Twitter just got hit with a massive music copyright lawsuit
Universal, Sony, Warner, and more are accusing Elon Musk's Twitter of more than $250 million in musical copyright infringement
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Twitter stepped on its latest rake of many today, to the tune of a potential $250 million—which is how much the three major music labels, Universal, Sony, and Warner, plus a host of smaller publishers, are suing the social media company for over its refusal to license music that people post on the service.
This legal throwdown has been brewing for a while, as Twitter remains one of the only major social media companies not to cut licensing deals with the labels to cover music that its users post—most especially as part of videos. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat all maintain license deals with the labels to smooth out any copyright issues that crop up from users posting licensed music, but Twitter has stood defiant, since back before Elon Musk took over the company. Now the issue’s finally come to a head, as the three major labels, plus a consortium of smaller publishers, have teamed up for a lawsuit accusing Twitter of violating copyright on more than 1,700 works, which, at $150,000 a pop, adds up to… Look, it’s a lot, okay?
Per THR, Twitter is expected to try to point to a fair use defense to cover its legal butt here, arguing that nobody really profits from music being used this way on Twitter. But the labels are contending that Twitter is knowingly profiting from allowing music to be posted, since it encourages people to share and circulate posts—and especially videos that drive a large part of the service’s use (and ad traffic). Meanwhile, the lawsuit also claims that, because Twitter doesn’t go out of its way to ban accounts that have been accused of multiple counts of copyright infringement, it forfeits at least some of its protections under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Or, to put it in vaguely threatening legal-ese pulled from the suit: “Rather than terminating access to specific users brought to its attention as infringers, which would have stopped or limited their infringement and deterred others from infringing, Twitter has operated its platform to be a haven for infringing activity.”
As we said, this is one of those issues that pre-dates Musk’s takeover of Twitter—former CEO Jack Dorsey was fielding letters about this stuff back in 2021, when the labels began issuing infringement notices in earnest. But, given that Musk has used the words “absurdly far” to describe the reach of U.S. copyright law in the past, he doesn’t seem to have been especially moved to address the brewing storm since taking over. It’s not clear yet what the lawsuit will mean for actual users of the site, but if you see takedown notices start getting even more heavy-handed than usual, you should have a decent inkling of why.
33 Comments
Perhaps I’m being unrealistic but I hope this lawsuit ends with Elon Musk going to prison for life somehow.
It’s more likely that Musk will die in a space ship accident on his way to Mars. Which, considering Musk’s desire for space travel, is very likely sometime this decade.
Now that’s just silly. Billionaires don’t get to where they are by paying the money they owe!
Elonnister always pays his debts.
He’ll pay what would, collectively, be life changing to 10,000 families but would be a molecule in a bucket to him.
I liked it better when it was simply that rich people didn’t pay their tailors.Mostly because I’m not a tailor.
He’s already stopped paying rent, paying vendors, paying severance owed to former employees, so good luck getting him to pay any of this.
I feel like I’m missing something here. Do people actually go to Twitter to listen to music?
Twitter is multiple different communities. The K-Pop folks, for one, definitely are sharing and listening to music videos on the site, even if your community doesn’t.
Wow, thanks for that weirdly defensive response. I guess it’s culturally insensitive of me not to know about the music-sharing habits of K-pop stans, or something?
This response is the one that’s weirdly defensive; you asked if there were people who go to Twitter to listen to music and they were literally just explaining to you that there are little pockets of Twitter who do just that. They certainly didn’t say or imply that you were culturally insensitive not to know whatever the fuck k-pop stans get up to.
If Parliamentarian replied saying he didn’t mean for it to be taken that way, then that would be fine.
But if you can’t see how the unnecessary additions of: ‘Twitter is multiple different communities’ and ‘even if your community doesn’t,’ might at least seem combative, then I don’t know what to tell you.
You think THAT’S defensive? Shit-talk Reddit. 😀
No. They’re mad about people who post videos that have music in them. Like I got a warning a few months back about a video I posted that had part of the Foo Fighters’ “My Hero” embedded in it. There was a letter sent to Twitter with a list of accounts and the tweets with various pieces of music in them, so Twitter deletes the tweets and tells you if they keep getting warnings they might have to delete your account. It’s pretty random too. I’ve got the same video up with Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” and another one with Tangerine Dream’s “Love on a Real Train” but never heard anything about those or others.
I’m gonna guess they care more about Foo Fighters than 80s pop? (Though you’d think Holding Out for a Hero would be one they’d watch for.) But it’s always arbitrary–reminds me of the emails I get every so often from HBO about downloads–and usually not for the shows I’d expect them to keep an eye on.
I had gotten a letter for downloading a movie from the early 90’s in the mid 2000’s, but got the letter 2 or 3 years after I downloaded it (it had the date and time of the download). After that, I got a seedbox. No more letters. Also makes it a lot easier for me to share movies and tv shows with friends via link without having to reupload to a cloud service.
That makes sense. I guess my thinking was that if people were sharing full tracks/music videos on Twitter and going there to watch/listen to them, that would be one thing. But if it’s just these kinds of videos and no-one’s making any money from them, then the case feels like a bit more of a stretch.
I’m sure there are some people somewhere out there that just straight up upload music to Twitter, but I doubt it’s very many. It’s just more likely to be like I said or reposted Tik Toks and that kind of stuff.It’s annoying, and the algorithms that search for it have been tuned up to hyperaggressive levels. Youtube will hit you just for just having things playing in the background, like if a car went past while you were filming and had a song blasting that an algorithm detects. It’s why you see in more of the videos where people are filming the police that the cops will start playing music on their phones or radios. It can’t stop you recording, but it can shut down a livestream or pollute the recording so much that you won’t be able to post it later with the unedited audio intact.
For sure, I don’t doubt that music gets posted there sometimes. It’s just hard to imagine that people are like: ‘I really wanna listen to X’s new song,’ and then of all places head to Twitter to do it, and thus it feels like Twitter would probably have no problem removing that stuff (or they would be stupid not to).The severity on YouTube is crazy, agreed. I know I’ve seen videos get demonetized because a brief clip gets played, or even just because someone sings, like, ten seconds of a song. It is ridiculous.
Wait, so you’re tellin’ me we can drive that Yarpie shitcunt broke just by making twitter accounts and uploading bootleg music to them?
Honestly one of the few moments where if Musk does take a stand against this he is right to do it
So you don’t think musician should get paid for their music?
Oh wow, what percentage will be going to the musicians?
*sigh* Like Disney vs Desantis, using long-standing legal standards (yes I know the online/app applicability of copyrights is new-ish) to fuck over one of the worst people in America is a win…regardless of whether 1% or 100% of the $250mm goes to aritists or other less evil rich people.
Yeah but Bezos is worse than Elon. I am not a fan of Elon but like in terms of bad rich Americans he really isn’t the worst
HAHAHAHAHAHA Elon Musk is an actively malignant person that is bad for America, democracy, any and every marginalized person, most (all?) of his employees, and all of his vendors. Bezos is a rich goblin that sent a dick pick to his girlfriend and got a divorce. Sing it with me: one of these things is not like the other.
No.
Well the suits start coming and they don’t stop coming!
Normally I’d hate this (evil music conglomerates have ruined YouTube for decades with fake takedown notices that YouTube plays along with), but in this case it couldn’t happen to a more deserving also evil bastard. If Universal, Sony, Warner, etc can actually take a few pounds of flesh out of Elmo then that’s great.
Jack, louch otherwise, knew better and had a well-staffed office to deal with this sort of stuff, one that Musk promptly fired.
Fuck Elon always and all ways…but the lawsuit definitely goes after actions that started before he bought his personal circle jerk social media platform.
This is definitely karma for a GOPturd just like DJT is now getting his karma.
They’re arguing that Twitter is profiting off their work? That’d work better if Twitter was making profits instead of hemorrhaging money.