It appears that Twitter cannot catch a break since Elon Musk acquired the company. The social media giant is hit with another lawsuit over copyright infringement, with the plaintiffs saying that it allows users to post content with copyrighted music.
Twitter Accused of Copyright Infringement
The lawsuit filed at the Federal District Court in Nashville claims that the social media illegally used around 1,700 songs as users post copyrighted music without permission. The National Music Publisher's Association (NMPA), with 17 music publishers, filed the lawsuit.
The Association's President, David Israelite stated that Twitter is the only large social media platform that has completely refused to license millions of songs on its service. Despite that, the company was said to be lax with its policies again copyright infringement in music.
With approximately 1,700 infringed music, the lawsuit demands that Twitter pay for the damages at $150,000 for each song, which amounts to around $250 million. According to The New York Times, the NMPA notified Twitter of around 300,000 infringement incidents since December 2021.
To make their point, the plaintiffs listed specific examples of when the infringements occurred, such as the post about Rihanna's song "Umbrella," wherein the post played two minutes of the song and garnered 221,000 views with 15,000 likes.
Twitter was in the process of negotiating with music publishers like Universal, Sony, and Warner before Musk acquired the company in 2021, although the deal did not go through. It was also unlikely to happen due to the cost of licensing alone.
As reports show, the tech billionaire has not been very attentive when it comes to the bills of the social media company as it refused to pay rent for one of its headquarters and its contract with Google Cloud. Compensating publishers could cost Twitter more than $100 million in just a year.
Twitter's measures to take down other copyrighted material have also been lacking ever since its workforce numbers were reduced. Full movies were uploaded on the social media platform, which would take hours if not a whole day before they were taken down.
Twitter's Financial Troubles
Getting hit by another lawsuit is the last thing Twitter needs right now, especially with a huge price like $250 million being demanded of the company. In terms of value, the company has reached its lowest point as it dropped to a third of Musk's acquisition price.
Despite its cost-cutting measures, new policies, and features, it's just not reaching the profitability Musk is hoping for. With the tech billionaire's plans to make the company worth $250 billion someday, as mentioned in Gizmodo, it is certainly going down the wrong path.
One of the most impactful events that caused Twitter's decrease in value is the loss of its advertisers. Twitter ads are the company's become source of revenue, and with several advertisers leaving the platform, Twitter is taking in huge losses.
Musk's layoffs have also been backfiring as the social media platform's performance is also affected. Without enough staff, some aspects of the platform are experiencing issues that are affecting the users' interactions with the app.
