Lawsuit focused on X/Twitter copyright infringement partially allowed to move forward

The growth of social media as a platform for content creation and use has sparked many discussions and legal attempts to define usage and ensure proper payouts to labels and artists. Now a lawsuit aimed at X/Twitter has been allowed to partially move forward as the companies complain of copyright infringement.

The platform’s potential liability hinges on how it responds to infringement, a question that extends beyond copyright. Similar questions arise in institutional negligence cases like the UHS lawsuit, where multiple plaintiffs pursue claims for systematic failures across facilities. 

The new filing states: The plaintiffs complain that, ‘[w]hile the Twitter platform began as a destination for short text-based messages,’ it has since become a ‘hot destination for multimedia content, with music- infused videos being of particular and paramount importance.’ There are lawful ways for a social media company to offer such media – particularly, by entering into licensing agreements with rights holders, as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat have done. Copyright licences, though, typically must be paid for, and X/Twitter is, the plaintiffs suggest, effectively trying to generate the kind of revenue that one would expect as a lawful purveyor of music and other media, without incurring the cost of actually paying for the licences.”

X/Twitter is unique from other social media platforms in that it has never negotiated a licensing deal with music labels and publishing houses.