{"id":46553,"date":"2025-09-27T14:42:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T14:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/46553\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T14:42:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T14:42:15","slug":"openai-lyrics-case-in-germany-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/46553\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI Lyrics Case in Germany Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTwo weeks ago, I wrote a column about how AI training licenses for music might work<\/a> under the assumption that the development of such deals is a matter of when, rather than if. I said that I\u2019d return to the subject, to focus on how rightsholders might divide money from those deals, but I was interrupted by the Trump Administration\u2019s attack on a late-night talk show<\/a>, because 2025. Now there\u2019s more relevant news, as an AI-related lawsuit brought by German PRO GEMA goes to court in Munich, offering a look at why I think licensing for AI is something of an inevitability. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the U.S., it\u2019s not quite. The major labels\u2019 lawsuit against Suno and Udio<\/a> involves fair use, so it\u2019s possible \u2014 but, I think, unlikely \u2014 that a court could determine that Suno and Udio don\u2019t need a license in order to copy music for the purposes of training their AI algorithms. (The two sides are said to be in settlement negotiations.) The European Union doesn\u2019t have fair use, though \u2014 and the first of the two big cases that could clarify EU law on AI and music goes to court on Monday (Sept. 29).\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tThat morning, a Munich district court will hear GEMA\u2019s lawsuit<\/a> against OpenAI for copying lyrics it controls. (The second case is GEMA\u2019s suit against Suno<\/a> for copying recordings as well as its output of songs that sound like the originals.) From the U.S. point of view, this might seem unusual \u2014 why is a collecting society dealing with lyrics and how important are they by themselves, anyway? European collecting societies control different rights, including mechanicals, which in some cases include lyrics \u2014 which are copyrighted in the same way songs are.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom a legal point of view, lyrics present the same issues as recordings. \u201cIt\u2019s the same principle as in the Suno case,\u201d GEMA general counsel Kai Welp tells me. Just as in that case, the first question \u2013 arguably the most important one \u2014 is whether an AI company needs a license to copy a work to ingest it for training purposes. That depends on whether a rights-holder has \u201copted-out\u201d \u2014 signaled to technology companies that a work is not freely available for training purposes \u2014 which GEMA has done on behalf of its songwriters and publishers, although OpenAI will argue that it hasn\u2019t done so on every online source of lyrics. Unlike the Suno case, \u201cthere\u2019s no dispute about territoriality,\u201d Welp says. That means EU copyright law applies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLike the Suno lawsuit, this case also involves issues of \u201coutput\u201d \u2014 the results generated by giving the algorithm different prompts. In some cases, OpenAI returned all the lyrics to a song, just as Suno generated music that sounds almost exactly like the original recordings. So GEMA is also suing for violating the \u201cmaking available\u201d right \u2014 which is basically akin to public display when it involves lyrics. (There is also what Welp calls \u201ca hallucination in the output\u201d \u2014 a change in lyrics \u2014 so in one case GEMA is also suing for a violation of the right to create derivative works.)<\/p>\n

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\n\tThere is also a more technical question that could become very important: Does the AI generate a new copy of the work in between input and output? Theoretically, a generative AI algorithm would ingest a work, analyze it and then use that analysis and others to create new works. If the algorithm simply outputs an original work, however, it\u2019s presumably copying it in order to do so. However that is resolved, cases like this will almost certainly lead AI engineers to program algorithms to avoid returning original works as output. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough German copyright cases can take time to resolve, this court hearing should only take a few hours. Within a few months, the court should either reach a verdict \u2014 which either side could appeal to a higher court \u2014 or refer a legal question or questions to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. That could make an eventual verdict more important, since it would clarify the law, or at least certain issues involved in it, throughout the European Union.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom a financial standpoint, this case may not be such a big deal \u2014 copyright infringement in the EU doesn\u2019t come with the high statutory damages it does in the U.S. That\u2019s not the point, though. \u201cWe want to put pressure on the companies to acquire licenses,\u201d Welp says. For that, this case offers a few ways to win, as does the Suno case, although some would be more decisive than others. How cases like this shape the law will determine the negotiating leverage that both sides have, but it is gradually becoming harder to imagine how AI music could become a serious business without some kind of licensing in place. It will take some time, and perhaps some more court cases, to figure out how it will work.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about how AI training licenses for music might work under the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,7323,2024,2487,18768,40812,1223,1019,40813,111,139,69,370,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-46553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-copyright","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-follow-the-money","15":"tag-gema","16":"tag-germany","17":"tag-international","18":"tag-lyrics","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-tech","23":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}