He has 15,000 tweets, but basically stopped tweeting in 2013. I wouldn't call him a squatter.

I tend to disagree:

The right of ownership includes to right to use what you own in your own way.

The ownership of twitter namespace is Twitter's alone, not the user's

IIRC, Twitter officially doesn't allow you to sell your handle.

I did not know that but I'm not surprised.

There's an agreement between Twitter and each user. And depending on the name used, Twitter users have own rights too, trade marks and of course domain names are examples.

I'm not using my home tomorrow morning. Is it alright for just anyone to go in and take ownership of it?

In a naturalistic sense? Yes. You only have a "right" to anything you can defend.

In which case, once I return in the afternoon I will be entitled to shoot whomever is there for trying to steal my home. I'll be 'naturalisticaly' defending it. Sounds like a great way to run a society. I better make sure I have a bigger gun than the rest then. (edit-language)

Is shooting people your first go-to for defense? I prefer arguments and evidence presented to institutions who have both been given permission to shoot people and are willing to do it on my behalf pending their judgements of my arguments and evidence.

Of course, if the institution's judgement is that people can take things that I'm not using at that exact moment, and it is not interested in intervening, then it's not my 'right' to leave my house alone for the day.

Turns out my rights are entirely dependent on the amount of guns I can bring to bear vs. the amount of guns somebody challenging my claim can bring to bear.

When an armed intruder is breaking into my house? Yes shooting them is in fact my first go-to defense. When someone else is intending to do harm to me or someone I love I'm not going to wait around for the police to get there 30 minutes later. All the police are going to find is my dead body by then.

He was talking in a 'naturalistic' way so I responded in kind. In reality if I found someone has stolen my home I'd call the authorities unless of course I feel a danger to my life in which case, had I not lived in the UK where guns are illegal, yes - shooting them would have been the first course of action. That is nothing to do with law or ethics, and lots to do with survival instinct.

Actually, castle doctrine does give you the right shoot someone breaking into your home in almost every state. It is exactly the way our current society is run.

chmars, I think he was being sarcastic.

Let's not confuse digital "property" with physical property. It's disingenuous at best, flat out wrong at worst. On top of that, you don't own a Twitter handle, or for that matter a domain, you rent it.

I understand it was a sarcasm, but there's one difference between the two. A Twitter handle or a domain name is something unique as opposed to a game console of which there were millions of copies.

So if I have a unique object that I don't use or look at or whatever one does with unique objects (say, a piece of art or something), I'm a squatter and its perfectly ok for someone to take it away from me?

Too bad then for the company named "N." They'll have to go with N_company or N_inc or N_co or get really creative if those are taken. There's probably only like 500 names they can choose from relating to "N."

If the username was worthless, no one would have stolen it in the first place or offered $50,000 for it.

... and it still involves the right of selling the account at the price he wants, even if he's squatting.