From Hundreds of Songs to Tens of Thousands
The initial lawsuit, filed in October 2023, focused on just under 500 musical compositions that publishers said were improperly used to train Claude. The new Anthropic Music IP Suit dramatically expands that scope.
According to the complaint, publishers later learned that Anthropic had separately torrented millions of copyrighted books from pirate libraries, many of which allegedly contained sheet music and songbooks. They say this activity only came to light in July 2025, after U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued a ruling in a related case brought by book copyright owners against Anthropic.
That decision, publishers contend, publicly exposed Anthropic’s alleged torrenting practices for the first time.
Songbooks, Torrenting and Lost Revenue
The new lawsuit alleges Anthropic downloaded “countless pirated copies” of songbooks and sheet music through BitTorrent, naming well-known works such as Sweet Caroline, Bennie and the Jets, Eye of the Tiger, Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Bittersweet Symphony, She Will Be Loved, Viva La Vida, California Gurls and Radioactive.
When Anthropic used BitTorrent, the publishers say, it did not merely download the works — it also automatically uploaded unauthorized copies to other users, violating the publishers’ exclusive distribution rights and fueling further infringement.
Each pirated file may have been shared thousands or even tens of thousands of times, the complaint alleges, resulting in substantial lost revenue. The publishers also accuse Anthropic of helping sustain pirate libraries by participating in the very systems that enable widespread infringement.
