![\"pirate-flag\"](\"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/pirate-flag-1.jpg\")
Last September, Anthropic paid $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit brought by book authors over seven million pirated titles.<\/p>\nLast September, Anthropic paid $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit brought by book authors over seven million pirated titles.<\/p>\n
That settlement closed one case, but it did not stop other rightsholders from pursuing their own legal claims. <\/p>\n
In a complaint filed at the Northern District of California late last Friday, several music publishers including Sony and Warner, argue that the same book data haul included many of their songbooks, sheet music collections, and lyrics.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed, each pirated work that Defendants torrented was likely shared thousands if not tens of thousands of times, depriving Music Publishers of substantial revenue,\u201d the complaint notes. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"complaint\"](\"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/complaint.png\")
<\/center><\/p>\nThe lawsuit alleges direct and contributory infringement through the torrenting activity itself, as well as broader infringement through scraping and AI training, and also mentions DMCA violations for stripping copyright notices. CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann are named personally as defendants.<\/p>\n
The publishers\u2019 complaint relies largely on fact that were already established in earlier Anthropic litigation<\/a>. A lot of the quoted material comes from the Bartz v. Anthropic case, where the book authors secured the $1.5 billion settlement.<\/p>\n According to the Bartz case, Mann discussed the LibGen torrenting openly in Anthropic\u2019s internal Slack channels and shared a screenshot of his activity with colleagues. He described a program he wrote to manage the download as \u201ca cute little libgen babysitter,\u201d the complaint states.<\/p>\n The complaint also notes that Anthropic\u2019s co-founder was aware of LibGen\u2019s dubious legal status. Internal messages note that he characterized the site as \u201csketchy AF.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Anthropic\u2019s own Archive Team went even further and called it a \u201cblatant violation of copyright.\u201d Despite these concerns, Anthropic\u2019s CEO Amodei approved the torrenting.<\/p>\n \u201cDr. Amodei admitted that Anthropic \u2018ha[d] many places from which\u2019 it could have legally purchased these copyrighted works for training, but instead torrented them because doing so was faster and free,\u201d the complaint reads. <\/p>\n When Mann discovered that Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) was ready for torrenting in the summer of 2022, he shared the link with colleagues and wrote, \u201c[J]ust in time!\u201d Another Anthropic employee responded, \u201czlibrary my beloved,\u201d the complaint notes.<\/p>\n Anthropic engineers then compared the five million books that they already torrented from LibGen against seven million available on PiLiMi, and downloaded the two million that were new. According to internal records, employees knew what they were dealing with, describing PiLiMi as \u201ca popular (and illegal) library.\u201d<\/p>\n The publishers allege that Anthropic\u2019s torrenting activities included hundreds of songbooks and sheet music collections. Exhibit A lists specific titles, including The Beatles Complete Scores, Best of Taylor Swift Songbook, and Bon Jovi These Days.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Even after Anthropic became \u201cnot so gung ho about\u201d training AI models on pirated material \u201cfor legal reasons,\u201d it kept the files in its central library anyway, the complaint adds.<\/p>\n While the torrenting allegations rely on established court records, the complaint\u2019s version of the history of pirate libraries isn\u2019t entirely accurate. It claims the FBI shut down LibGen in late 2021, after which pirates copied its contents to create Z-Library. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n In reality, LibGen was never shut down and remains online today<\/a>, while Z-Library was founded in 2008 as a LibGen mirror, growing into one of the largest pirate ebook libraries in its own right. <\/p>\n In fact, it was Z-Library that lost its domains to the FBI, in November 2022<\/a>, months after Anthropic wrapped up its downloads.<\/p>\n These errors don\u2019t change the core allegations, but for a complaint built on the details of shadow library piracy, the history is notably shaky.<\/p>\n The first two counts of the complaint target the torrenting activity itself, not the AI training that followed. Because BitTorrent simultaneously uploads whatever a user downloads, the publishers argue that Anthropic didn\u2019t just reproduce their works, it distributed them to countless others.<\/p>\n This is a theory rightsholders have used against individual torrent users for over two decades. Here it is applied to a company with a reported $2 trillion IPO on the horizon, which allegedly \u201csustains and normalizes\u201d the BitTorrent piracy ecosystem through its own use.<\/p>\n The lawsuit is the third to arise from the same torrenting activity. Book authors settled for $1.5 billion, and music publishers including Concord, Universal, and BMG filed a similar lawsuit in January. And the latest lawsuit might not be the end of it either.<\/p>\n Anthropic sees things differently and believes that its activities were fair use.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the third lawsuit from the same lawyers, recycling allegations from cases already before the courts,\u201d a spokesperson told Ars Technica<\/a>, adding that AI training is fair use \u201cas the court held in Bartz\u201d and that the company will defend itself \u201crobustly.\u201d<\/p>\n That fair use ruling applied to the training, however, not the acquisition. The same court previously noted that the downloading itself is \u201cstraightforward piracy but at massive scale.\u201d<\/p>\n The publishers demand up to $150,000 in statutory damages per infringed work which, with tens of thousands of works listed, could add up to billions of dollars.<\/p>\n \u2014<\/em><\/p>\n A copy of the complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here<\/a> (pdf).<\/p>\n From: TF<\/a>, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.<\/p>\n![\"sketchy\"](\"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/sketch.png\")
<\/center><\/p>\n\u201cA Popular (and Illegal) Library\u201d<\/h2>\n
![\"exhibit](\"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/exha.png\")
<\/center><\/p>\nRewriting Pirate Library History<\/h2>\n
![\"fbi](\"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fbi-libgen.png\")
<\/center><\/p>\nOne Torrenting Spree, Three Lawsuits<\/h2>\n