What happened
Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, seeking damages for 'tens of thousands' of copyrighted works. They are asking up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance where copyright data was stripped.
Why it matters
This is the latest in a series of high-profile suits against Anthropic, which recently settled a publishing industry suit for $1.5 billion. The complaint also names co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as individual defendants, alleging they used BitTorrent to download over five million pirated books.
What to watch
If the court awards the maximum amount, damages could total several billion dollars. Anthropic has not yet responded to a request for comment.
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This lawsuit is part of a broader legal battle against Anthropic over its use of copyrighted material in training its AI models. The complaint alleges that Anthropic and its founders used BitTorrent to download over five million pirated books and scraped lyrics from sites like MusixMatch and LyricFind, which had paid licenses. This follows a recent $1.5 billion settlement with the publishing industry, and there are also pending suits from Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO, BMG, and Round Hill Music. The damages sought could reach several billion dollars if the court finds in favor of the plaintiffs. The naming of individual founders as defendants is notable, as it could set a precedent for holding executives personally liable for AI training data practices.
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