UMG and Sony Cleared to Accuse Suno of YouTube Stream-Ripping in AI Copyright Fight

The legal fight over generative AI training data just narrowed its focus. Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment officially filed an amended complaint in Massachusetts federal court against Suno, adding a claim under Section 1201(a) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. According to reporting from Music Business Worldwide, the major labels accuse the AI company of using open-source tools like YT-DL and YT-DLP to bypass YouTube's "rolling cipher" encryption and illicitly rip audio to train its models. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV granted leave for the stream-ripping claim on August 18, noting that Suno already acknowledged in May 2025 discovery responses that it downloaded audio from YouTube using those utilities. Suno previously argued the DMCA only limits access controls rather than copying mechanisms, but Saylor ruled the labels put forward a plausible claim warranting a full factual record. Saylor was far less accommodating of procedural bloat. In a separate order issued the same day, the judge rejected the majors' bid to add 61,026 recordings—flagged via Audible Magic—to the 560 works already in suit. Saylor made it clear that determining whether Suno's ingestion constitutes fair use is the primary question, and dumping tens of thousands of extra recordings onto the docket would cause needless complexity and delay. The majors remain free to file a separate lawsuit for those 61,026 additional works. For now, the court is forcing both sides to address the real issue on the table: whether scraping protected audio under the banner of AI development holds up under federal copyright law.