That being said if you're not actually going to use your account you might want to at least consider giving it to someone who would put it to more active use. Just a thought.

Just how much of the "real world" law you're alluding to by using the term "ownership" do you suppose applies to Twitter handles? (or Gmail addresses, or Facebook pages, or even domain names?)

I just don't quite see how a username is 'owed' to other people who would use it more, either.

Seeing how easily GoDaddy handed over the domain, it seems one can't even own a domain properly, and that is supposed to be a lot closer to an "ownership" right than Twitter handles.

We could look towards email and dns, though, as examples of a more fair distribution of namespace resources.

Organizations would do well to investigate what their options are to retain control over their namespace, lest it fall whim to a mishap such as this instance.

Also, a Mercedes and a twitter handle (or domain name) aren't exactly the same thing as a twitter handle is a unique owner of a particular pice of the namespace.

A better analogy would be an owner of a valuable piece of property who wasn't putting it to good use.

So if you were not putting your backyard to good use you would not feel too bad if your neighbors decided to encroach on it?

The GP's analogy is extremely weak.

Some rich guy buys an amazing house on a beautiful California beachfront. But then never even bothers to stay there because he's got 3 other vacation homes. It just sits there empty all year long.

Would it be ok for someone to break in and start living there? No, of course not.

But you do have to kind of dislike that guy right? If he doesn't want to use this limited and valuable resource he should maybe give it up so someone else can get good use out of it.

"Would it be ok for someone to break in and start living there? No, of course not."

Dislike != ok to take my shit but it's still dislike.

I understand that you have not said that the situation the OP faced is deserved, but you don't feel too bad about it.

Unfortunately your defense does make it seem that you are not completely opposed to a framework that would take back "limited resources" not being used well. Most likely this is not your intention at all.

I often come across businesses/store locations and most importantly domain names that are not using even a small fraction of true potential. I do feel sorry for them, but I can't say I dislike them, they might dislike themselves if they knew what I knew.

The only way I can fathom the minutest possibility of disliking them is if they knew how to thrive and did not do anything, if it was common knowledge on how to do it right, but they chose not too.

Unfortunately most people don't know how to use potential or don't recognize it at all, can't dislike them for trying though.

Somebody just moved in and started living in his house. And just tossed all of his personal belongings out.

To be honest, I kind of disliked my friend for a while.

You mean Communism?

And if seizing it is too "communist" for you, then enormous taxes should be close enough to socialism.

There's nothing wrong with advocating the concept of sharing when a person obviously has more resources than he could actually use.

There is no reason he should have to give up @H just because he isn't utilizing it enough. The person that got it better not send a single tweet shorter than the maximum to fit your logic.

Land should not remain unused.

"They paved paradise, put up a parking lot." Joni Mitchell

IANAL, but I have a hard time believing that a court of law is going to issue a judgement of adverse possession where the perpetrator used fraud/identity theft, extortion and blackmail to come into possession of it.

For example, I used one email for most of my life. But recently, I stopped using that email address, and have used another one due to wanting to boycott that company. Since I no longer use that email address, I should have to give the password to another person. This is just the right thing to do in all cases.

That would FREE UP a lot of email addresses. If you have any email addresses that you do not need, you are obligated to give your password to another person. If you don't, then they can't use email.

Just make sure that if you use that email to sign in to other websites using that email and password combination, go to all of those websites and notify your friends that you are giving your email to someone else and you are not the same person if you see future comments using that name.

Not a security risk I'm willing to take, when I could simply leave that email address dormant. There's not really a huge shortage of good email addresses if you're willing to pay $10 a year for your own domain.

Poe's law and all that.

Or is it just vaguely notable?

places like foursquare, people know people at twitter. if your outside the valley twitter won't even help you when the autosuspender mistakenly pops your account but valley/connected people call an investor or executive and get their vanity handle in hours. seen it happen twice.

it's all who you know and never forget it. when i dealt with twitter support as a normal the disparity between insider service and official was pretty amazing. they are the worst of the valley backscratchers.

bet they would have taken @n if the right person called. what would you do, sue?

Up until maybe 18-24 months ago if you knew the right folks you could generally get an inactive account released but even that is pretty much off the table at this point.

All industries have insiders. In some you can get a twitter handle, in others hard to get concert tickets, in others I bet it's early access to the latest in air ventilation equipment. It's not malicious. It's just personal relationships.

shrug