San Francisco (AFP)
A group of music publishers, which include Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande and the Rolling Stones, have filed a lawsuit against video game platform Roblox for copyright infringement and taken further action against streaming service Twitch.
Roblox "has made hundreds of millions of dollars asking players to pay every time they stream music on the platform - taking advantage of their lack of understanding of how copyright works," accuses David Israelite, the president of the National Association of Music Publishers (NMPA), in a statement on Wednesday.
"And then they hardly take any precautions to prevent breaches or alert users to the risks they are taking," he continues.
The NMPA is demanding $ 200 million in damages for "Roblox's shameless exploitation of music without the necessary rights".
"We are surprised and disappointed by these lawsuits which constitute a total misunderstanding of the functioning of our Roblox platform," responded the company, whose games and game creation application is widely used by children.
It defended itself in a press release from any infringement, mentioning in particular advanced technologies which allow "to detect and prohibit unauthorized recordings".
NMPA is also attacking Twitch, the hugely popular live video game streaming platform owned by Amazon.
The publishers intend to intensify their efforts to force the site to remove the soundtracks used without permission according to them.
"Twitch users are penalized because the platform does not pay for the rights to the music, and as long as it does, NMPA will continue to remove music for which Amazon refuses to pay," the organization said.
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"Our conversations with music copyright holders, whether labels or publishers, are energetic and ongoing and we continue to work with them to establish potential approaches that would be appropriate for Twitch's service and our whole community, "responded a Twitch spokesperson to AFP.
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