I came late to the news of Twitpic‘s impending (and thankfully partial) closure and even later to an explanation for it. My initial assumption was that the service had failed to turn a profit and become financially insolvent. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This is, in the worst way, all about “intellectual property.” And it significantly and negatively impacts the social media which more and more of us rely on as our “window on the world.”
What is — or rather, what was — Twitpic? Simply put, a service which made it easy for Twitter users to share photos. It reduced the process of uploading a photo to a site, blog or image host and tweeting a link to that image to a single step.
That may not seem like a big deal but it was, especially for amateur journalists covering, or non-journalists caught up in, fast-moving events. In 2009, for example, the first visual coverage of US Airways Flight 1549’s ditching in New York’s Hudson River was a photo tweeted (before the “mainstream media” could get camera crews there) by ferry passenger Janis Krums using Twitpic. I’ve personally used the service in an “amateur journalist” capacity to tweet photos from blogger conferences, Tea Party rallies, political conventions, etc.
Twitpic is gone now. It shot itself in the foot, after which Twitter followed suit to its own foot and to Twitpic’s head, over “intellectual property.” The sequence of events:
In 2009, Twitpic filed an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office seeking trademark protection for its name. There’s never any good reason to do that. The things that trademark protects fall into two classes: Things which are already covered by laws against fraud on one hand; things which deserve no legal protection on the other.
In late summer 2014, Twitter demanded that Twitpic abandon its trademark application on pain of losing access to the Twitter API (which Twitpic needed to function).
Stating that Twitpic does “not have the resources to fend off a large company like Twitter,” Twitpic founder Noah Everett decided to shut down Twitpic in late October rather than give up on the trademark application. Oddly, an agreement was later reached with Twitter itself to maintain the database of existing Twitpic photos.
So now we don’t have Twitpic. Twitpic is dead. Twitter’s users, and therefore Twitter, are worse off. All over competing claims of “intellectual property” in a word. Claims which would be risible if they hadn’t destroyed a valuable application.
Twitpic’s demise doesn’t showcase a bug in the “intellectual property” system. Rather it highlights a feature of that system, a system designed for the sole purpose of using state power to protect established actors from market competition (Twitter’s incidental self-inflicted wound, on the other hand, was a bug).
Fortunately that system is coming apart at the seams. Unfortunately its complete collapse didn’t come in time to save Twitpic.
Citations to this article:
- Thomas L. Knapp, “Intellectual Property” is Why we Can’t Have Nice Things, Goa [India] Herald, 11/03/14
- Thomas L. Knapp, The death of Twitpic, Fiji Times, 10/31/14
- Thomas L. Knapp, Of intellectual property, Dhaka, Bangladesh New Nation, 10/30/14
- Thomas L. Knapp, “Intellectual Property” is Why we Can’t Have Nice Things, Jamaica Observer, 10/28/14
- Thomas L. Knapp, “Intellectual Property” is Why we Can’t Have Nice Things, Before It’s News, 10/27/14
Another victory for the monopolists!
You don't make it clear why Twitter "demanded that Twitpic abandon its trademark application", preferring instead simply to rant about how evil "intellectual property" is (in your mind). I'm curious: would you make it perfectly legal to sell, say, clothing that pretends to be made by some famous designer, but is actually a cheap knockoff? If yes, please explain why doing so is not fraud. The real label may signify high quality, while the knockoff may fall apart the first time the garment is cleaned, and this is perfectly ok with you?
If, on the other hand, you would not consider it fair business practice to fake a garment label, could you please explain where you would draw the line, without succumbing to horrible, terrible (in your mind) "intellectual property" laws?
In this particular case, I expect that Twitter IS probably whining about a product which they think sounds too much like Twitter, and if that is true, I would rule against them (assuming Twitpic's logo is clearly different, etc.). I would not throw the baby out with the bathwater and sanction a free-for-all of fakery, however, as you are apparently determined to do.
Question: "I'm curious: would you make it perfectly legal to sell, say, clothing that pretends to be made by some famous designer, but is actually a cheap knockoff?"
Answer: "The things that trademark protects fall into two classes: Things which are already covered by laws against fraud on one hand; things which deserve no legal protection on the other."
The real question is, do existing fraud (not IP) laws exist that protect against this type of rebranding? I would imagine the answer is "Yes." Purporting an item is one thing, when it is actually something else all together is probably illegal. But at the end of the day, this piece is an introduction to anti-IP thought for statists. If you're already an anti-statist this piece is a waste of electrons.
Precisely.
In the United States there are (according to howmanyofme.com) 338 people using the name "Thomas Knapp."
If someone uses the name "Thomas Knapp," they aren't "stealing" my "intellectual property."
If someone represents himself to you as "the Tom Knapp that writes at C4SS" — or "the (late and lamented) trick shooter Tom Knapp" for the purpose of procuring some value from you, that person still isn't stealing "my intellectual property." He's defrauding (fraud is theft by deception) YOU.
If I write the word "Nike" on a pair of shoes and sell it, I'm stealing nothing from Nike. If I falsely represent myself to the buyer as the Nike USA Corporation which does business from One Bowerman Drive, Beaverton, Oregon, I am attempting to steal from the customer by deception.
If I don't disclose my intellectual property, it's my intangible, intellectual property. It is a derivative of my thought process, a derivative of my life. If I disclose it with the stipulation that no one is to use it without my permission, I don't expect moral people to use it without my permission. The State really has nothing to do with it. It is none of their business. I would never depend on the incompetent State to protect my property. There are other ways.
"Intellectual property" is too broad a term for what's being discussed here. As much as I agree with Mr. Knapp about the Twitter-Twitpic situation, I'm not yet ready to say that it would be okay for me to scan and OCR a novel that someone spent five years writing and sell it online under my own name. If we own the product of our labour, that surely must include intellectual labour. I agree that trademarks are often too broad, and perhaps even that they are not a net benefit. And there's a growing body of evidence that patents are counterproductive, too. But there's more to intellectual property than just that.