Library of Congress Will Have All of Your Tweets

[razorsharp]

<p>

The Library of Congress and Twitter have signed an agreement that will see an archive of every public Tweet ever sent handed over to the library’s repository of historical documents.</p>

<p>“We have an agreement with Twitter where they have a bunch of servers with their historic archive of tweets, everything that was sent out and declared to be public,” said Bill Lefurgy, the digital initiatives program manager at the library’s national digital information infrastructure and preservation program. “The archives don’t contain tweets that users have protected, but everything else — billions and billions of tweets — are there.”

</p>

<p>[Library</a> of Congress to receive entire Twitter archive - FederalNewsRadio.com](<a href=“Library of Congress to receive entire Twitter archive”>Library of Congress to receive entire Twitter archive)</p>

<p>Twitter never asked my permission to give the government my Tweets. Pretty creepy, if you ask me.</p>

[ThisCouldBeHeavn]

<p>

Twitter never asked my permission to give the government my Tweets.

</p>

<p>Sure they did. If you decided to make your tweets visible to everyone then obviously you’ve given permission for the government to have them.</p>

[Sean518x]

<p>Old news</p>

<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC App</p>

[razorsharp]

<p>

If you decided to make your tweets visible to everyone

</p>

<p>Visible to others who follow me when I send a tweet and while I have my account open is much different than owned by the government and preserved forever.</p>

[MaineLonghorn]

<p>Everything you post on CC will be around forever, too. It’s surprising how many people don’t think of that until they’ve posted their life story on here. Then it’s too late.</p>

[anon94785555]

<p>This data will be fascinating to future sociologists, but a pain to go through.</p>

[AM17]

<p>From Twitter’s Terms of Services: “You understand that through your use of the Services you consent to the collection and use (as set forth in the Privacy Policy) of this information, including the transfer of this information to the United States and/or other countries for storage, processing and use by Twitter.”</p>

[GladGradDad]

<p>Here’s another thread by Dave Berry on the subject earlier - </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1253534-live-infamy-perpetuity.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1253534-live-infamy-perpetuity.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[razorsharp]

<p>

Everything you post on CC will be around forever, too.

</p>

<p>Not exactly. I remember the very popular and informative thread on the Duke lacrosse fiasco. One of the mods deleted it accidently but was unable to retrieve it. Unless CC sells out to the federal government before the business is closed, CC can delete it all.</p>

[romanigypsyeyes]

<p>Who cares? I mean really. What are they going to do with the knowledge? </p>

<p>Personally, as an anthropology student and a history nerd, I wish ancient civilizations would have had twitter. Think of how interesting it would be! </p>

<p>Related: <a href=“Dropout - Independent, ad-free, uncensored comedy | Dropout”>Dropout - Independent, ad-free, uncensored comedy | Dropout;

[notrichenough]

<p>

Unless CC sells out to the federal government before the business is closed, CC can delete it all.

Google indexes all of the threads here, which means they have it cached.</p>

<p>It also means anybody can capture all of the posts here at any time.Such as the Internet WayBack Machine, which has crawled the forums 659 times:</p>

<p>[Internet</a> Archive Wayback Machine](<a href=“http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://talk.collegeconfidential.com]Internet”>Wayback Machine)</p>

[razorsharp]

<p>I remember using the wayback machine when the Duke thread was deleted but it didn’t work for me. Is there a way to find the Duke lacrosse thread in there? The thread started sometime in the spring of 2006 shortly after the allegations were made.</p>

[notrichenough]

<p>

Is there a way to find the Duke lacrosse thread in there?

It would have to have existed when they snapshot the forums.</p>

[ThisCouldBeHeavn]

<p>

Visible to others who follow me when I send a tweet and while I have my account open is much different than owned by the government and preserved forever.

</p>

<p>Well even just the snippet you posted says that protected tweets aren’t included. But unprotected tweets are available to everyone, not just the Government.</p>

<p>There are a lot of ways to gather a large quantity of unprotected twitter data. [Here’s</a> one](<a href=“http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/twitteR/twitteR.pdf]Here’s”>http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/twitteR/twitteR.pdf).</p>

[lake42ks]

<p>Great idea. Record whatever we say or do so a complete analysis of us can be done in the future (days, weeks or years later). No more essays for college applicants.</p>

[razorsharp]

<p>Have you ever wondered why CC will not let you copy an entire article or book into a thread? Only a portion can be quoted. The reason is copyright and ownership of copyright. If someone starts a thread and copies the entire text of a magazine article into the thread and then 10000 people go to that link rather than buying the magazine, CC will have been exposed to a lawsuit for copyright violation. The article’s author will say that CC’s use of the article exceeded the “fair use” exception of copyright and stole the author’s property. </p>

<p>Every post on this website and every tweet is protected by copyright law and is owned by the author. Regardless of any terms of service, ownership of the tweet remains with the person who posted the tweet. By transferring all of the tweets of people in their entirety, Twitter has taken the author’s property without their permission and given it to a government entity. If I wrote a book and posted it on my website and my local library took the digital image of that book and put it in its book collection, it would be taking my property without permission. The fact that twitter has taken my tweets and given them to the Library of Congress is no different.</p>

[notrichenough]

<p>

If I wrote a book and posted it on my website and my local library took the digital image of that book and put it in its book collection, it would be taking my property without permission. The fact that twitter has taken my tweets and given them to the Library of Congress is no different.

</p>

<p>It is not the same at all.</p>

<p>From the Terms of Service on twitter.com:</p>

<p>

Your Rights</p>

<p>You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

</p>

<p>If you tweeted your entire book 140 characters at a time, Twitter would have the right to do whatever they want with it. You still retain rights, but now Twitter has rights too.</p>

[GlobalNomad]

<p>No tweets here. One less thing. Just sayin’.</p>

[notrichenough]

<p>

Personally, as an anthropology student and a history nerd, I wish ancient civilizations would have had twitter. Think of how interesting it would be!

I weep at the thought that our civilization may someday be judged by the contents of twitter.</p>