The BBC, in response to a complaint regarding handling of pictures taken from Twitter during the London riots, has said that most pictures on the social networking site are in public domain.

"Twitter is a social network platform which is available to most people who have a computer and therefore any content on it is not subject to the same copyright laws as it is already in the public domain," BBC wrote in response to Andy Mabbett, a blogger who complained about credits given to Twtter.

Mabbett sent a complaint to the BBC on August 6 objecting to the way the images had been credited with a "from Twitter" mention. He said that the images on Twitter may have been uploaded elsewhere and real names of photographers and sources must be credited.

He said that the BBC did not name the photographers may have been breached by the inclusion of his/her pictures. The Blogger has posted the response from the BBC online and has received huge online attention, something that has cased the BBC to take a u-turn on its stand.

Chris Hamilton, social media editor at the BBC said that BBC was now "checking out the complaint response quoted above but, on the face of it, it's wrong and isn't the position of BBC News."