Music Publishers File New Piracy Suit Against Anthropic Alleging Mass Torrenting of Copyrighted Works

"The complaint noted that despite Anthropic's purported adoption of so-called guardrails, the models still generate infringing lyrics and can be easily jailbroken by users to output copyrighted content. Concord Music Group, Inc., Universal Music Group, and ABKCO Music, Inc. filed a complaint on Wednesday for copyright and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violations against Anthropic PBC, Dario Amodei, and Benjamin Mann in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, adding another lawsuit against generative artificial intelligence companies."

"The publishers alleged that Anthropic engaged in mass piracy by downloading millions of unauthorized copies of books containing their copyrighted musical compositions from notorious pirate library websites, including Library Genesis (LibGen) and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi). The complaint argued that Anthropic used BitTorrent to acquire these works and subsequently trained its Claude AI models on the stolen content, thereby directly infringing the publishers' exclusive rights and undermining the music licensing market."

"According to the filing, evidence revealed in a separate case, Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, showed that Benjamin Mann personally engaged in illegal torrenting activities. The filing further alleged that Dario Amodei personally discussed and authorized this conduct. Concord, Universal, and ABKCO asserted that Anthropic concealed these torrenting violations during discovery in an earlier case, Concord Music Group, Inc., et al. v. Anthropic PBC (Concord I), which addressed the exploitation of 499 musical compositions in Claude AI models."

Concord Music Group, Universal Music Group and ABKCO Music sued Anthropic PBC and executives Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann in the Northern District of California for copyright and DMCA violations. The complaint alleges Anthropic downloaded millions of unauthorized book copies from pirate sites including LibGen and PiLiMi using BitTorrent, trained Claude models on the stolen content, and thereby infringed publishers' exclusive rights and harmed the music licensing market. Evidence from Bartz v. Anthropic is alleged to show Mann engaged in illegal torrenting and Amodei discussed and authorized the conduct. Exhibit lists identify thousands of specific musical works.

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