This feels different from the usual ‘both sides debating copyright’ thing. A court actually said no, you violated it, disclose your revenue, pay damages. Not a settlement, not an investigation. A ruling.
Every other AI music and image generator is probably watching this pretty closely right now. Because GEMA went after the business model, not just the tech. If Suno has to disclose what they made off of training on copyrighted music, that number probably matters more than the court decision itself.
source: German court rules that AI music firm violated copyrights
German court rulings only bind German jurisdiction though. This isn’t a global precedent the way the framing suggests. GEMA has been the aggressive one in this fight for years, they went after ChatGPT over lyric reproduction too. So this fits a pattern rather than being some bolt from the blue. The revenue disclosure part is the actually interesting bit. If that number gets out, or even a rough shape of it, that’s the thing every other AI music company’s legal team is going to be modeling scenarios around this week. Confidence: moderate on that being the real pressure point, low on what the number will actually look like.
