Bad day for Elon Musk: Twitter sued by 17 music labels, faces eviction from office over unpaid rent - Check details

The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Twitter in a federal court in Tennessee’s Nashville. The trade group is claiming that the tech giant has repeatedly violated copyright law by hosting music without permission.

Twitter has been running operations from Colorado’s Boulder since 2014.

Twitter’s business has fallen into disarray since the microblogging platform was acquired by Elon Musk for $44bn in October last year. Several reports suggest that Twitter has struggled to retain advertisers since Musk changed the policies around content moderation. This has hampered the growth of the tech giant since advertisers make up for 90 percent of the company’s revenue.

Now it seems that Twitter is in further trouble. The landlord of the property, where Twitter office is located in Boulder, Colorado, has secured a court order for eviction of the company over non-payment of rents for three months. Besides, the San Francisco-based company has been sued by the National Music Publishers’ Association and its members for copyright infringement.

Twitter facing eviction from Boulder office

Twitter has been running operations from Colorado’s Boulder since 2014, when it acquired tech company Gnip Inc. A Chicago-based landlord owns Twitter’s office at 3401 Bluff St. in Boulder.

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But, according to a report by the Denver Business Journal, Twitter owes three months’ rent to its Boulder landlord.

Reportedly, the landlord took Twitter to court last month. Subsequently, a Boulder County judge has ordered the sheriff to remove the tech giant from its office.

Twitter had signed a lease for four office suites at 3401 Bluff St. in 2020 and as many as 300 Twitter employees once worked out of the 65,000-square-foot office there. Interestingly, the social media giant is facing similar lawsuits over unpaid rent at its other offices, including London and San Francisco.

One of Twitter’s landlords, in a $1.3 million lawsuit, has alleged that the company had not paid rent for its office in Oakland, California, since November last year.

Music companies are suing Twitter

The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Twitter in a federal court in Tennessee’s Nashville.

The trade group is claiming that the tech giant has repeatedly violated copyright law by hosting music without permission and failing to control infringers, reported The Verge.

NMPA, which is a consortium of music publishers, has alleged that Twitter "fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical compositions, violating Publishers' and others' exclusive rights under copyright law."

The suit has been filed on behalf of 17 music publishing companies including Sony, Universal, BMG, EMI, Polygram, Concord and Warner Chappell.

NMPA’s lawsuit is damning as it alleges that the social media platform willfully infringed the work of about 1,700 songs and seeks up to $1,50,000 for each case of infringement. NMPA has also alleged that Twitter engaged in contributory infringement and vicarious infringement.

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