Twenty major record labels, including Universal and Sony, sued Twitter on Wednesday, accusing the social network of profiting from its artists’ compositions, in what they deem a “massive intellectual property infringement that harms music makers.”
These publishers have filed a civil suit in a court in Nashville, Tennessee, against X Corp, billionaire Elon Musk’s company that also owns Twitter, Efe reported.
Music companies require a jury trial to obtain US$150,000 (approximately €139,000) in damages for each work that is infringed, and in some cases some compositions can go as high as “hundreds of thousands of dollars”.
According to the document, Twitter uses the complainants’ music and video repertoire to “attract and retain” users and enhance their interactions, which “fuels the social network’s lucrative ad business” to the detriment of authors and detriment. of his” compositions, protected by copyright.
“Twitter has declined requests to obtain licenses or other necessary agreements to legally use the music compositions on its platform”also refer to the companies, pointing out that other social networks such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat pay for the use of these works.
The lawsuit only pertains to the state of Tennessee, which is home to Nashville, one of the music capitals of the world, as it is home to many of the plaintiffs and affected artists.
Publishers point out that they have spent “considerable time and resources identifying” the infringing works and specific “copyright” violations, and refer to having informed the social network about the existence of about 300,000 illegal “tweets.”
Twitter was acquired last year by Musk, who has been making changes for months to try to create value with the social network’s services and increase revenue by cutting staff costs.
This week, Musk handed over the helm to Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s new executive chairman.
After buying Twitter for $44,000 million (about $40,300 million), Musk fired several of the company’s top executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal.
It also laid off more than two-thirds of employees, allowed controversial figures who had been banned to return to the social network, and changed the account authentication system.
Source: DN
