Elon Musk's X Corp has filed a motion to dismiss the multi-million dollar music piracy lawsuit, which was recently amended following the Cox Supreme Court ruling. X says the new complaint is partly based on a tweet that was pulled out of context. It argues that even the full version falls short of what the Supreme Court's demanding inducement standard requires.
In a complaint filed at a Nashville federal court in 2023, Universal Music, Sony Music, EMI and others, accused X Corp of “breeding” mass copyright infringement.
The social media company allegedly failed to respond adequately to takedown notices and lacks a proper termination policy.
In addition to the alleged legal shortcomings, public comments by X Corp’s boss Elon Musk were also referenced. Specifically, the complaint mentioned that Musk described the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as a “plague on humanity.”
With hundreds of millions in damages on the line, X Corp fought the lawsuit tooth and nail. This resulted in an early win in 2024, when the court dismissed the music companies’ direct and vicarious copyright infringement claims.
The labels’ contributory infringement claims were partially dismissed, but Judge Trauger allowed the music companies to continue the case based on this remaining claim.
Proving contributory copyright infringement isn’t easy, however, and it became even more of a challenge when the Supreme Court raised the infringement bar in Cox v. Sony Music this year.
After the Cox ruling, the music publishers filed a Second Amended Complaint under seal. While this copy remains outside the public eye today, X Corp filed a motion to dismiss it this week, which partly lifts the veil.
As expected, the music companies are trying to keep their case alive by reframing it as an “inducement” claim. That is the only surviving contributory liability claim in this case under the new standard.
X Corp clearly disagrees and the company filed a motion to dismiss the amended complaint a few days ago. The company notes that the music publishers’ attempt to “retrofit” an inducement claim is simply not supported by the provided evidence.
“Plaintiffs’ attempt to retrofit an inducement theory fails as a matter of law because the allegations suggest only insufficient action to prevent infringement, which Cox and other cases have held cannot support an inducement claim,” X Corp writes.
The music publishers’ inducement theory partly relies on a handful of public statements by Elon Musk, which they argue demonstrate that X encouraged its users to infringe. This includes the “DMCA plague” tweet.
While we don’t have access to the sealed complaint, X says that the music companies have included a truncated version of the tweet, which misses key context.
Musk was responding to reporting about Senator Hawley’s bill to cap copyright duration at 56 years, and expressing a political opinion that current copyright protection terms are too long.
“Plaintiffs truncate one of Mr. Musk’s posts to pretend that he called “the DMCA” itself a ‘plague on humanity.’ In fact, he said that “Overzealous DMCA is a plague on humanity”,” X writes.
“Plaintiffs’ excision is telling. No reasonable observer could read Mr. Musk’s full comment and think he was inciting infringement. Instead, he was expressing a political opinion – responding to reporting about Senator Hawley’s bill to retroactively cap copyright duration at 56 years.”
X further clarifies that Musk wasn’t flatly against all copyright protection. In a tweet posted a few months later he stressed that reasonable takedown requests are appropriate and will always be supported.
The motion to dismiss adds more context than these tweets alone. It also references the music industry’s alleged threat to start a “massive” takedown notice campaign following a disagreement over licensing.
This is the same dispute that resulted in X’s antitrust complaint against the NMPA, Sony, Universal, and other major music publishers, claiming that they “weaponized” the DMCA to force licensing deals.
“Mr. Musk’s understandable frustration with such tactics was not inducement,” X writes.
The Musk tweet argument is colorful, but X’s motion to dismiss cites more arguments. For example, it counters the music publishers’ allegation that X’s platform features including display algorithms, and subscription and advertising systems, showed that X depends on infringing music.
X notes the court already dismissed this argument, noting that general platform features benefit all users equally and say nothing about intent to promote infringement specifically.
The publishers’ failure-to-stop-infringement allegations are not convincing either, X argues.
Much of the amended complaint allegedly returns to the original criticism that X was too slow to remove infringing content and too lenient with repeat infringers. The Cox ruling took away that argument.
As the Supreme Court made clear, contributory liability cannot rest on a provider’s knowledge of infringement and insufficient action to prevent it. That doesn’t qualify as inducement.
After 18 months of discovery, including the production of 150,000 pages and 21 depositions, X says the publishers found nothing that meets the inducement standard. As a result, they want the complaint dismissed.
For now, the motion sits with Judge Trauger. The music publishers will file their response, and the court will decide whether the Second Amended Complaint survives or whether Cox will effectively end this case.
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X Corp’s motion to dismiss and supporting memorandum, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, are available here (pdf) and here (pdf).
Source: Torrent Freak