making money from them? Twitter or you?
That debate has now landed in court.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But the case could provide the first, in-depth look at issues
surrounding one of the Internet industry's most prominent players in
Twitter.
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.
"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.
In its response, Twitter's lawyers argued: "This is Contracts 101."
Twitter said in a statement after the court decision: "We believe the
case is without merit and will vigorously defend against it."
Source: Reuters