Music companies sue Twitter for $255 million for copyright infringement

The National Music Publishing Association of America (NMPA), on behalf of its member publishers, filed lawsuit to the Twitter microblogging network, accusing it of violating the copyrights of musicians and performers. The association is seeking damages from Twitter in the amount of $250 million. The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Nashville, Tennessee.

The NMPA represents music publishers such as Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, BMG Rights Management and Universal Music Publishing Group. The lawsuit lists about 1.7 thousand musical compositions, in respect of which, according to the plaintiff, copyright is infringed.

The association believes that Twitter “tolerates and encourages” copyright infringement. According to members of the association, the social network receives “giant profits from the availability of unlicensed music without paying the necessary license fees for it.” And this, the lawsuit says, gives Twitter an “unfair advantage” over competitors, including TikTok, Facebook and Instagram (owned by Meta Platforms, which is recognized as extremist in Russia and banned), YouTube, Snapchat, which pay for a license.

NMPA chief David Israelit said in a statement that Twitter is the largest social network that “refused to license the millions of songs hosted on its platform.” As the members of the association say, they repeatedly turned to Twitter demanding payment of license fees, but copyright infringement did not stop after the change in the head of Twitter in October 2022. The plaintiff seeks compensation in the amount of $150,000 for each of the 1,700 compositions in respect of which there is copyright infringement, that is, a total of about $255 million.

Twitter has not yet commented on the lawsuit filed against him.

Alena Miklashevskaya