"AFP, like a lot of more established organizations, seems unable to change their perspectives on Twitter to address what the service actually is. That Morel posted some of the most important photos of the decade on Twitter before any other publication shows the power and flexibility of Twitter as a legitimate news service. AFP's argument, that Twitter is in some way nothing more than a digital bulletin board with no accompanying rights, is worrisome–it's a different kind of news outlet than AFP, but that doesn't mean its value in news can simply be ignored.

As Jeremy Nicholl says, "the whole situation is a mess." AFP's position might not hold much water, legally. But if the AFP does manage to get away with, in essence, scraping a photographer's work and selling it simply due to the venue in which it was published, both Twitter and new media journalism have serious problems to overcome."

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