Congress is once again asking Twitter to address its issues around copyright infringement in a new letter sent by a bipartisan group from the House of Representatives. Led by Reps. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), 20 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Monday (Aug. 2) asking whether the company has serious plans to address issues around copyright enforcement that the music industry has been complaining about for years.
“Creative content drives engagement on Twitter, yet unlike numerous other platforms, Twitter has not acquired licenses necessary to ensure that all creators are properly compensated for use of their works,” the letter states. “Given the pervasiveness of this issue, we would like to have a better understanding of how Twitter intends to effectively address these concerns.”
Signees of the letter include: Reps. John Curtis (R-UT), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Tony Cárdenas (D-CA), Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Ted Deutch (D-FL), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Ron Estes (R-KS), Mondaire Jones (D-NY), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Veronica Escobar (D-TX), Bill Johnson (R-OH), Richard Hudson (R-NC), Greg Pence (R-IN), Ben Cline (R-VA), Billy Long (R-MO), David Cicilline (D-RI), Ashley Hinson (R-IA), Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Judy Chu (D-CA).
For years Twitter has had a notable issue with copyright infringement, with Recording Industry of America CEO Mitch Glazier testifying before a December Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property that the music industry had sent the social network over 3 million infringement notices for 20,000 recordings from 2018 to 2020, while noting that Twitter did little to build new tools to tackle the problem.
Multiple sources told Billboard in January that when Twitter did take down content, they were exceedingly slow compared to other platforms of similar scale, taking between “three and five days” to take down infringing content, an eternity in the ephemeral ecosystem that is Twitter.
Recently Twitter has added new features like a Tip Jar for prominent creators that allows fans to pay them directly, which the bipartisan group took issue with. “The addition of Twitter’s Tip Jar feature, which permits users to send electronic payments to posters, demonstrates a lack of understanding and respect for the rights holders involved in the content posted on Twitter,” the letter says. “A more targeted measure that would indeed help its users benefit from their creativity, would be for the company to pay to license the content on its platform. Not only would this improve user experience by granting lawful access to copyrighted works, but it would also ensure that rights holders are properly compensated for their contribution to the content.”
Multiple sources say so far Twitter has been unwilling to discuss licensing agreements with the music industry, preferring to remove content only after rights holders send via Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices sent by rights holders. But many of those rights holders note that the company has an inferior process to report infringing content compared to YouTube and Facebook, which have created automated systems in Content ID and Rights Manager respectively.
The bipartisan group gave Twitter and Dorsey until Aug. 27 to respond with answers to their questions. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from Billboard.
The full letter is below.
Dear Mr. Dorsey:
We write to you regarding the ongoing problem of copyright infringement on Twitter and the platform’s apparent refusal to address it.
Creative content drives engagement on Twitter, yet unlike numerous other platforms, Twitter has not acquired licenses necessary to ensure that all creators are properly compensated for use of their works. Twitter claims it is not a primary destination for sharing music; however, musicians comprise many of the most followed accounts on the platform. The problem of infringement is well-documented. For example, in the first half of last year alone, Twitter itself reported receiving notices identifying 1.6 million infringements.
Additional infringing content almost certainly goes undiscovered as Twitter has taken the unprecedented step of charging creators for a fully functional search API that can identify instances infringement at scale. To be clear, the standard API Twitter offers free of charge is of such limited functionality that it cannot provide meaningful results at the scale of infringement occurring on the platform. While Twitter offers a more sophisticated API to academic researchers for free, it denies these tools to creators whose infringed works help generate revenue for the company. Between refusing to pay creators for their works and obstructing their discovery of infringing works, it appears that unauthorized use of copyrighted works is an unacknowledged part of Twitter’s business model.
The addition of Twitter’s Tip Jar feature, which permits users to send electronic payments to posters, demonstrates a lack of understanding and respect for the rights holders involved in the content posted on Twitter. A more targeted measure that would indeed help its users benefit from their creativity, would be for the company to pay to license the content on its platform. Not only would this improve user experience by granting lawful access to copyrighted works, but it would also ensure that rights holders are properly compensated for their contribution to the content.
Entering into licensing agreements would thus avoid the status quo in which creators rely on crowd-funded donations while Twitter continues to profit from infringement of their works.
Given the pervasiveness of this issue, we would like to have a better understanding of how Twitter intends to effectively address these concerns. Specifically:
1. What will Twitter do to enable content owners to meaningfully search for and identify infringement of their works at a scale commensurate with the amount of infringing tweets occurring on the platform at no additional cost to them?
2. Tweets can be uploaded in a fraction of a second, and hundreds of millions are posted to Twitter every day. What is Twitter doing to ensure that takedown notices are addressed in a manner that corresponds with that speed and volume?
3. Will Twitter add robust content protection technology across all of its platforms and implement it effectively to decrease the posting and reposting of infringing content?
We appreciate your continued attention to our concerns and look forward to your responses to these questions by August 27, 2021.
Source
