Civics: but challenging the order may involve going to court, incurring costs disproportionate to any legal or moral victory.

Tim Bradshaw:

My tweet was one of dozens identified by the record label as “unlicensed reproductions” of the Beastie Boys track. If I reposted it, or other infringing material, Twitter warned, I face the prospect of “permanent account suspension”. 

While some Twitter users have been “cancelled” by an online mob, my copyright infringement was most likely identified by an algorithmic crawler

This is my 15th year on Twitter. Since 2006, I have posted more than 26,000 tweets, made countless valuable contacts and broken plenty of stories thanks to the platform. But those 26,000 tweets are now also a potential liability. Is there another ticking time bomb buried amid the #breakingnews and my musings on sandwiches? 

While some Twitter users have been “cancelled” by an online mob, my copyright infringement was most likely identified by an algorithmic crawler, which scans the web continuously on behalf of the record labels. Twitter has not yet struck the kind of music licensing agreementthat YouTube and TikTok have with labels that can insulate their users from some complaints. I could argue that my clip was “fair use”, which permits short excerpts without a licence, but challenging the order may involve going to court, incurring costs disproportionate to any legal or moral victory.