Apple has told a court in California that it should dismiss a lawsuit filed against it by music streaming app Musi, which went legal last month after being kicked out of Apple’s App Store in September.
Responding to the lawsuit, Apple says that - under its App Store terms - it’s allowed to remove the Musi app “at any time, with or without cause”. And even if it wasn’t, the decision to kick Musi out “followed numerous, credible complaints alleging that the Musi app violates the legal rights of third parties”, the tech giant’s new legal filing reveals.
We knew that a complaint from YouTube in July prompted the axing of Musi from the App Store, but Apple says that it also received a complaint from the US National Music Publishers Association and at least seven complaints from the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry.
Musi sources in its music from YouTube. As Apple describes in its new court filing, the app then “removes YouTube advertising content and replaces it with Musi’s own or allows ad-free streaming for a fee”.
Apple adds that it “received many complaints from third parties alleging that Musi reproduces copyrighted content from YouTube without authorisation from the copyright holders and deprives artists and other rightsholders of royalty revenue”.
In its lawsuit last month, Musi said that Apple had informed it in August about the complaint it received from YouTube, which accused the music app of infringing its intellectual property and violating its terms of service. But, Musi argued, no detail was provided regarding YouTube’s claims and, when it requested more information directly from the Google-owned video platform, those requests were ignored.
In its new legal filing, Apple says that the record industry had already complained numerous times about Musi prior to YouTube’s intervention. The IFPI submitted a formal complaint to Apple in July 2023 “alleging that Musi violates YouTube’s terms of service and infringes its members’ copyrights”.
Musi, it adds, “engaged with IFPI and Apple but failed to resolve IFPI’s concerns”. As a result, “On at least six separate occasions between September 2023 and May 2024, IFPI demanded that Apple remove the Musi app due to copyright violations”.
The NMPA made a submission in September in support of YouTube’s intervention. It stated, “Musi is an audio streaming app that leeches its content offerings from YouTube’s API to avoid paying copyright licensing fees”. Apple says that the music publisher trade body also “submitted evidence in support of its contention that Musi violates YouTube’s terms of service, including snippets of Musi’s code”.
Musi was aware of all of this, Apple argues, meaning it had a full understanding of the issues with the way its app sourced music, even if YouTube’s complaint in July didn’t include a huge amount of detail.
“Musi now argues that Apple’s decision to remove its app was supported only by a ‘five word complaint’ from YouTube”, Apple goes on, adding, “That is false and Musi knows that it is false”.
However, it stresses once again, even if that was true, Apple was still within its rights to remove Musi. “Apple is contractually permitted to remove the Musi app for any reason, including receipt of YouTube’s so-called ‘five word complaint’”, it concludes, “and that contractual right is not limited in any way”.