A group of 17 music publishers sued Twitter in Nashville, Tennessee, federal court, accusing the company of enabling thousands of copyright violations by allowing users to post music without a license. Members of the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), including Sony Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management, and Universal Music Publishing Group, seek more than $250 million in damages for alleged infringement of nearly 1,700 copyrights. The lawsuit said the longstanding infringement has gotten worse since Elon Musk bought Twitter, and that other major platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube properly license music from the publishers. The microblogging platform "routinely ignores" repeat infringement by users who post tweets that contain unlicensed music, the lawsuit said. The publishers said Twitter encourages user infringement, which increases engagement and ad revenues while giving it an "unfair advantage" over platforms that pay for music licenses.

Source: The Hindu June 15, 2023 18:36 UTC