Header Image: US District Judge Aleta Trauger
The social media platform X Corp. succeeded in trimming a sweeping copyright lawsuit from more than a dozen music publishers who alleged the Elon Musk-owned company profited from rampant music piracy.
US District Judge Aleta Trauger on Tuesday dismissed claims of direct and vicarious copyright infringement brought by the 17 publishers, which include Universal Music Corp. and Sony Music Publishing.
The judge also dismissed the publishers’ contributory infringement claim, but said they can advance their specific accusations that X, formerly known as Twitter, failed to properly police paying “verified” users and didn’t take down infringing posts quickly.
The publishers, all of which are members of the trade group the National Music Publishers’ Association, sued X in the Nashville-based US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee last summer, seeking $250 million in damages for the alleged willful infringement of around 1,700 songs.
A spokesperson for the NMPA said in a statement the organization is “pleased that the court recognized Twitter’s potential liability and that the publishers’ copyright infringement claim on all the asserted works in the case will be moving forward.”
“The spread of rampant music piracy on the platform is obvious and unacceptable, and we look forward to securing just compensation for the songwriters and music publishers whose work is being stolen,” the statement said.
The complaint said X profited from widespread infringement on the platform and failed to implement a system to take down infringing songs when requested or terminate the accounts of repeat infringers, as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Trauger was largely unconvinced, finding that X has acted “more like a telephone company—providing the mechanism for communication,” rather than as an active participant in the infringement.
But if a class of X users were “brazenly using the platform as an infringement tool, and X Corp. made the decision to unreasonably withhold enforcement” against those users, then the company could potentially face contributory liability, the judge said.
An attorney for X didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Oppenheim & Zebrak LLP and Riley & Jacobson PLC represent the publishers. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP represent X.
The case is Concord Music Group Inc. v. X Corp., M.D. Tenn., No. 3:23-cv-00606, 3/5/24.
