Music publishers file $250 million lawsuit against Twitter, allege Musk made copyright infringement worse
Twitter owner Elon Musk has previously called copyright rules a 'plague on humanity'
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A group of music publishers has filed a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter, claiming years of copyright infringement on the platform have gotten even worse under new owner Elon Musk.
The lawsuit, filed by a group of 17 publishers led by the National Music Publishers’ Association, alleges that Twitter has for years unfairly benefited from copyright infringement by allowing users to share unlicensed music, while competitors such as TikTok, Meta, and Snapchat all pay licensing fees, according to a report by The Guardian.
"The availability of videos with music, including copies of Publishers’ musical compositions, furthers Twitter’s financial interests both because it drives user engagement, and thus advertising revenue, and because Twitter does not pay fees to license musical compositions," the lawsuit reads. "Providing free, unlicensed music gives the Twitter platform an unfair advantage over competing platforms, such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and others."
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The lawsuit alleges that Twitter has for years unfairly benefited from copyright infringement. (Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The suit further alleges that the issue has gotten worse since Musk purchased the platform, going so far as to include screenshots of the owner's tweets that were critical of copyright rules.
"Current copyright law in general goes absurdly far beyond protecting the original creator," Musk tweeted in May of last year. "Overzealous DMCA is a plague on humanity."
"This statement and others like it exert pressure on Twitter employees, including those in its trust and safety team, on issues relating to copyright and infringement," the lawsuit reads in response to the Musk tweet.
A Twitter logo hangs outside the company's offices in San Francisco, on Dec. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu / AP Newsroom)
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A list of 1,700 songs is included in the lawsuit, which claims the songs had been uploaded by users "who had already been identified in multiple earlier notices," yet Twitter "did not expeditiously remove or disable access."
"Twitter’s policies demonstrate that Twitter views itself, not the law, as the arbiter of what content is permitted on the Twitter platform," the lawsuit, which is asking for $150,000 statutory penalty for each of the violations, reads. "There are thousands of instances where Twitter waited 30 days or more to remove or disable access to the content identified."
The logo of Twitter can be seen on the headquarters of the short message service. (Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images / Getty Images)
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