Twitter Inc’s steadily tightening grip over the 140-character messages on its network has set off a spirited debate in Silicon Valley over whether a social media company should or should not lay claim over its user-generated content.<\/p>\n
That debate has now landed in court.<\/p>\n
A San Francisco judge on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order compelling Twitter to continue providing access to its “Firehose” – the full daily stream of some 400 million tweets – to PeopleBrowsr Inc, a data analytics firm that sifts through Twitter and resells that information to clients ranging from technology blogs to the U.S. Department of Defense.<\/p>\n
As part of a broader revenue-generating strategy, Twitter in recent months has begun clamping down on how its data stream may be accessed, to the dismay of many third-party developers who have built businesses and products off of Twitter’s Firehose.<\/p>\n
PeopleBrowsr, which began contracting Firehose access in July 2010, has continued to buy Twitter data on a month-to-month basis until this July, when Twitter invoked a clause in the agreement that allowed for terminating the contract without cause.<\/p>\n
The court’s decision to extend the two San Francisco-based companies’ contract has not settled the legal spat; a judge will hear PeopleBrowsr’s arguments for a preliminary injunction against Twitter on January 8.<\/p>\n
But the case could provide the first, in-depth look at issues surrounding one of the Internet industry’s most prominent players in Twitter.<\/p>\n
In a court filing, PeopleBrowsr founder John David Rich argued the Twitter move was a “commercial disaster” for his business and contradicted the spirit of repeated public statements that Twitter has made regarding its data.<\/p>\n
“Twitter has repeatedly and consistently promised that it would maintain an ‘open ecosystem’ for its data,” Rich said in his company’s request for a temporary injunction.<\/p>\n
In its response, Twitter’s lawyers argued: “This is Contracts 101.”<\/p>\n
Twitter said in a statement after the court decision: “We believe the case is without merit and will vigorously defend against it.”<\/p>\n
Obama \u201cFour more years\u201d captures Twitter<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n