A lawsuit was filed on Wednesday by a group of 17 music publishers against Twitter, accusing the social media platform of copyright infringement involving approximately 1,700 songs. The publishers are seeking up to $250 million in damages, marking yet another challenge for Twitter, which is owned by Elon Musk.
The suit was filed in the Federal District Court in Nashville, with the publishers claiming that Twitter violated copyright law by allowing users to post music without obtaining proper permission. Negotiations between Twitter and the music industry to establish comprehensive licensing agreements had previously collapsed several months ago.
David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers’ Association, a trade group, stated, “Twitter stands alone as the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service.”
Twitter and Elon Musk, the platform’s owner, have yet to respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit highlights the publishers’ allegations of Twitter’s failure to effectively address widespread music copyright infringement on its platform. Specific tweets were cited as evidence, including one featuring Rihanna’s song “Umbrella” and an unauthorized two-minute clip from its music video. The post garnered 221,000 views and 15,000 likes, according to the suit, all without the permission of the song’s publishers.
The plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each of the nearly 1,700 infringed works, totaling approximately $250 million.
It is important to note that music publishers represent the copyrights for songwriting and composition, which differ from copyrights for recordings.
Furthermore, the lawsuit outlines the music publishers’ attempts to inform Twitter about infringements through the protocol established in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law enacted in 1998 to protect internet service providers while providing guidelines for addressing copyright violations.
According to the suit, the National Music Publishers’ Association has notified Twitter about roughly 300,000 tweets containing infringing music since December 2021. However, the company consistently delayed or failed to take action on these notices.
Twitter had been engaged in negotiations with the three major music labels—Universal, Sony, and Warner—since 2021 regarding licensing rights. Unfortunately, the talks stalled after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company for $44 billion in October. Licensing deals for music rights, which involve compensating publishers and record labels when users post or play content containing songs, can cost well over $100 million annually.
Since acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk has implemented cost-cutting measures, such as employee layoffs, skipping rent payments, and avoiding payments to vendors. The company has also faced declining advertising revenue and billions of dollars in debt payments resulting from Musk’s acquisition. Musk has even expressed concerns about Twitter’s financial stability, suggesting it is on the brink of bankruptcy.
The lawsuit attempts to use Elon Musk’s own statements against him, quoting a series of his tweets in which he criticized current copyright law for going “absurdly far beyond protecting the original creator.” He referred to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as a “plague on humanity,” expressing his disapproval of its overzealousness.
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