Suno held liable for copyright infringement by Munich court in AI training case

In a landmark decision, a German court has ruled that AI music generator Suno broke copyright laws by ripping streams from YouTube to build its training data. GEMA has been vindicated, and neither the TDM exception nor fair use apply. Suno argued that they were operating within the boundaries of Germany’s TDM exception and the US fair use doctrine, but both of these claims were dismissed.

GEMA, the German collecting society for music authors and publishers, took legal action against Suno over six famous songs. According to the court, Suno’s v3.5 and v4 models contain substantial portions of the original songs.

1The Court Rejected Both Lines of Defense

Stream ripping was the key factor in the case. By accessing music via a streaming platform (in this case, YouTube) while bypassing its technological protection measures, Suno committed piracy, irrespective of what they did with the data afterwards. It doesn’t matter whether the company itself or its customers are responsible for building the training data and choosing the right model architecture — Suno is liable.

This decision could have serious consequences for the entire AI music industry. If you don’t have licensing deals with the rights owners or switch to using certified open data, you might end up like Suno. And it’s not just the AI music sector that needs to worry — any platform that has collected data without obtaining explicit permission from the creator will be affected.