By Gerry Shih
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 29 (Reuters) - 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.
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 Jan. 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."
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