The National Music Publishers’ Association is suing Elon Musk-owned Twitter for a whopping $250 million for violating over 1,700 copyrights. Major music publishers like Sony Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing, and Warner Chappell are members of the organization.
The music publishers claimed in a US court case that Twitter makes large profits from the “infringement of Publishers’ repertoires of musical compositions.” They asserted that Twitter rejected requests for licenses to utilize the musical composition on the platform.
Even after Elon Musk bought Twitter, the NMPA argues that things have changed. They wrote, “Both prior to and following the sale, Twitter actively participated in, deliberately assisted, and benefitted from infringement of copyright, at the cost of music producers, to whom Twitter owes nothing.”
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The music publisher’s organization continued, “By layout, the social media site Twitter became an increasingly popular hotspot for multimedia material, with musical-infused video becoming especially noteworthy and paramount importance.”
In a statement, NMPA President David Israelite further noted that Twitter is the only significant social media network to outright decline to license millions of songs for usage on its service.
In addition, the petition asserts that other well-known social media sites, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, have contracts in place with right holders that permit payment of authors of music.
In the appeal, NMPA stated that Twitter first served as a platform for sending brief text messages. To keep up with other social media platforms, Twitter swiftly evolved into a source of multimedia information.
The publishers claimed that Twitter intentionally hosts illegally copied musical compositions while doing none of the bare minimum steps to promptly remove or disable access to the illegal content. Additionally, they claimed that the dominant social media platform ignores repeat offenders to boost engagement and ad income while gaining a disproportionate advantage over rivals.
