AI
Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic for billions over alleged mass copyright theft
The music publishers are seeking up to $150,000 per work, claiming Anthropic used tens of thousands of copyrighted songs without permission to train its Claude AI models.
The Verge
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed a federal lawsuit against Anthropic in California, accusing the AI company of systematically downloading and scraping copyrighted musical works to build its Claude language models. The damages claim could reach several billion dollars if the court awards the maximum penalties.
The allegations#
The music publishers argue that Anthropic engaged in widespread copyright infringement by downloading pirated books and lyrics through torrent networks, then scraping additional content directly from licensed music sites. The complaint specifically alleges that Co-Founder Benjamin Mann oversaw the download of over five million pirated books via BitTorrent, with Anthropic employees obtaining millions more from sources like Pirate Library Mirror. Additionally, the company is accused of extracting lyrics from MusixMatch and LyricFind—platforms that had paid for rights to distribute that material.
The filing describes the conduct as "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history."
Damages sought#
Plaintiffs are requesting up to $150,000 in damages per copyrighted work, plus an additional $25,000 for each instance where copyright metadata was deliberately removed. With tens of thousands of songs allegedly involved, potential liability could exceed several billion dollars.
A pattern of litigation#
This marks the latest in a growing line of copyright suits targeting Anthropic. The company recently settled with a coalition of publishers for $1.5 billion over the use of pirated books in training data. Anthropic has also faced separate lawsuits from Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO, BMG, and Round Hill Music over alleged unauthorized use of lyrics and musical content.
Specific works cited#
The complaint identifies several well-known tracks discovered in Anthropic's training data, including Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer," Earth, Wind & Fire's "September," Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," and Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings." Anthropic has not yet responded to the lawsuit.
