitter any way.
Skoal Kid
Did she really take the time to copyright that material? I doubt it. Just because you post something doesn’t mean it has copyright protection.
Barney Laurance
Actually in most of the world it does. Creative work is generally considered copyright from the moment you write it down, or otherwise create it in any permanent form.
Paul Ducklin
Until about 1988 you had to register copyright in the USA, but then the USA ratified the Berne Convention of 1886 and copyright became automatic, as it is almost everywhere.
So I think you can argue that by posting something you improve your claim to copyright because you establish a point at which you had the content. Of course you also make it easier for people to rip you off, but that’s how the biscuit breaks.
LindaSView
I’m not sure, but I think “@runolgarun” may be the person who felt some late-night TV show host may have used a joke or two from the account. There was a bit of chatter about this July 26-27. Many people do not realize that attribution is required as they believe someone else’s writings on the Internet are open to all. I had a poem copied when I first had my blog up. It was nice that it made the rounds of the net and came to me in an email, but it said the writer was either someone else or anonymous!
That’s just NOT right.