Twitter Just Got Sued by Music Publishers For $250m: Here’s Why

Sued by a group of over 17 US music publishers, Twitter allegedly enabled copyright violations for over 1,700 songs

Microblogging social media platform, Twitter has been sued by over 17 publishers in the US who are claiming that the social media platform has enabled copyright violations for over 1700 songs and are now demanding compensation for their losses.

National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), the organization behind the lawsuit claims that Twitter “permits and encourages infringement” in exchange for profit and is now demanding a sum of $250m in damages.

NMPA claims that this has been going on long before Elon Musk took over the platform, however, the situation did not seem to improve even months after his entrance into the Twitter office, which is something that also makes Musk to be an equal participant in the problem.

NMPA, which includes firms such as Sony Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management and Universal Music Publishing Group says that the platform continued “reaping huge profits from the availability of unlicensed music without paying the necessary licensing fees for it”.

According to NMPA, any social platform, especially one as big as Twitter, who does not pay its music licensing fees has an unfair advantage over platforms who play by the books and are paying their music licensing fees, the list of which includes TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.

Twitter “stands alone as the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service,” says David Israelite, who currently serves as the president of the NMPA.

“Twitter’s change in ownership in October 2022 has not led to improvements in how it acts with respect to copyright. On the contrary, Twitter’s internal affairs regarding matters pertinent to this case are in disarray,” says NMPA.

“Twitter routinely ignores known repeat infringers and known infringements,” NMPA added.

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