Music publishing giants led by Universal Music Group sue anthropic for $3 billion

Universal, Concord, and ABKCO accuse ai firm of "flagrant piracy" involving 20,000 songs and illegal BitTorrent use.

The legal war over AI and copyright reached a new high on January 28, 2026, as a coalition of the world's most powerful music publishers filed a staggering $3 billion lawsuit against Anthropic. The new complaint, filed in the Northern District of California, represents a massive escalation from previous disputes, with publishers now alleging that Anthropic’s multibillion-dollar empire was built on "systematic, flagrant piracy" rather than just accidental scraping.

The plaintiffs, including Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), Concord, and ABKCO, claim that Anthropic’s founders personally authorized the illegal downloading of millions of files from "shadow libraries" to train their Claude AI models.

Allegations of executive-led piracy

While previous AI lawsuits focused on whether "scraping" the public internet is fair use, this case introduces far more serious allegations of criminal-style acquisition.

The publishers allege that Anthropic co-founder Benjamin Mann personally used BitTorrent to download approximately 5 million pirated books from the notorious site Library Genesis (LibGen) in 2021.

The lawsuit further claims that CEO Dario Amodei was not only aware of this but authorized it, despite internally describing the source as "sketchy."

Within those millions of pirated files were thousands of songbooks, sheet music, and lyric collections. The publishers have identified 20,517 specific works that were allegedly ingested this way.

The list of affected songs includes iconicc titles like "Sweet Caroline," "Wild Horses," "Bennie and the Jets," "Eye of the Tiger," and "Radioactive."

Why this case is different: Fair use vs piracy

The publishers are leveraging a critical distinction recently established in the related Bartz v. Anthropic case. In that ruling, the judge suggested that while training an AI might be fair use, acquiring the data through piracy is a standalone act of infringement that "poisons the well."

By proving that Anthropic didn't just "find" the data on the web, but actively used illegal tools to steal it, the publishers aim to bypass the "fair use" defense entirely. They are seeking the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work, resulting in a record-breaking $3,077,550,000 total demand.

Failing "guardrails" and DMCA violations

Beyond the initial theft, the lawsuit attacks the current performance of Claude 4.5 and the upcoming Claude 5.

Publishers provided evidence that Claude can still be "easily jailbroken" to output copyrighted lyrics in their entirety, directly competing with licensed lyric sites.

The lawsuit also includes a count for the intentional removal of Copyright Management Information (CMI). They allege Anthropic used algorithms specifically designed to treat copyright notices as "useless junk" and strip them away during the training process.

The $350 billion backdrop

The timing of the lawsuit is no coincidence. It comes just days after reports that Anthropic is seeking a new funding round at a $350 billion valuation. The music industry is effectively signaling that if Anthropic is to be one of the most valuable companies on Earth, it must pay for the "creative fuel" that powered its ascent.

"Anthropic misleadingly claims to be an AI 'safety and research' company," the complaint states. "But its record of illegal torrenting makes clear that its business empire has in fact been built on piracy."