Photo Credit: BoliviaInteligente
Amid intensifying stream-ripping sub-disputes with Suno and Udio, the major labels are firing back against the AI music generators’ dismissal pushes.
The firmly worded dismissal-motion opposition recently arrived in the appropriate dockets, with the majors having amended their separate complaints last month. As we reported then, following mixed-bag fair use rulings and Anthropic’s huge book-piracy settlement, the adjusted actions each added a DMCA claim.
Specifically, Suno and Udio are accused of violating section 1201 due to their purported “stream-ripping” circumvention of YouTube’s rolling cipher anti-piracy measure. In plainer language, the AI platforms allegedly downloaded protected audio from YouTube videos for training purposes; it probably doesn’t need saying that the majors (and other rightsholders) didn’t authorize the alleged stream ripping.
Just like that, a pair of years-old stream-ripping legal battles (one involving Russia’s FLVTO, the second pertaining to Connecticut’s Yout) have once again taken center stage. Important on more than the precedent level, the much-cited Yout action is alive at the appeal stage and is now fielding inputs from Suno as well as Udio.
As the music generators spelled out earlier this month, there’s purportedly a key distinction between section 1201’s described access and copy controls. In a nutshell, the DMCA allegedly doesn’t prohibit bypassing the latter (which, in keeping with the name, center on stopping the copying of publicly available content) but does prevent one from bypassing the former (including, for instance, subscription-platform passwords that limit access to certain media).
Unsurprisingly, the AI developers are adamant that any alleged stream-ripping falls squarely into the copy category – and that the DMCA claims should therefore be tossed. Also unsurprisingly, the majors are on a completely different page.
Enter their newly filed opposition to Udio’s October 10th motion to dismiss the DMCA claim.
The way the majors see things, the defendant’s dismissal argument “suffers from two fatal flaws,” the first being the alleged framing of section 1201 access “as an all-or-nothing proposition,” the second being the alleged treatment of “‘access’ and ‘copy’ controls as a binary choice.”
“Udio’s position assumes that a TPM [technological protection measure] can ‘control[ ] access’ only if it completely blocks access to a work,” the majors wrote. “But controlling access is not all or nothing. A measure can qualify as an access control if it regulates the manner and conditions under which access occurs, as opposed to barring access altogether.”
Furthermore, section 1201 allegedly covers YouTube’s rolling cipher in that the measure allegedly bars some forms of access (like reaching videos’ underlying files for off-platform use).
“Unable to locate support in the text or relevant caselaw,” the majors drove home, “Udio leans heavily on legislative history to manufacture a bright-line divide between access controls and copy controls.”
As for the position that the majors’ section 1201 interpretation would “chill fair use,” Udio’s “remedy lies with the Library of Congress, which can grant class-specific exemptions through the rulemaking process,” per the text.
In any event, it’d be premature to toss the stream-ripping claim with a motion to dismiss, the majors maintained in more words.
As the suits against Suno and Udio are substantially similar, we can safely switch between the technically distinct cases to paint a fuller litigation picture. In opposing the majors’ motion for leave to add the stream-ripping claim, Suno criticized their access-controls definition as overly broad.
“But that definition of access controls is broad enough to also cover all copy controls, which can just as easily be characterized as measures that control ‘how users may interact’ with a work by (e.g.) allowing someone to view a work but prohibiting them from copying it,” Suno penned.
“That, in turn, would collapse the distinction between these two distinct categories of controls and unwind Congress’s careful decision to prohibit circumvention of access controls while permitting circumvention of copy controls,” proceeded the company, which today released its “v4.5 All” model.
Furthermore, Suno also emphasized its and Udio’s aforementioned ongoing involvement in the Yout v. RIAA courtroom confrontation.
“Worse still,” Suno added, “Plaintiffs continue to cite the Yout district court opinion as persuasive authority. But they fail to mention that the Second Circuit panel that has been reviewing that opinion for the past two years recently granted Suno leave to file its amicus brief out of time and invited the parties to the Yout appeal to submit 20-page briefs in response to Suno’s brief.”
