Musician and composer Maria Schneider’s long-running legal battle with YouTube has come to an end, after her lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice (meaning it can’t be refiled again with the same court) days before a trial was due to begin.
Schneider had originally sued YouTube in 2020 in what she intended to be a class-action lawsuit, targeting its Content ID tools for not being directly accessible to independent musicians and small labels in the same way they are for larger music companies.
In May this year, the judge in the case refused to certify it as a class action, ruling that copyright claims “are poor candidates for class-action treatment” – because in their view the details of each claim “turns upon facts which are particular to that single claim of infringement”.
Schneider’s legal team had sought a delay in the process while they appealed against that “last-minute, haphazard and erroneous” ruling, but were denied, leading to the agreement to dismiss the case. Neither Schneider nor YouTube has yet commented on the dismissal publicly.