Twitter has a new open front. About twenty major record companies, including Universal and Sony, have sued the company in a US court for profiting from the compositions of their artists in what they consider a “massive violation of intellectual property that harms music creators.”
The record companies filed a civil lawsuit against X Corp, the company of billionaire Elon Musk that includes Twitter, in a court in Nashville (Tennesee), and demand a jury trial to obtain compensation of $ 150,000 for each work submitted to infringement. The figure can reach exorbitant heights, because they calculate that there are “hundreds of thousands” of cases.
According to the plaintiffs, Twitter uses the music and video repertoires of the complainants to “attract and retain” users and boost their interactions, which “feeds the lucrative advertising business” of the social network “at the expense of the authors and to the detriment of his” compositions, protected by “copyright” rights.
“Twitter has rejected calls to obtain licenses or other necessary agreements to be able to legally use the musical compositions on its platform,” the companies add, noting that other social networks such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat do pay for the use. of those works.
The record companies, through their employers National Music Publisher’s Association (NMPA), assure that they have managed to document all the cases in which Twitter has not paid artists for their creations. In total, they estimate that there could be some 300,000 illegal tweets.
Twitter is not going through its best economic moment. Since it was acquired by Musk, the businessman has tried to monetize the services of the social network by implementing the Twitter Blue subscription service. In addition, he has tried to increase the company’s income with various initiatives that are not without controversy, such as cutting staff or auctioning office furniture.
