Twitter Sued By Music Publishers For Copyright Infringement

A consortium of music publishers on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Twitter, claiming the social media platform has repeatedly violated copyright law by hosting music without permission and failing to police infringers.

The suit was filed in federal court in Nashville by the trade group National Music Publishers’ Association on behalf of 17 music publishing companies including Universal, Polygram, BMG, Sony, EMI, Concord and Warner Chappell. It alleges Twitter willfully infringed the work of about 1,700 songs.

Among the songs and artists mentioned as examples in the lawsuit were Louis Armstrong’s What a World, Glass Animals’ Heat Waves and Rihanna’s Umbrella.

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The suit, formally against Twitter parent X Corp, seeks up to $150,000 for each case on infringement as well as additional damages among its claims for direct copyright infringement, contributory infringement and vicarious infringement. It is seeking a jury trial.

Twitter is among the last of the major social media platforms who have not reached licensing deals with the music publishers, after big-bucks agreements with the likes of YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Twitter reportedly had been in talks on a similar deal before Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition last fall.

The suit noted that two executives leading Twitter’s “trust and safety” division have resigned since Musk’s takeover, among the departments “involved with content review and policing terms of service violations, including both the legal and the trust and safety teams.”

“Videos with music, including infringing copies of publishers’ songs, attract and retain account holders and viewers, and grow the body of engaging tweets on the Twitter platform,” said the lawsuit, which included examples of Twitter statements about how important music is to the platform and its users. “Twitter then monetizes those tweets and users via advertising, subscriptions, and data licensing, all of which serve to increase Twitter’s valuation and revenues.”

The suit also says that Twitter “routinely ignores known repeat infringers and known infringements” despite having the ability to police such activity. As proof, the NMPA began sending Twitter formal infringement notices (known as NMPA Notices?) on a weekly basis beginning in December 2021. The publishers claims that they have identified 300,000 infringing tweets since then.

“Twitter’s policies and its response to the NMPA Notices make clear that Twitter does not take its legal obligations with respect to copyright infringement seriously,” it said, adding that the company “has not adopted, reasonably implemented, nor informed subscribers or account holders of, a policy to terminate users engaging in repeated acts of copyright infringement.”

The NMPA filed a similar suit against Peloton that was settled in 2020; the settlement included working together to optimize the fitness platform’s licensing systems and processes.