tech
January 29, 2026
Music publishers sue Anthropic for $3B over 'flagrant piracy' of 20,000 works
Originally, these music publishers had filed a lawsuit against Anthropic over its use of about 500 copyrighted works.
TL;DR
- Music publishers led by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group are suing Anthropic.
- They accuse Anthropic of illegally downloading over 20,000 copyrighted songs, including sheet music, lyrics, and compositions.
- The lawsuit seeks over $3 billion in damages.
- This is one of the largest non-class action copyright cases filed in U.S. history.
- The same legal team represented authors in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, which involved similar accusations of using copyrighted works for AI training.
- In the Bartz case, a judge ruled AI training on copyrighted content is legal, but acquisition through piracy is not.
- The Bartz case resulted in a $1.5 billion judgment for authors, with recipients getting about $3,000 per work.
- The music publishers initially filed a smaller lawsuit but discovered more alleged piracy during the discovery process of the Bartz case.
- A previous motion by the publishers to amend their original lawsuit was denied because they failed to investigate piracy claims earlier.
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann are also named as defendants.
- The lawsuit claims Anthropic's business is built on piracy, despite its claims of being an AI safety and research company.