The record labels suing AI music platform Udio for copyright infringement have shot back at Udio’s attempt to have part of the lawsuit dismissed.
In a memorandum filed in a federal court in New York on Friday (October 24), lawyers for the record labels said Udio’s motion “mischaracterizes” the labels’ legal arguments “and the legal landscape.”
The labels, representing all three of the major recording companies, amended their complaint against Udio in September, adding allegations that the AI company “illegally scraped” YouTube videos in order to collect content on which to train its AI models.
The move appears to have been inspired by another copyright lawsuit, this one against AI company Anthropic, in which a court ruled earlier this year that Anthropic’s unauthorized use of copyrighted books counts as “fair use” under US copyright law, but the company’s downloading of massive amounts of books from online pirate libraries does not.
Anthropic responded by agreeing to a $1.5-billion settlement with the authors who had sued it. Since then, lawyers for rightsholders in a number of different lawsuits against AI companies have beefed up their copyright claims with allegations the AI companies illegally accessed the materials they used to train their AI.
On October 10, Udio filed a motion to dismiss the labels’ charge of illegal scraping of YouTube videos, arguing that US copyright law doesn’t actually criminalize downloading of videos that are available to the public.
The YouTube scraping claims are “a gambit to try to evade application of the fair use doctrine,” lawyers for Udio wrote in the motion, which can be read in full here.
They argued that the US’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) forbids the circumvention of “access controls” that prevent users from reading, viewing or listening to certain content, but it doesn’t forbid circumventing “copy controls” that prevent reproduction of a work once it has been accessed.
“Anyone can access YouTube content,” Udio’s lawyers wrote. “You can go to YouTube and watch music videos without restriction. Plaintiffs do not allege otherwise, nor do they contend that Udio circumvented any [technological protection measures] at all to view YouTube content in the first instance.”
Scraping YouTube videos isn’t a violation of the DMCA, but “may give rise to a claim for copyright infringement – which is already part of this case,” Udio’s lawyers wrote.
In their response, lawyers for the record labels said Udio’s argument contains “fatal flaws,” namely that it treats the DMCA’s prohibition on circumventing access “as an all-or-nothing proposition,” and that it treats “access controls” and “copy controls” as “a binary choice. Both positions are wrong.”
Udio’s interpretation “would mean that once a copyright owner makes a work accessible to the public to any degree, there can be no ‘access control’ that guards the work. That is not the law,” lawyers for the record labels wrote in their memorandum, which can be read in full here.
They argued that Udio had confused “controlling access” to content with “preventing access” to content, and therefore misunderstood the law as spelled out in the DMCA.
“Udio’s all-or-nothing reading of [the DMCA] would mean that once a copyright owner makes a work accessible to the public to any degree, there can be no ‘access control’ that guards the work. That is not the law.”
Lawyers for record labels, in case against Udio
The big three recording companies’ case against Udio is running in almost perfect parallel with a case the record companies are pursuing against another generative AI music platform, Suno.
Both Suno and Udio were sued by the record labels at the same time last year, with Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group labels accusing the AI companies of “mass infringement” of copyright.
And as with Udio, the labels are seeking to add claims against Suno that it “stream-ripped” YouTube videos to train its AI.
Udio’s motion to dismiss the YouTube scraping charges makes the same arguments as the ones Suno made in its own motion to dismiss, which was filed seven days before Udio’s motion and uses some of the same language, including an assertion that there is a “burgeoning consensus” that it’s “fair use” for AI companies to use copyrighted music without authorization or payment.
That assertion refers to two recent federal copyright cases in which judges agreed with the AI companies on the “fair use” argument, including the abovementioned case against Anthropic.
Adding claims of illegal access to copyright lawsuits against AI companies may not be a slam-dunk win for copyright holders. Earlier this month, the judge in music publishers’ lawsuit against Anthropic ruled that piracy claims can’t be added to the case.Music Business Worldwide
