The music industry doubles down on lawsuit against Suno, adding fresh ‘stream ripping’ allegations
RIAA ups the pressure on AI music generator Suno, accusing it of ripping songs from YouTube to train its model.
The RIAA ups the anti
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has stepped up its legal fight against AI music generator Suno, according to MBW. Representing the big three labels (Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group), the RIAA has amended its lawsuit to include a new allegation.
The updated complaint alleges that Suno relied on the popular privacy method ‘stream ripping’ to download millions of copyrighted sound recordings from YouTube. These ripped tracks were then used to train the company’s AI model.
The added allegations can be found from page 16 onwards here, with a key section reading:
A follow-up to another recent AI legal battle
This addition comes just weeks after AI company Anthropic agreed to pay a $1.5 billion settlement to authors. That case also centred on evidence that copyrighted works had been illegally scraped and downloaded to train its AI model.
The parallels aren’t lost on the majors. They now believe Suno likely trained their model in a similar fashion. The labels argue this act violates the Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention rules, which exist to stop people from bypassing protections (protections that YouTube had in place) to guard protected works.
What’s at stake?
Of course, the major labels want compensation for any work that Suno illegally copied. They’re now seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work infringed plus $2,500 for each time YouTube’s protections were bypassed.
On top of that, the lawsuit argues that Suno wouldn’t have landed its reported $125 million in funding or its 12 million paid users without piggybacking off copyrighted music.
What this means for the music industry
At its core, this case highlights the same message we keep hearing around AI and copyright: if you want to use protected works, copyright laws can’t be ignored, and you need permission from the rights holders.
While lawmakers have been slow to react to AI and copyright, the Anthropic settlement could be a sign of what’s to come. Still, the RIAA’s case against Suno remains a key moment for shaping the future of music and copyright- as well as how AI models can (and can’t) be trained going forward.
Discover more about the timeline of Suno’s legal battles on the RouteNote Blog:
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