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June 25, 2024
The Recording Industry Association of America, on behalf of Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group Recordings and Warner Records, announced the filing of two copyright infringement cases based on the alleged mass infringement of copyrighted sound recordings copied and exploited by music generation services Suno and Udio, which use artificial intelligence.
The lawsuits, filed separately in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claims that cover recordings by artists of multiple genres, styles and eras have been used without permission.
Ken Doroshow, RIAA’s chief legal officer, said the suits are “straightforward” cases of copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a “massive scale.”
“The [defendants] are attempting to hide the full scope of their infringement rather than putting their services on a sound and lawful footing,” Doroshow said in a statement.
The cases seek declarations that the two services infringed plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings; injunctions barring the services from infringing plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings in the future; and fiscal damages for the infringements that have already occurred.
“The music community has embraced AI, and we are already partnering and collaborating with responsible developers to build sustainable AI tools centered on human creativity that put artists and songwriters in charge,” RIAA CEO Mitch Glazier said in a statement. “But we can only succeed if developers are willing to work together with us. Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it’s ‘fair’ to copy an artist’s life’s work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all.”
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