Photo Credit: Rashidul Islam
Udio has fired back against Sony Music’s supersized copyright suit – including by doubling down on its fair use argument and by accusing the major of engaging “in anticompetitive activities that extend an unlawful monopoly over the production and commercialization of music.”
The AI music platform just recently offered a formal answer to Sony Music’s complaint, which set sail in late July. As reiterated in the suit, Udio now has licensing pacts in place with Universal Music, Warner Music, Merlin, Kobalt, Believe, and the NMPA.
But if the present courtroom confrontation is any indication, Sony Music won’t be joining the list in the near future. With far more allegedly infringed works at issue here than in their ongoing first action against Udio, the filing parties are seeking a mountain of damages for alleged training-related infringement, DMCA violations, and more.
Though decidedly serious, these claims aren’t exactly unique at this stage of the game. Multiple AI developers are grappling with far-reaching copyright allegations from rightsholders, with giants like Anthropic staring down a number of distinct complaints.
Despite the apparent overlap – some of it stemming from Sony Music’s above-noted first Udio case – a few things stand out in the platform’s newly filed response, which is essentially a point-by-point refutation of the major’s allegations.
First, the defendant has once again acknowledged obtaining “audio data from YouTube for use as training data” and acquiring a portion “of its training data by utilizing” stream-ripper YT-DLP.
Does this mean Sony Music will ultimately prove that Udio violated the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions when doing so?
Time will tell, but it’s noteworthy that the defendant is readily acknowledging the stream-ripping itself – especially because similar claims are alive in different suits, all tending to invoke each other’s precedents and decisions.
(Without spilling too much ink on the involved subject, as we previously broke down, the DMCA is said to allow for the bypassing of “copy” but not “access” controls. The jury’s out regarding which category houses YouTube’s anti-circumvention measures; AI giants are adamant that “copy” is an apt descriptor.)
Next, as highlighted, Udio has rallied behind the longstanding “fair use defense” by maintaining that its “AI tool uses a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.”
And this tech process “is quintessential fair use,” per the platform, which is still alleging “copyright misuse,” tying back to the initially mentioned “anticompetitive activities” of Sony Music.
The latter position appears as one of Udio’s many affirmative defenses, and the all-encompassing nature of these arguments (the major’s “remedies are barred at least in part by the applicable statutes of limitations,” to name one) suggests that the potential trial is a ways off.
Notwithstanding the possibility of a quicker schedule in the second Sony Music v. Udio case due to the first’s sweeping discovery, the original suit is now over 26 months old; the court last week scheduled a status conference for late October.
Naturally, the facts raise additional questions about the litigating major’s precise objectives as Udio, currently licensing patents from Universal Music to boot, prepares to launch a rightsholder-supported product.