The complaint seeks more than $250 million in damages from Twitter for hundreds of thousands of infringement claims across about 1,700 works, according to Variety .
“Twitter promotes its business through infringing copies of musical works, violating the exclusive rights of publishers and others under copyright law. While many of Twitter’s competitors recognize the need for proper licenses and agreements for the use of musical works on their platforms, Twitter does not, and instead enables massive copyright infringement that harms music creators,” the complaint reads.
Twitter has undergone numerous layoffs and policy changes since being acquired by Elon Musk last year.
"Twitter knows full well that neither it nor its users have a secure license to the pervasive use of music created on its platform as complained of here. Yet, in connection with its highly interactive platform, Twitter consistently and knowingly hosts and streams infringing copies of copyrighted musical works, including songs uploaded or streamed, including specific infringing works that Twitter knows are infringing. Twitter also routinely provides repeat infringers with a clear understanding that such use of the Twitter platform is infringing. Twitter profits greatly from infringing publishers' copyrighted musical works," the complaint continues.
The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) said: Twitter’s unlawful conduct has caused and continues to cause substantial, irreparable harm to publishers, their songwriter customers, and the entire music ecosystem. This unlawful conduct enriches Twitter at the expense of copyrighted musical works. Twitter has refused to grant licenses or other agreements necessary for the fair use of musical works on its platform.
An email was sent to Twitter's press account asking for a response to the incident.
The plaintiffs include: Concord, UMPG, Peermusic, ABKCO Music, Anthem Entertainment, Big Machine Music, BMG Rights Management, Hipgnosis Songs Group, Kobalt Music Publishing America, Mayimba Music, Reservoir Media Management, Sony Music Publishing, Spirit Music Group, The Royalty Network, Ultra Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and Wixen Music Publishing.
Last year, Elon Musk tweeted that “current copyright law generally goes beyond protecting authors in an absurd way.”
The NMPA has previously aggressively filed or threatened similar legal action against companies including TikTok, Twitch, Peloton, Roblox, and several others. The result has often been a settlement or agreement that benefits publishers. Twitter has gone through several rounds of layoffs and policy changes since it was acquired by Elon Musk last year.
“Twitter stands alone as the largest social media platform in its total refusal to license millions of songs on its service,” said NMPA President and CEO David Israelite. “Twitter knows that music is leaked, released, and streamed to billions of people every day on its platform. They cannot hide and refuse to pay songwriters and music publishers.”
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