Music Publishers Sue Anthropic Over Alleged Illegal Downloading of 20,000 Copyrighted Songs

A group of major music publishers, including Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group, has filed a new lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the AI startup of illegally downloading more than 20,000 copyrighted songs and related materials. The publishers said Wednesday that the case could seek more than $3 billion in damages, which would rank among the largest non-class action copyright disputes ever brought in the U.S.

The lawsuit centers on both the scale of the alleged infringement and how the works were obtained. The publishers claim Anthropic acquired the music through illegal torrenting, arguing that piracy played a role in building the company’s business and training its AI models, including Claude.

The legal fight follows Bartz v. Anthropic, a separate case brought by authors represented by the same legal team. In that matter, Judge William Alsup ruled that training AI models on copyrighted content can be permissible under certain circumstances, but he also made clear that unlawfully sourcing that material — such as through piracy — is not protected.

The publishers say this new complaint was prompted by evidence uncovered during discovery in the Bartz case. They had initially sued Anthropic over roughly 500 works, but now allege the company downloaded thousands more beyond what was first known.

The court previously rejected an attempt to amend the original music lawsuit to add the piracy claims, ruling in October that the publishers had not pursued that line of investigation early enough. As a result, they have now filed this separate case, which also names Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants.

The filing adds to the growing wave of copyright challenges facing AI developers, with rights holders increasingly focusing not only on whether copyrighted material can be used in training, but also on whether the underlying datasets were obtained legally in the first place.

This analysis is based on reporting from TechCrunch.

Image courtesy of Unsplash.

This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.