Summary
Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has filed a court motion claiming ownership of all X accounts, arguing they cannot be transferred, in an effort to block The Onion’s purchase of InfoWars, Alex Jones’s conspiracy outlet.
The sale was part of a $1.4 billion judgment against Jones for defaming Sandy Hook families.
X’s filing asserts that users only hold a non-transferable license to their accounts, despite Musk’s prior actions threatening to reassign handles.
Critics view Musk’s move as aiding far-right figures like Jones and aligning with his MAGA agenda.
It’s pushing existing boundaries, but I wouldn’t call it an entirely new argument. Twitter’s lawyers could (and probably would) argue that a Twitter account is analogous to something that is already well-established as being both property of the service provider and insulated enough that it doesn’t make the service provider liable for content published through it.
My previous example of “Twitter account = IP address” is probably the easiest to explain through analogy.
An IP address is an addressable identifier. /
An account is an addressable identifier.
Verizon owns their IP addresses. /
Twitter owns their accounts.
Subscribers can communicate under one of Verizon’s IP addresses. /
Users can communicate under one of Twitter’s accounts.
Verizon can not be held liable in civil court for actions performed with one of their IP addresses. /
… (this is the argument Twitter could make)
A sane court would probably find that the second point isn’t comparable because an account uniquely identifies a specific entity whereas an IP address is shared, but we don’t exactly live in times where sanity is a given. Alternatively, they could argue that “Twitter handle = IP address” and “Twitter account = subscriber account”.
In any case, we won’t find out until when/if it makes it to court. Though, if it does, that might actually be one and only time I don’t side against the MPAA or RIAA.