AI Music Digest

The US Department of Justice filed a Statement of Interest of the United States on Tuesday, September 1, in the consolidated copyright litigation against OpenAI and Microsoft in the Southern District of New York, before Judge Sidney Stein. It is the first time the federal government has stepped into the wave of AI training-data cases. Music Business Worldwide, which read the 20-page filing, reports it was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and argues that training large language models on copyrighted text is fair use — “extraordinarily transformative,” in the brief’s framing, and not a market substitute, because training copies neither replace the originals nor expose their content. MBW quotes the filing directly: “The United States has a strong interest in this Court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law.”

The government’s reasoning is competitive and geopolitical as much as doctrinal. Per AppleInsider’s read of the same brief, the DOJ argues that “rules of law that make it significantly more difficult to develop a robust AI industry in the United States therefore threaten national security,” and that a ruling against fair use “would hamper competition in the market for LLMs, because only the largest technology companies might have the capital necessary to pay licensing fees.” The plaintiffs are unimpressed. The Intercept — itself a plaintiff in the consolidated case alongside the Times, Tribune Media and Ziff Davis — reports that its attorney Matt Topic called the government’s position “an unprecedented, uncompensated transfer of IP rights from news organizations to tech companies.”

Two limits are worth stating plainly. The filing concerns text, not music, and it does not bind Judge Stein or decide the case. But MBW’s analysis argues the structure of the brief is what should worry rightsholders: on its reading, the DOJ splits AI development into three stages and defends only the middle one — the act of training itself — which cuts against the strategy Universal and Sony have used against Suno and Udio, where infringing-sounding outputs are offered as proof that the training was unlawful. Music’s live fair-use fights, against Anthropic in California and against Suno in Massachusetts, now have the United States on the record on the other side of the doctrine.

Why It Matters: Fair use is the single question on which music’s biggest AI cases turn. The government’s view is not binding, but it is the most authoritative endorsement of the training-is-transformative argument that AI defendants have yet been handed.

SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, filed a statement of claim against Suno in the Federal Court of Canada on Wednesday, September 2. The claim alleges Suno trained its models on effectively all music files reachable on the open internet without obtaining licences, and — the part that makes this a performing-rights case rather than a training case alone — that Suno then generated and streamed outputs closely resembling songs in SOCAN’s repertoire to users in Canada, without consent or compensation. SOCAN says it has never licensed Suno and has never received a royalty payment from it.

The claim attaches 150 example outputs as a sample. Reporting and SOCAN’s own summary name works including The Tragically Hip’s “Bobcaygeon,” Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi,” Tom Cochrane’s “Life Is a Highway,” K-Maro’s “Femme Like U,” Céline Dion’s “A New Day Has Come,” and tracks by Joni Mitchell and Alexisonfire; The Canadian Press adds Nickelback’s “Photograph.” BetaKit, which reviewed the filing, reports SOCAN is seeking damages and an accounting of profits, statutory damages of up to $20,000 per song, and punitive damages, alongside orders requiring Suno to comply with Canadian copyright law and stop making the infringing outputs available. SOCAN CEO Jennifer Brown told BetaKit: “Innovation can’t come at the expense of human creativity. The future of music must belong to the people who make it.” SOCAN’s own statement puts it more bluntly: “Creators were never asked, never informed, and never given the chance to say no.” Suno did not respond to requests for comment from BetaKit or The Canadian Press.

Why It Matters: Suno’s public defence has rested on US fair use — a doctrine that does not exist in Canadian law. Following GEMA’s win in Munich and Koda’s claim in Copenhagen, collecting societies are litigating in the jurisdictions where that argument is unavailable.