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Twitter Users Posted Full Movies as Elon Musk’s Copyright Enforcement Seems to Be Broken
While Twitter is still online even after Twitter reportedly temporarily closed all of its offices late last week, prompting concerns that the website could permanently go offline, there are some aspects that appear to be either broken or not functioning as they previously had been. Among them are Twitter’s copyright strike/takedown system. According to a report from Forbes, the system appears to be non-functional after a user went viral for uploading and posting the full The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in two-minute clips over the course of a 50-tweet thread.
The thread was apparently gone as of this morning, but there are still some unusual issues. First, Forbes notes that the media — in this case, the video clips — were never actually taken down. When the takedown system was working, users could still see the tweet, but the media was replaced with a message that read “the media cannot be displayed. Forbes notes that the account in question this time appears to have been manually suspended, but it also was still appearing on mobile — complete with the videos being playable.
But it’s not just this one account with this one movie. Others have found threads containing other films, including the 1995 film Hackers, all uploaded in 2-minute clips. As some have noted this can be a huge problem for Twitter, amidst the other issues that the site has been facing in the wake of Elon Musk‘s takeover. In this case, Twitter could be hit with various DMCA claims and legal issues if copyright strikes aren’t handled quickly.
This is what Twitter’s official copyright policy says: “Twitter will respond to reports of alleged copyright infringement, such as allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted image as a profile or header photo, allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted video or image uploaded through our media hosting services, or Tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials,”
This is just the latest issue that has cropped up with Twitter in recent weeks following Musk’s purchase of the site for more than $40 billion. Prior to this, there were changes to the platform’s Verification process as well as several rounds of layoffs. The latest were last week after Musk reportedly gave remaining employees at Twitter the ultimatum to either put in long hours in what he called becoming “extremely hardcore” or resigning and taking a three-month severance package. It’s been reported that approximately 75 percent of employees opted for the severance package, prompting the temporary closure of Twitter’s offices to prevent any potential sabotage.
What do you think about this latest development with Twitter? Let us know in the comment section.
