A group of leading music publishers led by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group filed a lawsuit on January 28, 2026 against Anthropic, the creator of the Claude AI assistant. The publishers accuse the company of illegally downloading more than 20,000 copyrighted works, including sheet music, song lyrics, and musical compositions. The damages sought could exceed $3 billion (approximately CZK 69 billion), making the case one of the largest uncertified copyright class-action lawsuits in U.S. history.
From 500 Works to More Than 20,000
The music publishers originally sued Anthropic over its use of approximately 500 copyrighted works. However, the situation changed dramatically during discovery in Bartz v. Anthropic, in which a group of fiction and nonfiction authors similarly accused the AI company of using their copyrighted works to train its Claude models.
In that case, Judge William Alsup ruled that it was legal for Anthropic to train its models on copyrighted content. However, he emphasized that it was not legal for Anthropic to obtain that content through piracy. Bartz v. Anthropic resulted in a $1.5 billion penalty for the company (approximately CZK 34.5 billion), with the affected writers receiving about $3,000 (roughly CZK 69,000) per work for approximately 500,000 copyrighted works.
Through the discovery process in the Bartz case, the publishers claim they learned that Anthropic had also illegally downloaded thousands of additional works. The exact number now cited in the lawsuit is 20,517 works. The publishers attempted to amend their original lawsuit to address the piracy issue, but the court denied the motion in October, stating that they had failed to investigate the piracy allegations earlier. This prompted the publishers to file this separate lawsuit, which also names Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants.
Torrents and Illegal Downloading
Court documents reveal that Anthropic co-founder Benjamin Mann allegedly used torrents to download approximately 5 million pirated books from LibGen in June 2021—including songbooks containing the publishers' copyrighted material. Even more seriously, CEO Dario Amodei allegedly approved this digital theft despite internal warnings about its illegality.
The lawsuit states: "While Anthropic deceptively claims to be an AI 'safety and research' company, its history of illegally torrenting copyrighted works clearly shows that its multibillion-dollar business empire was in fact built on piracy."
The lawsuit details how Claude readily spits out copyrighted lyrics from hits such as "Wild Horses", "Sweet Caroline", and "Eye of the Tiger" when users employ basic techniques to circumvent safeguards. The safeguards claimed to prevent copyright infringement have proven ineffective.
Astronomical Damages
The publishers are seeking $150,000 (approximately CZK 3.45 million) for each willful infringement under federal copyright law, multiplied by 20,517 works. This represents potential damages of $3.077 billion (about CZK 69 billion). By comparison, their original 2023 lawsuit covered only 500 works, with potential damages of approximately $75 million (about CZK 1.7 billion). This new filing represents a 40-fold escalation after evidence from a separate case involving book authors came to light.
In addition to Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group, ABKCO Music has also joined the lawsuit. All three companies are represented by the same legal team that led the Bartz v. Anthropic case.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment. The company is valued at $183 billion (approximately CZK 4.2 trillion), so while $1.5 billion may seem like a substantial sum, it is not a crippling amount for a company of this size.
Impact on the Entire Industry
This case has significance far beyond the payment of damages itself. If the publishers prevail in this dispute, licensing agreements can be expected to become mandatory rather than optional—and these costs will ultimately be reflected in subscription prices for users of AI services.
The case exposes Silicon Valley's popular myth of "building the future." As the publishers state, "Anthropic's multibillion-dollar business empire was in fact built on piracy." It turns out that cutting-edge AI was trained on the same torrented files that college students use to pirate textbooks. The only difference? Anthropic allegedly did it on a corporate scale and charged premium prices for the results.
Source: law.com
