Policy & Ethics

Music Publishers Sue Anthropic for $3B, Alleging Mass-Scale Piracy

Credit: Outlever

Key Points

  • Major music publishers are suing AI developer Anthropic for over $3 billion, alleging the company illegally downloaded 20,000 songs to train its Claude models.
  • The complaint alleges Anthropic used pirate sites and that CEO Dario Amodei personally approved the illegal downloads to avoid licensing costs.
  • The legal action moves beyond the "fair use" debate to directly challenge the illegal acquisition of AI training data, setting a potential precedent for the industry.

A coalition of major music publishers including Universal Music Group is suing AI developer Anthropic for over $3 billion, alleging the company used BitTorrent to illegally download more than 20,000 copyrighted songs to train its Claude AI models, as first reported by Music Business Worldwide. The lawsuit marks a significant escalation in the legal battles facing AI labs over their data sourcing practices.

  • Torrents of trouble: The legal complaint claims Anthropic engaged in "brazen" piracy, downloading works from "notorious pirate sites" like Library Genesis. The suit also names CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants, accusing them of personally green-lighting the illegal downloads.
  • Following the playbook: The strategy mirrors the one used in the recent Bartz v. Anthropic case, which established that training AI on illegally acquired data is copyright infringement and resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement for authors. This new suit expands the publishers' original 2023 legal action from just 500 songs to over 20,000.
  • Avoiding the 'slog': The complaint alleges this was a calculated business decision to sidestep the cost and effort of legally acquiring training data. It cites internal communications where CEO Dario Amodei described pirate libraries as "sketchy" but proceeded anyway to avoid what he reportedly called a "legal/practice/business slog."

This lawsuit moves the debate beyond "fair use" and directly targets the alleged illegal acquisition of training data, putting the entire AI industry's data sourcing ethics on notice. The legal escalation follows a breakdown in mediation talks between the two parties and comes as Anthropic's valuation has reportedly swelled to over $180 billion.