In brief: X is trying to turn the Supreme Court's recent Cox decision into a weapon against the music publishers that sued the company in 2023. The move could deal a major blow to one of the music industry's most closely watched copyright cases.
X argued that the Supreme Court's ruling wiped out the contributory infringement claim, the only major theory left standing in limited form after last year's motion to dismiss.
The original 2023 suit, backed by the National Music Publishers' Association on behalf of 17 publishers including Concord, Sony, and Universal, accused X (then still Twitter) of allowing widespread use of unlicensed songs and sought roughly $250 million in damages over nearly 1,700 works.
The plaintiffs said they had sent around 300,000 infringement notices since late 2021 and argued the company routinely failed to act quickly enough.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2022
In March 2024, Judge Aleta Trauger tossed the direct and vicarious infringement claims, but allowed parts of the contributory claim to move forward.
This contributory claim was related to allegations of softer enforcement for verified users, slow responses to takedown notices, and inadequate action against repeat infringers.
What changed was the Supreme Court's March 25 ruling in Cox v. Sony Music. In a unanimous opinion, the Court said a service provider is contributorily liable for a user's infringement only if it intended the service to be used for infringement.
That intent can be shown only in two ways: if the provider induced infringement through specific acts, or if the service is tailored to infringement and lacks substantial non-infringing uses. That was enough to overturn the liability theory used against Cox, and X says it should do the same here.
In its March 27 filing, X argued that social media plainly has substantial lawful uses and that the publishers never alleged the company actively encouraged piracy in the Grokster sense.
It even pointed to the harsher facts in Cox, where internal emails included "F the DMCA," arguing that if those facts still fell short of contributory liability, the claims against X should not survive either.
The company wants a status conference and says it is prepared to seek judgment on the pleadings or reconsideration rather than let both sides burn through more expert and summary-judgment costs.
The publishers are not conceding the point. In a March 31 response, they said Cox does not mean the case should be dismissed and maintained that their allegations and factual record still support moving forward, though they agreed that a temporary stay makes sense while the court decides the next procedural steps.