The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk-owned micro-blogging site X (previously Twitter) on behalf of Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group, Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, and other major publishers in 2023. The lawsuit alleged that the social media platform “breeds massive copyright infringement that harms music creators” by failing to take action against posts containing copyrighted music.
According to a report by The Verge, a US court has allowed the music labels to move forward with parts of their lawsuit against X. In a filing, US District Judge Aleta A Trauger partially denied X’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The judge said that it’s still not clear “to what extent X Corp may be liable for the infringing acts of users on its platform.
Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter in 2022, the platform has gone through several changes. However, It is important to note that the copyright issues on X have been a problem even before the platform was acquired by the billionaire, As per the lawsuit, the NMPA started sending infringement notices to Twitter “on a weekly basis” in December 2021.

Parts of the lawsuit that has been approved

The report claims that the court is allowing some of the claims in the NMPA lawsuit to stand. This includes allegations that X “allowed users to pay for more forgiving treatment under its anti-infringement policies” through its premium subscription. The subscription also allows s users to upload longer videos.

The court also rejected X’s motion to dismiss the NMPA’s claims that X failed to respond to claims in a timely manner and didn’t take appropriate action against “repeat infringers.”
However, the judge agreed to dismiss the NMPA’s allegations claiming X engaged in direct copyright infringement and that the platform is “vicariously liable” for direct infringements by users.
In his ruling, Trauger wrote: “As the Supreme Court has acknowledged, ‘the lines between direct infringement, contributory infringement, and vicarious liability are not clearly drawn. The ultimate questions presented by this case are whether and to what extent X Corp. may be liable for the infringing acts of users on its platform.”
The judge noted that as the lawsuit moves forward, X’s monitoring and control over users “are relevant to that inquiry,” and so are the platform’s financial incentives to “tolerate infringement.”