Gaming platform Roblox has been hit with a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement on “a massive scale.”
The U.S. based National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) announced Wednesday it filed the $200 million U.S. lawsuit on behalf of several major music publishers. Canada’s deadmau5 (aka Joel Zimmerman) is also named as a plaintiff.
The NMPA claims Roblox offers users a library of unlicensed songs that can be incorporated into games created on the platform.
“Behind the scenes, they are making millions at songwriters' and artists' expense,” said NMPA president/CEO David Israelite. "We are sending a clear message both to Roblox, and to the video gaming industry at large, that you cannot build a company on the backs of music creators, refuse to pay them, profit off of users by activity and money and get away with it.”
Roblox’s terms of use prohibit copyright infringement but the NMPA lawsuit alleges the company does not properly police music uploaded by its 42 million active daily users, despite threatening to terminate accounts that receive three valid takedown requests from copyright holders.
Billboard reported that Israelite accused Roblox of “taking advantage of young people’s lack of understanding about copyright” and taking “virtually no action to prevent repeat infringement or alert users to the risks they are taking.”
Roblox has not commented on the legal action.
The NMPA also has its eye on Amazon’s Twitch gaming platform and has vowed to file takedown requests to “remove aggressively that which Amazon refuses to pay for.”