Music publishers have been suing X for copyright infringement since June 2023, when it was still called Twitter.
In June last year it seemed like a settlement was imminent, as the two sides filed a joint motion to pause the case for 90 days in order to “facilitate an orderly and negotiated resolution”.
How did that go? Not so well, judging by the news this month that X has filed an antitrust lawsuit against 18 publishers as well as their industry body the NMPA, accusing them of collusion: having “conspired to leverage their combined market power”.
The accusation is that the publishers tried to “coerce X into taking licenses to musical works from the industry as a whole, denying X the benefit of competition between music publishers”. TorrentFreak has the full legal filing, while Variety has the sharp response from NMPA boss David Israelite.
“X/Twitter is the only major social media company that does not license the songs on its platform,” he said.
“We allege that X has engaged in copyright infringement for years, and its meritless lawsuit is a bad faith effort to distract from publishers’ and songwriters’ legitimate right to enforce against X’s illegal use of their songs.”
