Twitter was sued yesterday by music publishers who are seeking about $250 million in damages for alleged copyright violations. Members of the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) trade group say that Twitter does little to stop copyright infringement and doesn’t pay for music rights like other social media companies do.
“Twitter knows perfectly well that neither it nor users of the Twitter platform have secured licenses for the rampant use of music being made on its platform as complained of herein,” said the complaint filed against X Corp. (aka Twitter) in US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. “Nonetheless, in connection with its highly interactive platform, Twitter consistently and knowingly hosts and streams infringing copies of musical compositions… Twitter also routinely continues to provide specific known repeat infringers with use of the Twitter platform, which they use for more infringement.”
Unlike Twitter, social media firms “TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat have entered into agreements with Publishers and other rights holders that compensate creators of musical compositions for use of their works on those platforms,” the lawsuit said. The plaintiffs asked for up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each infringed work and provided a list of about 1,700 infringed works. That adds up to about $250 million, but the court exhibit said the list of songs is a “non-exhaustive, illustrative list of works infringed by Twitter.” This list “will be amended as the case proceeds,” the lawsuit said.
The 17 plaintiffs include Sony Music Publishing, various subsidiaries of Universal Music Publishing Group, the Warner Chappell subsidiaries of the Warner Music Group, BMG Rights Management, and independent publishing companies. Allegedly infringed works include songs by Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Harry Styles, the Rolling Stones, Rush, 50 Cent, John Denver, Justin Timberlake, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and many others.
Musk called DMCA “plague on humanity”
The lawsuit criticizes Twitter owner Elon Musk and points to his tweets about copyright law. “Twitter’s most senior executive [Musk] has previously described the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)—a statute that, among other things, provides for notice and takedown of infringing copyrighted material—as a ‘plague on humanity,'” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit shows a screenshot of Musk tweets from May 2022 in which he wrote, “Current copyright law in general goes absurdly far beyond protecting the original creator. Overzealous DMCA is a plague on humanity.”
The lawsuit follows stalled licensing negotiations between Twitter and the biggest record labels. “Twitter had been in negotiations for licensing rights with the three major music labels—Universal, Sony and Warner—since 2021, though the talks stalled after Mr. Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the company in October [2022],” according to The New York Times. “Deals for music rights, which require social media companies to compensate publishers and record labels when users post or play content with songs, can cost well over $100 million a year.”
The NYT noted in a March 2023 story about the stalled talks that “Twitter is one of the last big social media platforms without music licensing deals, which allow the sites to host virtually all commercially available audio content without fear of takedowns or legal reprisal.”
Though Musk claims to have saved Twitter from bankruptcy, the company’s value has reportedly dropped to about one-third of the $44 billion acquisition price. Musk has gotten rid of most of Twitter’s staff to cut costs, but the company owes $1.5 billion a year in interest payments related to the $13 billion of debt Musk used to fund the takeover. Twitter also faces numerous lawsuits from vendors that say Twitter hasn’t paid its bills.
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1948136