Music Publishers Sues Twitter for Over $250 Million

The lawsuit by 17 publishers, including Sony and Universal, allege that Twitter infringed copyright laws on over 1,700 songs for financial gain

 

Brought by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the lawsuit was filed on behalf of 17 music publishers suing social media platform, Twitter, for more than $250 million for bulk copyright infringement.

Filed at the Federal District Court in Nashville, the lawsuit file states that Twitter has not paid for a blanket license, which protects artists’ music and related content.

This is unlike social media platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, which have policies in place that compensate artists for use of their work and allows its users to legally upload copyrighted material featuring publishers’ music.

Among the 17 plaintiffs are Sony Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group, Anthem Entertainment, Big Machine Music, BMG Rights Management, Kobalt Music Publishing America, and Spirit Music Group firms. 

The court filing includes a non-exhaustive list of 1,700 songs of various genres — each of which, the plaintiffs allege, had been uploaded on Twitter by “specific users who had already been identified in multiple earlier notices,” and were not held accountable by the site.

The lawsuit is requesting a $150,000 statutory penalty for each of infringements, or, as an alternative, the damages and Twitter’s profits from the copyright breaches as stated.

“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 from Publishers and other music rights holders,” wrote lawyer Steven Riley in the lawsuit. “Indeed, providing free, unlicensed music gives the Twitter platform an unfair advantage over competing platforms.”

 

According to Item 128 of the lawsuit, Twitter stated in its marketing, blogs, or tweets, that music is its largest community, where “people are more likely to follow a music-related account than any other type of account on Twitter.”

Despite this, there are disparities in its policy-making. As reported in The Guardian, the lawsuit also cites tweets by Elon Musk — who bought Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion — to argue that the company has deliberately stopped enforcing the rules.

“Twitter’s policies demonstrate that Twitter views itself, not the law, as the arbiter of what content is permitted on the Twitter platform,” the court file continued. 

In May 2022, Musk tweeted in response to a separate case, that copyright “goes absurdly far beyond protecting the original creator” and that “overzealous DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) [enforcement] 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 argued.

“To advance its interests, Twitter has made the process of uploading infringing music to its platform extremely easy for users, requiring only a few clicks,” the document continued. “Publishers have not authorized Twitter or users of the Twitter platform to copy, distribute, or publicly perform Publishers’ musical compositions at issue in this litigation on the Twitter platform.”

 

Further, in December 2021, the NMPA had begun sending formal infringement notices to Twitter on a weekly basis, on behalf of the plaintiffs, drawing attention to an initial over 300,000 infringing tweets.

“Despite claiming to take down tweets in response to an infringement notice within hours or minutes, Twitter routinely waits much longer before acting, if it acts at all,” the suit continued. “There are thousands of instances where Twitter waited 30 days or more to remove or disable access to the content identified.”

In response, Twitter claimed its delay in removing infringing material was that it “unequivocally opposes copyright infringement and has invested in tools to assist rights holders’ content protection efforts.”

“The pervasive infringing activity at issue in this case is no accident,” the lawsuit explained. “While the Twitter platform began as a destination for short text-based messages, Twitter widened its business model to compete more aggressively with other social media sites for users, advertisers, and subscribers. By design, the Twitter platform became a hot destination for multimedia content, with music-infused videos being of particular and paramount importance.” 

Though there were ongoing discussions since 2021 at Twitter to license certain material, the decisions were put on hold due to the over $100 million costs involved, and were abandoned when the company changed management. 

The 17 plaintiffs are represented by Stephen A. Riley, John R. Jacobson, Tim Harvey and Grace C. Peck of Riley and Jacobson PLC; and Scott A. Zebrak, Matthew J. Oppenheim, Keith Howell, Meredith Stewart, Alexander Kaplan, Carly Rothman, and Andrew Guerra and Matthew Cooper of Oppenheim and Zebrak LLP.

The full lawsuit can be accessed here.