--- title: Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic for... description: Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a multi-billion dollar copyright lawsuit against Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/sony-music-and-warner-chappell-sue-anthropic-for-copyright-infringement-over-claude-training-data-5vcu5lbjm twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic for copyright infringement over Claude training data | daily.dev og:description: Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a multi-billion dollar copyright lawsuit against Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/sony-music-and-warner-chappell-sue-anthropic-for-copyright-infringement-over-claude-training-data-5vcu5lbjm og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/5Vcu5lbjm.png og:image:alt: Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic for copyright infringement over Claude training data og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic for copyright infringement over Claude training data **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 3 min read · 7 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a multi-billion dollar copyright lawsuit against Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, alleging illegal torrenting and scraping of copyrighted works, including song lyrics, to train Claude. The complaint claims Mann discussed acquiring LibGen data with Amodei's approval, that pirated material reached commercial Claude models indirectly through synthetic data and reinforcement feedback, and that Anthropic stripped copyright metadata from training material. The suit seeks up to $150,000 per infringed work, disclosure of training data, and destruction of infringing copies. It follows the Bartz v. Anthropic case, which resulted in a $1.5 billion payout after a judge ruled that piracy-sourced training data was illegal even though training on copyrighted works itself was not. ## Content Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Anthropic and its co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing the company of illegally torrenting and scraping copyrighted song lyrics to train Claude. The complaint names works by Taylor Swift, Mariah Carey, and others, including songs like "Eye of the Tiger" and "Hallelujah." The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed composition, disclosure of Anthropic's training data and collection methods, and destruction of any infringing copies. ## What the complaint alleges The suit's core accusations are specific and damaging: - Co-founder Benjamin Mann discussed acquiring data from Library Genesis (LibGen) with CEO Dario Amodei, who approved torrenting it. A prior court already found Mann knew the books were pirated. - Even after Anthropic stopped using pirated sources directly, the complaint argues the material still reached commercial Claude models indirectly — through synthetic data and reinforcement feedback from earlier Anthropic models trained on that data. - Anthropic allegedly stripped copyright-identifying information from training material. - During Claude's finetuning, human reviewers were asked to evaluate lyric reproductions and consistently selected accurate ones over inaccurate ones, effectively training the model to reproduce copyrighted lyrics verbatim. ## Context and prior cases This isn't Anthropic's first run-in with copyright claims over the same archives. In the *Bartz v. Anthropic* case, a judge ruled that using copyrighted works for training was legal, but acquiring them through piracy was not — and Anthropic was ordered to pay $1.5 billion, with individual authors receiving roughly $1,500–$3,000 per title. The music publishers are clearly aware of that settlement and appear to be pushing for significantly more. This suit is also broader than earlier music-related cases, including one filed by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group in January. Adding international pressure, a Munich court ruled in November 2025 — in a case against OpenAI — that storing memorized lyrics inside a model constitutes reproduction, and that the EU's text-and-data-mining exception doesn't apply to pirated sources. That ruling isn't final, but combined with the EU AI Act's training-data transparency requirements, it signals that the legal environment around AI training data is tightening on both sides of the Atlantic. The core question the music publishers are pressing — whether the path from pirated source material to commercial product can be laundered through intermediate training steps — hasn't been definitively answered yet. That's what makes this case worth watching. ## Questions this post answers ### Why are Sony Music and Warner Chappell suing Anthropic? Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell allege Anthropic illegally torrented, scraped, and downloaded copyrighted works, including song lyrics, to train Claude. The complaint says co-founder Benjamin Mann discussed acquiring LibGen data with CEO Dario Amodei, who approved torrenting it, and that Anthropic stripped copyright-identifying information from training material. Plaintiffs seek up to $150,000 per infringed work. _daily.dev tracks AI copyright litigation for developers weighing legal risk in AI tooling choices._ ### What did the court rule in the Bartz v. Anthropic case? A judge ruled that using copyrighted works to train AI models is not inherently illegal, but acquiring those works through piracy is. This distinction resulted in Anthropic being ordered to pay $1.5 billion, and it forms the central legal argument in the subsequent Sony Music and Warner Chappell lawsuit against the company. _Follow evolving AI copyright rulings on daily.dev to gauge legal exposure when adopting AI models._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 10 comments across x (as of 2026-08-30). **TL;DR:** Reactions are largely skeptical or dismissive, framing the suit as another cash-grab lawsuit following the earlier Bartz settlement, though some note the scale of alleged infringement is striking and could chill other labs with similar data practices. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 30% mixed · 60% skeptical **The pushback** - Some call the lawsuit a 'legal theater shakedown' by opportunistic lawyers rather than a genuine grievance. - Others argue damages claims are inflated since courts typically scale down fair-use damages by orders of magnitude. - A few note the scale of alleged infringement (tens of thousands of songs) is strikingly audacious and echoes the prior author settlement. **By community** - x (skeptical): Replies mostly dismiss the suit as legal opportunism or inevitable industry litigiousness, with a couple pointing out the precedent set by the earlier billion-dollar settlement. **Open questions** - Will damages actually scale to the multi-billion dollar claim or be reduced as in prior fair-use cases? **Highlights** > @rohanpaul_ai This is another legal theater shakedown by lawyer sharks. @grok - Please provide settlement details of the previous legal shakedown where Anthropic was ordered to pay billions to publishers and/or authors. Meta just last week settled a historic $16billion shakedown as well. > — [CloudR907 on x · 1 comments](https://x.com/CloudR907/status/2093781232085831938) > @CloudR907 @rohanpaul_ai Anthropic settled Bartz v. Anthropic for $1.5B with authors and publishers in 2025 (final approval July 2026). About $3,000 per work for ~500,000 books from pirate sites like LibGen. Training on legal copies was fair use. Meta's ~$16.7B settlement last week was with states over > — [grok on x](https://x.com/grok/status/2093781381922836760) > @rohanpaul_ai multi-billion damages assume every training sample caused maximum harm. courts have historically scaled those claims down by orders of magnitude in fair use cases > — [Chahatusharma on x](https://x.com/Chahatusharma/status/2093756999502536828) > @rohanpaul_ai Every lab with a LibGen-shaped hole in their training data just felt a chill. > — [gamestoneai on x](https://x.com/gamestoneai/status/2093764980814262462) > @rohanpaul_ai let those without a torrenting sin cast the first stone > — [bb\_thibodeau on x](https://x.com/bb_thibodeau/status/2093801519808156051) **Source threads** - [x](https://x.com/rohanpaul_ai/status/2093753446881275962) · 0 points · 10 comments ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@jliter85** · 2 upvotes > The part I’ll be watching is what happens with the argument about the data being passed through earlier models and synthetic training. If the original material was obtained illegally, does putting several training steps between the source and the final model actually change anything legally? The answer to that could have a pretty big impact on how AI companies handle training data going forward. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Music publishers sue Anthropic for $3B over ‘flagrant piracy’ of 20,000 works](https://daily.dev/posts/music-publishers-sue-anthropic-for-3b-over-flagrant-piracy-of-20-000-works-6falaorrx) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#claude](https://daily.dev/tags/claude), [#anthropic](https://daily.dev/tags/anthropic) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/sony-music-and-warner-chappell-sue-anthropic-for-copyright-infringement-over-claude-training-data-5vcu5lbjm) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic for copyright infringement over Claude training data","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/sony-music-and-warner-chappell-sue-anthropic-for-copyright-infringement-over-claude-training-data-5vcu5lbjm","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/sony-music-and-warner-chappell-sue-anthropic-for-copyright-infringement-over-claude-training-data-5vcu5lbjm"},"datePublished":"2026-08-29T21:58:41.279Z","dateModified":"2026-08-30T12:30:25.474Z","description":"Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a multi-billion dollar copyright lawsuit against Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann,...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/87a3004e31517379f7b91955332b2a8e?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/87a3004e31517379f7b91955332b2a8e?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collections","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collections","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--fk_6ycEi--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996001/logos/collections?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/sony-music-and-warner-chappell-sue-anthropic-for-copyright-infringement-over-claude-training-data-5vcu5lbjm","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":7},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"machine-learning,llm,claude,anthropic","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collections","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic for copyright infringement over Claude training data"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/sony-music-and-warner-chappell-sue-anthropic-for-copyright-infringement-over-claude-training-data-5vcu5lbjm","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"The part I’ll be watching is what happens with the argument about the data being passed through earlier models and synthetic training. 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