If you've ever typed "make me a breakup song in the style of the '70s" into an AI app, you've met Suno. On September 9, it released a new model, v6. Nine days later, Universal Music and Sony Music sued it again in federal court in Massachusetts. They call it "the second action" over the same core accusation: that Suno copied their recordings without permission to train its AI.
The business backdrop matters. The complaint says Warner Music Group, once a co-plaintiff, signed a licensing deal with Suno in November 2025, and that BMG and Believe announced partnerships this summer. Sony and UMG are the holdouts.
The Verge summed up the headline theory as "model laundering." Suno's spokesperson told The Verge that v6 "was trained on content licensed from our partners, interactions including creations and preference signals from our community, and the accumulated learnings from our team." The labels say that isn't a clean slate: "Training a 'new' model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it." Their kicker: "v6 is not a fresh start; it is the fruit of the same poisoned tree."
Those are allegations, and no court has ruled on them. But tucked inside the complaint is a second claim that may not rise or fall with the AI-copyright debate.
Takeaway #1: The Suno lawsuit's anti-hacking claim, §1201
FROM THE STATUTE
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
What it means for you. This is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention rule. In plain English: don't break the digital lock. The complaint says YouTube uses a "rolling cipher," a scrambling system that "effectively controls a user's access" to the video files behind each page. It alleges Suno used code to get around it, "stream ripping" songs into permanent downloads without permission from the labels or YouTube, and in violation of YouTube's Terms of Service.
Why lead with a lock instead of a copy? Because the big AI cases keep turning on fair use, and nobody knows how that ends. Some courts treat breaking a lock as a separate violation from infringing a copyright. Others want a link to infringement, and the labels plead that link too. On the first view, even a strong fair-use argument about training might not answer a claim about how the files were obtained. That's my reading of the strategy, not something the labels say outright.
Your move. This isn't just an AI-company problem. If you rip audio from a streaming site for a remix or a training set, the "how" can be its own legal issue. Get your source files from a licensed download or the rights holder.
Takeaway #2: What a lock can cost
FROM THE STATUTE
"not less than $200 or more than $2,500 per act of circumvention, device, product, component, offer, or performance of service, as the court considers just."
What it means for you. That's the statutory damages range for circumvention, and the complaint asks for up to $2,500 "with respect to each act of circumvention." The key word is "each." Multiply a per-act number by a training set and you can see why the labels pleaded it. The devil is in the details: whether each ripped file counts as a separate act is exactly the kind of thing a court would decide. And that's on top of the copyright claims, where the labels seek their damages and Suno's profits or statutory damages.
Notice the "poisoned tree" theory too. The labels say v6 was built partly by "knowledge distillation," training a new "student" model to copy the behavior of an older "teacher." If a court buys that, a model's legal history could travel with it, even after a rebrand.
Your move. If you license your catalog or your voice to an AI company, ask in writing where its training data came from, and get a promise that it was lawfully obtained. Ask before you sign, not after the lawsuit.
Sample wording (our illustration): "Company represents that all training data used in any model that uses Licensed Content was lawfully obtained, without circumventing any technological protection measure."
And always remember, don't sign it till you read it, my friends.
General information, not legal advice. Reading this doesn't create an attorney-client relationship. Ask your own lawyer before you rip or license anything.
