Music publishers sue Twitter

 

Members of the National Music Publishers' Association have filed a lawsuit against Twitter, claiming that the platform repeatedly violates copyright law by allowing users to share music without permission.  The suit is seeking damages of up to $250M for the alleged infringement of about 1,700 songs. While Twitter's competitors like Facebook and YouTube have licensing deals in place and pay fees for using copyrighted music, Twitter itself lacks such arrangements. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of 17 music publishers, claims Twitter failed to take action to prevent the infringements despite being notified of thousands of cases. It provides examples of tweets containing copyrighted music, such as Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You," that were posted without permission. Members of the National Music Publishers' Association include Sony Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management, and Universal Music Publishing Group Twitter and its owner, Elon Musk, have not yet responded to the allegations. The suit argues that Twitter's ownership change under Musk has not resulted in improvements and cites his past tweets criticizing copyright law.