You may think that it's obvious that messages posted to Twitter are public - after all, unless you choose to use strict privacy settings, anyone can read the things that you tweet. But the implications of this statement reach far wider: for example does that mean that mainstream media can republish what you have posted to Twitter in national newspapers?
The Press Complaints Commission has made a ruling on just such a case after a complaint was made by a civil servant whose tweets were published by two national newspapers.
The report states that: "In reaching its decision on the case, the Commission judged that the publicly accessible nature of the information was a "key consideration". It was quite clear that the potential audience for the information was actually much larger than the 700 people who followed the complainant directly, not least because any message could easily be retweeted to a wider audience."
What do you think? Should our tweets be protected?
