2023-06-15 03:51:00
The National Association of Music Publishers (NMPA, for its acronym in English) requires up to US$ 150,000 (about R$ 727,000) per work used by the social network, which would raise the action to hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Twitter is the biggest social media platform that completely refuses to license millions of songs on its service,” said David Israelite, executive director of the NMPA, in response to an AFP question.
“Twitter knows full well that music is filtered, released and streamed by billions of people every day on its platform.”
Twitter’s response to copyright complaints has not improved since Elon Musk bought the platform late last year for $44 billion (R$230 billion at the time), the lawsuit claims.
“To the contrary, Twitter’s internal affairs relating to matters pertinent to this case are in chaos,” argues the suit, filed in the state of Tennessee.
Twitter’s head of trust and security confirmed earlier this month that she left the company, without disclosing her reasons.
The executive was the second trust and safety officer to leave Twitter since the eccentric billionaire Musk bought the platform and reduced content moderation.
Since taking control of Twitter, Musk has laid off most employees, rehired terminated accounts, suspended journalists and started charging for services that were previously free.
“Twitter refuses to stop rampant infringement of copyrighted music (…) because it knows that the most popular and profitable Twitter platform is if it allows such infringement,” the plaintiffs argue.
Allowing the use of unlicensed music in Twitter posts gives the platform an advantage over competitors such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, which pay fees to music publishers, the plaintiffs explain. “Twitter fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical compositions,” they add.
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