Sony and Warner are targeting Anthropic; how will the copyright battle in the AI era be fought?
2026-09-06 15:30Models🔥 47.3 heat score
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On August 28, 2026, 35 music publishing entities including Sony Music and Warner Chappell filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, its CEO Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The core issue of the lawsuit is that Anthropic downloaded at least 7 million pirated books and scraped large amounts of text to train the Claude model, allegedly violating copyrights on lyrics and musical scores. The plaintiffs argue that although U.S. courts have deemed large-scale copying of books to be “fair use,” intentional use of pirated materials does not absolve liability; if Claude can generate complete lyrics and create new copies, it will increase the determination of infringement. In the Bartz book copyright case, Anthropic paid $1.5 billion in settlements for similar actions. This lawsuit aims to establish the licensing market for lyrics in AI training. The plaintiffs believe that Anthropic is likely required to pay compensation and sign a payment agreement to gain legal certainty and avoid further damage to the company…
On August 28, 35 music publishing entities including Sony Music and Warner Chappell filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, its CEO Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The controversy centers on Anthropic’s use of at least 7 million pirated books and large amounts of text to train the Claude model, which is suspected of violating copyrights for lyrics and musical scores, potentially leading to billions of dollars in compensation. In a previous case involving Bartz’s book copyrights, Anthropic paid $1.5 billion as compensation for similar behavior. The U.S. court previously ruled that large-scale reproduction of books is “fair use,” but intentional use of pirated materials does not absolve liability; moreover, if Claude can generate complete lyrics and create new copies, it will strengthen the determination of infringement. Music publishers aim to establish a market for “AI training of lyrics” licenses, and Anthropic is likely to pay compensation and sign a payment agreement to gain legal certainty and avoid litigation affecting the company’s future.
Sony and Warner are jointly targeting Anthropic, aiming to curb the use of copyrighted data by its AI models without authorization. Both parties have clearly stated that training is allowed but must be paid for, thereby establishing commercial boundaries. This move marks the entry of the copyright battle in the AI era into a substantive confrontation phase, with the core dispute being the legitimacy of data usage and compensation mechanisms.