Music Industry vs. X | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: This looks interesting. This is from Digital Musicnews dot Com. Music publishers x copyright lawsuit officially on pause following the Supreme Court's cos decision all Deadlines shelved as a social media platform eyes dismissal so recently on the show, was it last week? It was last week? Right? The Supreme Court, which you know, we live in a time where I don't necessarily agree with a lot of the rulings. We won't get into that, but they got that one right, in my opinion, they ruled that an Internet service provider cannot be held liable for what its users do in terms of.

0:35 Speaker 2: That would have been grotesquely awful of it.

0:37 Speaker 1: In terms of in terms of yeah, in terms of downloading pirated music and so forth. But looks like, uh, looks like that might uh well.

0:48 Speaker 2: That could knock the stuff out of the water. That's yeah, Ben pending people who have been trying to.

0:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's a news story here. So according to this, the presiding judge may made the pause official. Oh wait, let me back up. Major music publishers long running copyright infringement lawsuit against x so x, of course being formerly Twitter, is now on a hard pause. Following the Supreme Court's Cox versus Sony Music decision, which is the case that I was talking about last week. And by the way, that wasn't just Sony Music, but UMG was involved in that lawsuit as well as other labels. But okay, so this says the presiding judge made that pause official in a recent order after the publishers and the Elon Musk owned social platform asked the court to stay all current deadlines.

1:36 Speaker 1: And the stay request didn't come out of left field, as we previously broke down. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous re unanimous ruling in favor of Cox Communications, the internet service provider that was in the other lawsuit, found that service providers can be held contributorily liable only if they induced user infringement or tailored their core offerings to enable infringement. And by the way, that's one of the reasons I said I agreed with the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in that case because to me, and the analogy I used is holding internet service provider is responsible for everything that their users do.

2:17 Speaker 1: That would be akin to holding auto manufacturers responsible every time somebody gets into a car accident where somebody accidentally gets killed on the highway. You know, oh, you created a product that was used in this accident. Therefore you are responsible. You know it's absurd, So I agree with the Supreme Court's ruling says here Naturally, the decisions significance for similar isp repeat piracy cases took center stage out of the gate, but the narrow secondary liability definition is already factoring into a number of copyright cases in and beyond the music world.

2:53 Speaker 1: One of the non music cases textbook publishers copyright and trademark infringement show down with Google, which promptly moved to stay discovery depending the resolution of the Cos versus Sony related motion for partial judgment. Enter exis push to toss the remainder of publishers infringement claims due to the perceived lack of secondary liability. So if I'm understanding this correctly, and again I'm not a legal expert of any kind, But if I understand this correctly, so the argument from X is that, Okay, you're not going to hold Cox Communications responsible.

3:31 Speaker 1: You also cannot hold X responsible for what our users do on our platform if they are infringing on copyright. And again I would agree. You know, I'm not a big fan of Elon Musk, but again I would agree with with that argument. You should not this. This has come up, but this has been coming up for years, by the way, in terms of social media platforms. This concept that some people really believe in that social media platforms should be somehow held responsible for everything that their users do, and that they should be held liable for that that everything that their users do on their platforms.

4:09 Speaker 1: And these social media platforms already police that stuff. But if you're going to make it so that these social media platforms are liable for every single thing that users do that might infringe on a copyright or or may break some law, or then or you will end you will end social media.

4:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, you say boo about somebody and suddenly there's a lawsuit. But the internet company is gonna heck of a lot more money than the average person. So if there's a street to their bank account, everybody's gonna get off and take it.

4:45 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you would end social media if you're gonna hold you know, if you're gonna hold everything responsible for every little thing that people post.

4:52 Speaker 2: How does YouTube do do videos? Right? Because then if it's running on Exfinity. Exfinity is liable for everything gets played on YouTube.

5:01 Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you can't. Yeah, you can't do it. You can't do it.

5:04 Speaker 2: Oh, every once in a while to get something right.

5:07 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, says here. It's against this backdrop. With a dismissal demand looming large, that both sides requested a stay of all deadlines in the current schedule so they could meet and confer regarding the appropriate next steps for this litigation, and with Judge Aletta Trauger having signed off on the request as mentioned, the litigants are expected to submit a joint schedule proposal by next Wednesday, April eighth, So this Wednesday coming up actually, besides addressing X's anticipated attempt to end the litigation, said schedule will cover the plaintiff's opposition and possible motions to amend the complaint and or seek reconsideration of the prior partial dismissal.

5:48 Speaker 1: On the latter front, it's been two years in change since the court dismissed vicarious and direct infringement claims against X, and while it's unclear what the reconsideration requests may look like, the possible descriptor is important here. The plaintiffs only indicated that they may file related motions. Time will tell where this definitive pause leads the year's running case and what's in store for other infringement disputes impacted by Cox versus Sony. As noted, different ISP disputes jump out.

6:22 Speaker 1: The major label suit against Altis was gearing up for a jury trial until being stayed pending the Supreme Court's determination. But so do complaints like Epidemic Sounds nearly four year old first copyright action against Meta. Last week, the Facebook parent formally moved to invoke Cox versus Sony into its summary judgment motion. The presiding judge granted the request, and Meta has until April sixteenth to file a supplemental brief addressing the impact of Cox communications, in other words, addressing the impact of that ruling.

6:57 Speaker 1: So the Supreme Court has effectively set a precedent here with their ruling and Cox versus Sony saying that you know you cannot hold you cannot hold Internet service providers, whether it be an ISP or perhaps whether it be a social media platform, you cannot hold them liable and responsible for every little thing that every user does on their platform that might be illegal or you know or maybe not necessarily illegally illegal, but might be something that might cause a civil action, you know, defaming someone's character, et cetera.

7:32 Speaker 1: And by the way, all these social media platforms already have rules against that kind of thing, but it's up to them to enforce them, and they're not always going to get it right, and sometimes they sometimes is almost an overcorrection, if that's the right term, because sometimes people get caught up in a net. You know, it's happened to me. I mean, I've run into problems with YouTube, not recently, not for a while, but I've run into problems with YouTube where I've been flagged for things in my YouTube videos where it's like, well, wait a minute, I'm being flagged for something I didn't too or I'm being flagged for saying something I'm not allowed to say on YouTube.

8:04 Speaker 1: But I wasn't saying it. I was actually quoting someone else who had said it, and I was using that as an example of what that person said. That particular thing has caught me a few times because they have the bots that patrol the videos, and then a bot hears me say something that again, it's not me saying it, it's me repeating something someone else said, and then I'm refuting it that exact thing has happened to me, and then YouTube flags it, and then I get a strike on my account, and then I have to appeal to strike, and da da da da da, and it's a whole thing.

8:35 Speaker 1: But I would not expect anyone as frustrated as I might get with YouTube. I would not expect there to be I would not expect YouTube to be legally liable for anything that I do. You know, whether I'm being held accountable for something I actually did or something that a bot has decided that I did. But I'm kind of vented a little bit about YouTube because I have gotten caught up in that net. But my point being, these social media companies already police that it's never going to be perfect, But we don't need laws or rulings in terms of civil penalties that hold them accountable for something that.

9:14 Speaker 2: You couldn't.

9:16 Speaker 1: It would be an unreasonable standard to hold any business or industry to that standard. It would be unreasonable