Major Labels Expand Suno Lawsuit to Include Piracy Claims

The major labels have amended their claim against Suno, alleging the AI music creation platform illegally obtained the sound recordings it copied into its dataset.

The amendment:

• The labels allege that “many if not all” the sound recordings used by Suno to train its model were “illicitly” downloaded from YouTube using a method of music piracy known as “stream ripping.”

Why it matters:

• In the recent case between a group of authors and AI company Anthropic, a judge ruled that while AI training constitutes “fair use” of the source material, it’s only legal if the material comes from legitimate channels.

• Anthropic had downloaded millions of e-books from piracy sites to train its model.

• Following the judge’s ruling it opted to enter a provisional $1.5bn settlement deal with the lawyers representing the American authors.

• As per Complete Music Update, the majors claim that ripping music files from YouTube violates the site’s terms and conditions, and breaches the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

• In other words, it sourced its training data through piracy.

• The lawsuit states: “By ‘stream ripping’ audio files from YouTube, Suno circumnavigated technological measures implemented by YouTube that effectively control access to copyrighted works in violation of the US Copyright Act.”