Anthropic Sued By Sony, Warner For Allegedly Stealing Tens of Thousands of Songs, Torrenting Copyrighted Works (axios.com) 19
Axios reports:
Some of the world's largest music publishers filed a blockbuster lawsuit against Anthropic late Friday night, alleging "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history."
The suit is the opening salvo in what is now likely to be a yearslong fight over music, AI, and how intellectual property is protected in a new era of technology... The Sony/Warner lawsuit is notable because it's broad. It alleges Anthropic unlawfully trained its models off "tens of thousands" of music publishers' copyrighted compositions, whereas other lawsuits have focused on a narrower set of works. BMG's lawsuit against Anthropic, for example, claims infringement against 493 compositions.
What they're saying: "Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic's 'Claude' series of artificial intelligence ('AI') models," the plaintiffs write in the 48-page complaint. They also claim that Anthropic pirated thousands of copyrighted musical works...
More details from The Verge: The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance when identifiable copyright data was stripped. In total, the damages could amount to several billion dollars if a court finds in Sony and Warner's favor and awards the maximum amount...
The suit alleges that Mann used BitTorrent to download over five million pirated books, and that employees downloaded at least two million more from Pirate Library Mirror. It also claims that Anthropic scraped lyrics from sites like MusixMatch and LyricFind, which paid to license content from the labels.
The suit is the opening salvo in what is now likely to be a yearslong fight over music, AI, and how intellectual property is protected in a new era of technology... The Sony/Warner lawsuit is notable because it's broad. It alleges Anthropic unlawfully trained its models off "tens of thousands" of music publishers' copyrighted compositions, whereas other lawsuits have focused on a narrower set of works. BMG's lawsuit against Anthropic, for example, claims infringement against 493 compositions.
What they're saying: "Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic's 'Claude' series of artificial intelligence ('AI') models," the plaintiffs write in the 48-page complaint. They also claim that Anthropic pirated thousands of copyrighted musical works...
More details from The Verge: The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance when identifiable copyright data was stripped. In total, the damages could amount to several billion dollars if a court finds in Sony and Warner's favor and awards the maximum amount...
The suit alleges that Mann used BitTorrent to download over five million pirated books, and that employees downloaded at least two million more from Pirate Library Mirror. It also claims that Anthropic scraped lyrics from sites like MusixMatch and LyricFind, which paid to license content from the labels.
a lot to prove (Score:2)
Downloading music could be illegal, training using illegally obtained information could also be. But you'd need to prove the illegal downloading and provide that the training materials were illegally obtained. An AI could "listen to" music that was broadcast just like humans can, it seems as though this is just another permutation of the same baseless assertion that AI training and other forms of use are inherently different.
Of course, no one should doubt that AI companies are consuming copyrighted works
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The fact they've targetted Anthropic alone suggests they already have the evidence of internal Anthropic comms.
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Do you know how a human listens to music? If not, then presumably you can prove that AI "listens to" music in the same way as a human, even if you can't know exactly how the human or the AI does it.
Please describe this equivalence, so we can judge the plausibility of your assertion that AI "listens to" music in the same way as a human.
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Do you launch a terminology debate too when people says AIs "steal" copyrighted works ?
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It's only a matter of time... (Score:2)
How long before the labels start going after new artists that sound like existing ones?
You know, where someone is "inspired" by a singer, a band or a songwriter that they've idolized for years and thus their own creations are heavily influenced by those artists?
If there's a chance for a new Lambo or Porsche in the corporate car park at EMI or WMG you *know* they'll be working on such law suits right now!
I've also wondered why there's no restriction on voice-actors who impersonate famous people -- but if you
Re: It's only a matter of time... (Score:2)
That line's been blurred already.
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How long before the labels start going after new artists that sound like existing ones?
You know, where someone is "inspired" by a singer, a band or a songwriter that they've idolized for years and thus their own creations are heavily influenced by those artists?
There's (probably) a fundamental difference, even if you want to equate AI recombination and human inspiration.
Human artists - in theory - used legal means to hear what inspired them. Could be listening to it on broadcast radio, where the right to hear it was arranged through ads. Could be listening to it on a mix tape from a friend, which many countries have laws for. It's not assumed, suspected, or proven that the musician who cites Sting or Ozzy stole the albums they're inspired by.
The tech bros p
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negotiate a deal that would probably have been either refused or astronomical.
Your honor, you see I was right to steal that Mercedes because the price they were asking, it was too high for me to pay it but you see I really really wanted it.
Re: Sued? why no criminal complaints? (Score:2)
This is what bugs me hardest. If some kid pirates one of my albums , he could be facing serious time in a cell with a dude who considers rape his primary hobby. But if some Silicon Valley exec pirates *everyone's* albums, well that's a 400mil bonus and a visit at the Whitehouse. Where's the justice if justice isn't fair?
Billions in fines, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Make a public show out of this by bulldozing their data centers to accomplish this.
Copyright is a gift by government (Score:2)
Copyright is a gift by government which may become too troublesome to be worth the expense. Copyright expires
(despite Disney and their puppet Sonny Bono who lived far too long considering the damage he did) after all, and could expire much sooner than later. It's an annoyance.
If artists want money they can emulate the Grateful Dead who generated a fanatically loyal following (that long outlived the band) by encouraging taping, even off their sound boards at concerts.
Cue rip and destroy CDs in... (Score:2)
3... 2... 1...
they did it with the books, why not CDs, SA-CDs and DVD-Audio?
what a timeline (Score:3)
Good luck to Sony and Warner (Score:2)
I posted something similar in another thread about the same topic, but here we are again
in case anyone needs the refresher:
Straight from www.copyright.gov ( the link: https://www.copyright.gov/circ... [copyright.gov])
If you don't feel like reading the link, here's the relevant part:
Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106a, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, f