Sony再次就30000首歌曲起诉Udio，索赔45亿美元。

      The other two major music labels reached an agreement with Udio months ago, while Sony took a different approach. On Monday, it initiated a new lawsuit in New York, as reported by Billboard, involving 30,117 recordings, which places a significantly larger financial burden on Udio.

      Turning a truce into a weapon

      The core issue of the case revolves around fair use, a defense that Udio relies on to defend its training practices using unlicensed songs. Courts evaluate whether such use negatively impacts the market for the original works, and Sony has found a clear response to that.

      Since then, Udio has entered into training agreements with Universal, Warner, Kobalt, Merlin, Believe, and a group representing U.S. publishers. Sony contends that this demonstrates the existence of a clear licensing market. “A company that pays to license the very inputs at issue cannot credibly maintain that no market exists for those inputs,” the complaint states.

      In essence, the peace that seemed to signify AI's reconciliation with the music industry has been turned into a tool for the labels against the remaining holdout.

      Why pursue two lawsuits

      The second lawsuit serves as a workaround. Sony initially sought to incorporate the 30,000 songs into its original case from 2024, but last month, Judge Alvin Hellerstein declined, citing concerns over trial delays, while indicating that Sony could file a separate claim. Hence, it did.

      The scale of the issue emerged from discovery. After obtaining access to Udio’s training data, Sony claims that audio fingerprinting identified hundreds of thousands of its recordings. The initial 333 songs from the first lawsuit have been described as a “minuscule” portion of the overall issue.

      The allegations

      The complaint outlines three charges: the unauthorized copying of modern recordings, the unauthorized copying of older recordings from before 1972, and the circumvention of YouTube’s protections to extract audio in violation of anti-circumvention laws. Udio has acknowledged its use of YouTube, just like its competitor Suno, while defending it as fair use.

      Sony is seeking the statutory maximum of $150,000 per track and a jury trial. The list of songs mentioned includes iconic artists like Elvis, Beyoncé, Bob Dylan, Britney Spears, and Michael Jackson, as detailed by The Verge.

      The last holdout

      Sony carefully positions itself as pro-licensing rather than anti-AI, highlighting its recent agreements with Spotify and the startup Klay. Its fundamental message is a demand for payment for the resources used.

      The implications extend beyond just music. The issue of fair use for AI training remains largely unexplored, posing a critical question in numerous copyright disputes involving everything from book publishers to film studios. The closest relevant case, involving Anthropic’s book-piracy settlement, sidestepped this question, and a larger parallel dispute against Suno is ongoing.

      The outcome of the Manhattan court's ruling regarding Sony’s theory of market harm will have consequences beyond the music industry. It directly influences how every AI company is expected to compensate for the data it utilizes for training.