June 14 (Reuters) - A group of 17 music publishers sued Twitter in Nashville, Tennessee, federal court on Wednesday, accusing the company of enabling thousands of copyright violations by allowing users to post music without a license.
Twitter drives user engagement with "countless infringing copies of musical compositions," the lawsuit said.
Members of the National Music Publishers' Association, including Sony Music Publishing (6758.T), BMG Rights Management and Universal Music Publishing Group (UMG.AS), are seeking more than $250 million in damages for alleged infringement of nearly 1,700 copyrights.
Twitter "routinely ignores" repeat infringement by users who post tweets that contain unlicensed music, the lawsuit said.
The publishers said Twitter encourages user infringement, which increases engagement and ad revenues while giving it an "unfair advantage" over platforms that pay for music licenses.
Persons:
Elon Musk, David Israelite, Musk, Blake Brittain, David Bario, Richard Chang
Organizations:
Twitter, National Music Publishers ' Association, Sony Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing, Elon, Facebook, YouTube, Thomson
Locations:
Nashville , Tennessee, Washington