American Labels Complain about Piracy by Telegram

Telegram is accused of poor filtering of musical compositions in open channels.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has compiled a report for the US government complaining of music piracy. Along with torrent trackers, streaming platforms and pirated music kiosks, the list of the most popular services for illegal music includes Telegram messenger. The issue is that Telegram users can freely exchange any files. Therefore, if a user creates an open channel and uploads pirated music to it, anyone can listen to it.

The Association stressed that it did not want to wage war on the messenger, it just opposed illegal distribution of music. The report mentions that right holders sent about 18 thousand requests to Telegram demanding their tracks to be removed, but it had no effect in most cases, as the messenger just gave users notices of such claims without force removing the files. 

However, Telegram did not always give its users so much freedom. 2 years ago the messenger removed the channel that shared Taylor Swift’s album Reputation.