Other way round. They've placed all legal liability on the user to protect themselves from being sued by the users or anyone else, there's section about that in the terms of service. They absolutely do and have to ban people for violating the terms. The service is not unrestricted and there is significant content moderation and restrictions to protect them from users using the platform to break the law or violate copyright. I've seen multiple accounts nuked for trying to make music that sounds like commercial artists and stuff that tries to subvert the restrictions on violence, racism and other problematic content. This also applies to Udio where in the first few weeks of their launch I witnessed them scrambling to moderate content being made with extreme views, they soon implemented background safeguards.

They're not providing any direct copyright protection because, as you stated, they cant, and they even acknowledge that the inherent nature of the model means that they take absolutely no responsibility when it inevitably spits out something that infringes copyright law.

As far as I can see the only issue on copyright they are exposed to is the original training data for the model and that's what all those lawsuits are about, these terms of service cover absolutely everything else regarding any liability.

The predatory licensing agreement is the egregious part here not the standard company liability stuff.

 

I'm very happy about AI generated content now being contained within spoilers. 99.9% of the time I really do not want to see it. However, in this instance I thought it interesting to see what AI spat out regarding AI. Kinda reminiscent of the bogus concept of industry self-regulation that is just a severe conflict of interest paradox (of course AI currently doesn't quite work like that but there are parallels and it probably won't be long before self-protectionism is introduced to the models).

The even less amusing aspect is, by outlining all the highly-involved procedures that can be present in copyright protection issues it demonstrates how the process is so bureaucratic, that the majority of individuals wouldn't have the resources available to take on the procedure; even under ordinary, non AI-involved, circumstances. This is how your average low-level musician/composer/producer gets screwed by the man every time.

 

Not really the opposite, at all. When I mentioned Suno "suing or banning" someone, it is in reference to the differences between their paid accounts and free ones. If you pay them, you have the "unrestricted use" of whatever it spits out; only as far as they are concerned. You can use its output for commercial purposes. As a free user, you can't. They could ban you or sue you, theoretically; by using the service without paying and then turning around and using the material for commercial purpose. That means things like using it as background music for some commercial purpose, a music bed behind a voiceover, or any other commercial use. That sort of use is commercial, but not protected by a copyright unless separately protected for normal reasons. That is totally outside the issue of Copyrights, falling under only the TOS; like the examples you mentioned which they ban people over. Obviously, music with explicit content can be against their Terms of Service; but Copyright cannot exclude such material. Copyright is governed by law, no matter what Suno's Terms of Service alludes to.

 

@clone OK, you quoted me speaking specifically about the paid service only, but I see now you've clarified you were expanding to the free service and general copyright law. So I misunderstood. You're right, despite Suno placing all the liability on the user, both are still potentially at risk of the actual copyright laws if there is an infringement.

If I'm still misunderstanding I'm absolutely fine with that as I didn't have debating TOS intricacies of some parasitic AI slop generator on my bingo card for this week, lol. I'm happy to move on. I appreciate the replies.

 

I'll wait for the results of the lawsuits against Suno, see what the judges decide and whether Suno's business model will still be viable.