Universal Music and Sony Music filed an amended copyright complaint against the music AI company Suno on 25 August 2026, adding allegations that the company built its training dataset by illicitly downloading recordings from YouTube. The filing followed rulings earlier in August 2026 by Judge F Dennis Saylor, who permitted the new claims while refusing a separate request to expand the list of named works by more than 60,000 tracks.
What the amended complaint alleges
The updated lawsuit states that "Suno acquired many, if not all, of the copyrighted sound recordings in its training data by illicitly downloading them from YouTube" using a method of music piracy known as stream ripping. The two majors had been seeking to add these allegations since September 2025. The new claims are framed under section 1201 of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the circumvention of technological protection measures.
Suno raised technical and legal objections, insisting it violated no laws when obtaining audio from YouTube. Judge Saylor concluded that the labels' account amounts to a plausible claim for violation of section 1201, while noting that deciding the issue will require more analysis of how YouTube's technological measures and Suno's alleged circumvention tools actually work. A plausible claim is a threshold for the case to proceed. It is not a finding that Suno did anything unlawful.
The track list request was refused
Alongside the stream ripping claims, the majors asked to increase the number of named infringed works from 560 to 61,026. Under US copyright law, a copyright owner can seek statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work. The original list therefore implied up to $84 million in potential damages, while the expanded list would have pushed the theoretical maximum above $9.1 billion.
Saylor refused the expansion, citing the "obvious consequences of complexity and delay" and the likelihood that such added complexity this late in the proceedings would prejudice Suno. He did, however, acknowledge that the labels could simply file a second, separate lawsuit covering the additional works. Sony has already taken that route in its parallel case against Suno's rival Udio: when another judge declined to let it add more tracks there, Sony promptly submitted a second lawsuit covering the extra recordings.
Why the Anthropic precedent looms over the case
The strategic weight of the stream ripping claims comes from a ruling in a separate US copyright case brought by a group of authors against Anthropic. In that litigation, the judge accepted Anthropic's argument that AI training can qualify as fair use, but only where the developer started with legitimately sourced copies. Anthropic had in fact relied on millions of pirated ebooks, a circumstance that preceded a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and the authors.
The music industry continues to argue that AI training is never fair use. Even so, if the Anthropic reasoning is followed in this case, Universal and Sony would be in a stronger position if they could show Suno's training copies were pirated rather than legitimately obtained. Demonstrating that ripping recordings from YouTube was unlawful is central to that effort. The labels' wider hope is that stronger arguments and a larger potential damages figure will push Suno towards settlement and licensing deals, likely involving changes to its business model.
What is established and what is merely claimed
Established: the amended complaint was filed on 25 August 2026; Judge Saylor permitted the stream ripping claims and refused the expanded track list; the original complaint named 560 works; the requested figure was 61,026; statutory damages can reach $150,000 per work; and in the separate Anthropic case a judge accepted a qualified fair use defence tied to legitimate sourcing, after which Anthropic agreed a $1.5 billion settlement.
Merely claimed: that Suno actually downloaded the recordings from YouTube by stream ripping, that any such downloading circumvented technical protection measures within the meaning of section 1201, and that Suno's training was therefore unlawful. Suno denies it violated any law. The court has ruled only that the labels' account is plausible enough to proceed, and no court has yet decided whether Suno's training constituted fair use or infringement.
Sources
- Complete Music Update report on the amended Suno complaint and Judge Saylor's rulings · completemusicupdate.com