A coalition of music publishers, including Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music and Sony Music Publishing, is suing Twitter over “massive copyright infringement” involving the companies’ respective music catalogs.
Seventeen music publishers, who hold the rights to music from artists including Drake, Taylor Swift and Adele, filed the joint lawsuit in Tennessee federal court. They seek more than $250 million in damages.
Elon Musk’s X Corp, which owns Twitter, is the sole defendant.
“Twitter stands alone as the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service,” David Israelite, chief executive of the National Music Publishers’ Association, said in a statement. “Twitter knows full well that music is leaked, launched, and streamed by billions of people every day on its platform. No longer can it hide behind the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and refuse to pay songwriters and music publishers.”
Israelite accused Twitter of platforming leaked music, copyrighted music videos and other material. Under DMCA rules, Twitter and other social media websites are protected against copyright strikes over user-uploaded material, provided they work to remove infringing material and punish the offending users.