4-4 Music Theft: AI in the Courtroom

I'll be honest, I got some warnings before I filed these class action lawsuits. "Are you really going to go against giant tech companies? It's one thing to go after another music business. It's a whole other thing if you're going to go against a huge tech company like Suno, like Udio." Well, we filed the class action lawsuits. [ 00:15 ]

What's the open letter, you ask? Well, right now, this is the draft. We are just launching this as of right now. This is an open letter from independent music creators to AI companies built on stolen music. Now, of the independent artists and leaders, we have Ben Jordan, Curtis King, DJ Payne, and of course, our lead plaintiff, Tony Justice, as well as almost 800 others who have already joined to support the class action lawsuits that we have filed against Suno and Udio on behalf of independent music creators. [ 00:46 ]

If you guys remember, these companies were sued about a year ago by the major record labels and accused of copyright infringement. What we're all just shocked by is that they came back in their answers and they said, "Yeah, we took music off of publicly available platforms." One of the companies in particular, Suno, said, "We took tens of millions of songs." Okay, we did the quick math and we go, if you're taking tens of millions of songs, let's say, off of Spotify, we can reasonably assume the far majority of those belong to independent artists. The far majority of the music created right now is by independent music creators. [ 01:20 ]

So, we came together and we go, you know what? A couple things just happened. The copyright office came and said, "What these AI companies are doing is not okay and it's probably not what we call fair use. If it's not fair use, it's copyright infringement and they owe you money." So, we got together through my law firm, Delgado Entertainment Law, and we joined with a class action law firm in order to file these lawsuits. So, they're done. We have filed. They're cooking. And we're very curious to see how Suno and Udio respond. [ 01:46 ]

Now, in the meantime, as you guys have been wanting to basically support, there's a couple different ways you can support. If you want to join as a plaintiff, you can do that. If you want to just get on the email list to get updates, you can do that. And now, if you actually want to sign this open letter where we'll give you the opportunity to literally sign this so you can be a part of it and have your name on the signature page. [ 02:07 ]

One of the things that we highlight is that we say, you know, independent music creators are some of the greatest innovators. I mean that with all of my heart and soul. Independents not only shape our culture, but they are the ones that take the risks that move our industry forward. Despite their recognizable contributions, independent creators are often the first to be exploited and the last to be protected. And like guys, for the other big content creators who also make great content here on YouTube, their independent artists like the Ben Jordans and the Curtis Kings and the other people who are signing up to be a part of this and to publicly put their name on this. I'm so extremely grateful. [ 02:44 ]

So what's the next step in this? Well, the next step on the litigation standpoint is that the complaints have been filed. We are awaiting formal responses and the responses could be answers. There were answers in the major label litigation cases, right? So not motions to dismiss. So, we're curious to see the strategy that these companies end up taking, particularly given that not only did the copyright office come out and say what they did is likely not fair use. There's no protection. There's no defense to what they did, but now we have in the Northern District of California, we have another federal court in one of the anthropic lawsuits. So, Anthropic being an AI company that makes Claude. Claude is like chat GBT. I call it Chatty. [ 03:26 ]

So it makes Claude and in the building of the training models that are inside of Claude that Claude pulls from is a book library. So there's this little digital book library that they built. And in building it, they took the books that they had legally purchased. They also took books that they had downloaded from pirated websites. And what the court found in a recent ruling is that as it relates to the pirated books, fair use does not apply. [ 03:52 ]

In my own words, the court's interpretation was that fair use is a defense to copyright infringement when you are evolving something into something new, right? You're transforming it and you're acting in a way that essentially like serves the mission of the copyright laws, which is for the progress of science and art. And so when we look at what these companies have been doing to just kind of take what they want, do what they want and they don't care about you when they could have legally licensed, they could have legally purchased or they could have just hired their own songwriters and producers to make the songs, but they didn't do that. So in that particular anthropic case, the court says, well, when you could have and you intentionally chose not to, what you did really wasn't fair. So it probably isn't fair use. And in that case, it was deemed to not be fair use as related to the pirated to the stolen copies. So, we are nothing but ecstatic about that ruling and we're feeling real good about our class action lawsuits. [ 04:44 ]

All right. So, guys, as far as tagging big creators and really any creators who can come and be a part of this to sign this open letter, please, please, please tag tag down below in the comment section. But if you want to support, in fact, you don't even need to be a music creator, but if you want to support this in general, you can get on our email list. You can join as a plaintiff if you are a music creator. And now you can actually sign the open letter if you want to support. You can do all those things. Just go to indieailawsuit.com. I'm Top Music attorney. Don't forget to subscribe. I'm going to see you on the next one. [ 05:18 ]