Music publishers sue Anthropic for $3B over ‘flagrant piracy’ of 20,000 works

A group of prominent music publishers, spearheaded by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group, has initiated legal action against Anthropic, alleging that the AI company unlawfully downloaded over 20,000 copyrighted musical works. This includes not just the songs themselves but also sheet music and lyrics. In a statement released on Wednesday, the publishers indicated that the potential damages from this case could exceed $3 billion, marking it as one of the largest non-class action copyright lawsuits in U.S. history. The legal team behind this case is the same that represented plaintiffs in Bartz v. Anthropic, where authors accused the company of misusing their copyrighted materials to enhance AI models like Claude. In the Bartz case, Judge William Alsup determined that while Anthropic could utilize copyrighted content for training purposes, acquiring such content through piracy is illegal. The outcome of that case resulted in a $1.5 billion penalty for Anthropic, with affected authors receiving approximately $3,000 per work for around 500,000 copyrighted items. Although $1.5 billion appears significant, it represents a minor setback for a company valued at approximately $183 billion. Initially, the music publishers had filed a lawsuit against Anthropic regarding its use of about 500 copyrighted works. However, through the discovery process in the Bartz case, they uncovered evidence of Anthropic downloading thousands more without authorization. After an attempt to amend their original lawsuit to include these piracy allegations was denied by the court in October—citing a lack of earlier investigation—the publishers opted to file this separate lawsuit. This new action also names Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann. The lawsuit claims, "Despite Anthropic’s misleading portrayal as an AI 'safety and research' entity, its history of illegally torrenting copyrighted materials reveals that its vast business empire is fundamentally built on piracy." Anthropic has yet to respond to requests for comment on this matter.