Anthropic faced copyright lawsuits from Sony, Warner Chappell
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have initiated legal action against Anthropic, alleging that the AI firm engaged in extensive scraping, torrenting, and downloading of copyrighted materials for the purpose of training its Claude AI models. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Northern California, additionally names Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. Anthropic has contested the allegations and stated its intention to mount a vigorous defence in court, according to source. The publishers assert that Anthropic acquired and utilised “tens of thousands” of copyrighted musical compositions without authorisation, encompassing works linked to notable songs such as Eye of the Tiger, September, Uptown Funk, Hallelujah, Taylor Swift’s Paper Rings, and Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You.
The complaint alleges that Anthropic acquired copyrighted material via torrent networks and extensive scraping, encompassing content from digital archives like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. It also alleges that the company extracted lyrics from websites such as Musixmatch and LyricFind. The publishers assert that Claude is capable of reproducing copyrighted lyrics either verbatim or in a manner that is substantially similar to the original text. They contend that these outputs have the potential to compete with music produced by human songwriters.
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell are pursuing statutory damages of as much as $150,000 for each work they claim was wilfully infringed. Additionally, they are seeking up to $25,000 for each alleged removal or alteration of copyright management information. The potential financial exposure could amount to billions of dollars, although any ultimate damages would hinge on the court’s determinations. The publishers have also requested a jury trial and are seeking additional remedies, including the destruction of infringing copies and an accounting of Claude’s training data. The case arises in the wake of Anthropic’s recent $1.5 billion settlement with authors and publishers concerning allegations related to the use of pirated books in the training of Claude.
A US judge determined that Anthropic downloaded over seven million pirated books, although the previous case also highlighted a distinction between utilising copyrighted material for AI training and the unlawful acquisition of that material. The music publishers are leveraging that prior litigation as a component of their argument, contending that AI companies are obligated to acquire copyrighted creative works in a lawful manner and to provide compensation to rights holders when necessary.
