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UPDATE: Roblox refutes allegations of music copyright violation

UPDATE: Roblox refutes allegations of music copyright violation

Update (14/10): Roblox has said that it is not in violation of music copyright.

In a statement, the company said that it uses "industry-leading" copyright tech to make sure its users aren't using anything they shouldn't be.

"As a platform powered by a community of creators, we are passionate about protecting intellectual property rights - from independent artists and songwriters, to music labels and publishers - and require all Roblox community members to abide by our Community Rules," a Roblox rep said, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz

"We do not tolerate copyright infringement, which is why we use industry-leading, advanced filtering technology to detect and prohibit unauthorized recordings. We expeditiously respond to any valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) request by removing any infringing content and, in accordance with our stringent repeat infringer policy, taking action against anyone violating our rules.

"We are surprised and disappointed by this lawsuit which represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Roblox platform operates, and will defend Roblox vigorously as we work to achieve a fair resolution."

Original story (10/6): Games creation platform Roblox is being sued by the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) for over $200m.

As reported by Variety, the lawsuit was revealed by NMPA president and CEO David Israelite at the trade body's annual meeting, in which he said that Roblox has illegally used songs from many different artists, including Ariana Grande, Deadmau5, Ed Sheeran and the Rolling Stones. The organisation is seeking a minimum of $200 million in damages.

As pointed out by Music Business Worldwide, record labels represented in the case include Big Machine, Concord and Kobalt, but Warner and Sony are not. This might be in part because the former acquired a minority stake in Roblox back in January, while the latter partnered with Roblox for events featuring its artists, such as Little Nas X.

“[Roblox has] made hundreds of millions of dollars by requiring users to pay every time they upload music onto the platform – taking advantage of young people’s lack of understanding about copyright – and then they take virtually no action to prevent repeat infringement or alert users to the risks they are taking,” Israelite said at the NMPA meeting.

PCGamesInsider.biz has looked for the lawsuit on PACER but it hasn't appeared on there just yet.

Roblox went public in March of this year and currently boasts a market cap of $51.88 billion. The platform boasted 202 million active users in April.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.