The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) is seeking more than $250m (£197.7m) in damages. In a lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court, in Nashville (USA), the association alleges that Twitter allows and encourages the infringement for profit purposes.
The NMPA, which represents companies such as Sony Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management and Universal Music Publishing Group, says that Twitter continues to “earn huge profits from the availability of unlicensed music, without paying the necessary fees”, and that the situation does not improved since Elon Musk bought the company. It adds that the infringements have given Twitter an unfair advantage over competitors such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, which pay for music licenses.
“Twitter stands alone as the largest social media platform that has outright refused to license the millions of songs on its service. The change of ownership of Twitter, in October 2022, has not led to improvements in the way it acts in relation to copyright, on the contrary”, says the president of the NMPA, David Israelite.
Musk, who recently assumed the title of the richest person in the world, bought Twitter last year for $44 billion.
A NMPA cites o downsizing from Twitter as “critical departments involved with reviewing content and policing terms of service violations” and the resignations of trust and safety chiefs Yoel Roth and Ella Irwin. It also alleges that Twitter routinely ignores repeat offenders and known infringements.
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Earlier this month, Linda Yaccarino, former head of media advertising at NBCUniversal, became the new head of Twitter. She oversees business operations on the platform, which has struggled to make money.
Since buying Twitter, Musk has cut 75% of its workforce, including teams tasked with tracking abuse, and has changed the way the company verifies accounts.
* With information from BBC News.
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