Twitter starts cracking down on tweet thieves, deletes stolen tweets

Twitter has had a problem of stolen content since pretty much its inception. More often than not, that funny tweet you read was stolen from someone else, which was stolen from someone else, which was probably stolen from someone else.

So far there didn't seem to be much users could do about this problem, and not much Twitter was doing about it either. But now Twitter has started cracking down on stolen content, either automatically or based on registered DMCA takedown complaint by the owner of the original tweet. It's unclear how Twitter verifies the original tweet was indeed original and wasn't just lifted off from elsewhere outside Twitter.

Stolen tweets won't simply disappear but will show the message 'This tweet from <@username> has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder.'

This is a good move by Twitter because anyone who regularly uses the service knows tweet stealing is a major issue on the site. There are several accounts with several thousand followers that run exclusively on content stolen from other Twitter users or other sites. With this feature in effect it will be easier for users to ensure someone else isn't benefiting from their work.