Music publishers express confidence in their case against Anthropic despite a legal setback
Music publishers remain confident against Anthropic despite a court injunction denial.
In late 2023, prominent music publishers including Concord, ABKCO Music & Records, and Universal Music sued Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company. The lawsuit alleged that Anthropic's chatbot, Claude, utilized copyrighted song lyrics in its training process without adhering to the fair use standard of the U.S. copyright law. These publishers sought a court injunction to prevent further use of these lyrics by Anthropic, arguing that their works were being misused commercially.
Recently, a federal court in California denied the injunction request. U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee highlighted a key issue: the music publishers could not precisely define the scope of the injunction, having provided a list of 500 songs they considered merely 'illustrative and non-exhaustive.' Judge Lee pointed out the potential difficulty for Anthropic to comply as the injunction would affect an unknowable range of songs, as publishers could update the list at any time.
Although music publishers faced this initial legal setback, they remained optimistic about the outcome of their broader case against Anthropic. In a statement to Music Business Worldwide, they asserted confidence, noting that despite the narrow ruling, Anthropic had acknowledged the merit of their claims by implementing 'guardrails' against infringing outputs from Anthropic's Claude chatbot.
Anthropic expressed satisfaction with the court's decision. A spokesperson shared their view with Gizmodo, emphasizing that the ruling avoided what they termed as a 'disruptive and amorphous request' by the publishers. Anthropic's defense in the ongoing case asserts that using copyrighted material to train large language models constitutes fair use in accordance with copyright law.
The case underlines the growing tension between artificial intelligence companies and copyright holders. As AI development progresses, defining fair use and acceptable practices in the digital age remains an evolving challenge for both the legal system and the tech industry.
Sources: Gizmodo, Music Business Worldwide, Court Listener