The tLicense Twitterformat (e.g., /l by) sets a license for any assets linked/uploaded in your tweet (for example when uploading a photo to Twitpic). Twitter clients that implement tLicense can link known licenses (e.g., Creative Commons licenses) and also services like Twitpic can implement automatic license support for tweets containing tLincense.

Syntax

/l by
/l by-nd
/l by-nc-nd
/l by-nc
/l by-nc-sa
/l by-sa
/l cc0
/l pd

Raison d'être

There isn't a commonly-accepted way of licensing tweets or media uploaded via tweets. tLicense addresses this lack.

Manual usage

The tLicense Twitterformat is simple enough to be used manually by users. e.g.,

Look at this awesome photo I just took: http://mycoolphoto.com/12345 /l by

(In this case, mycoolphoto.com can automatically add the Creative Common Attribution License to the uploaded photo.)

Implementation guide for Twitter client authors

Photo, video, and other media sharing sites:

Automatically add the relevant license to the uploaded media by parsing the tLicense twitterformat in tweets.

Twitter clients:

Link the tLicense Twitterformat to the relevant license if known (e.g., Creative Commons licenses.)

License

This Twitterformat Proposal is released under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

The tLicense Twitterformat Proposal article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.