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German court: ChatGPT violated copyright law by ‘learning’ from song lyrics
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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Is ChatGPT a legal entity competent to violate copyright law? I don't think that's likely.
I do think OpenAI violated copyright law by copying song lyrics and other media to use them as input to their LLM systems, to embed the essence of them into their LLMs for commercial benefit. Judging by the valuations of the companies that do not yet have significant income compared to the investments, on the face of it, the IP they copied, often without license, as far as I know, is fantastically valuable.
Does that mean song lyric websites with ads also violate copyright laws?
According to Are Song Lyrics Copyrighted? How the Law Works, unless their use is 'fair use' or they have a license, then they are violating copyright, if I understand the article correctly. I believe that site explains laws in the United States. It probably varies somewhat by jurisdiction, so I expect it would depend on who owns the website and where they are based.
To tag along with this, I remember this becoming an issue 10 or 15 years ago and a lot of the big lyrics websites were forced to reach licensing agreements with the songwriting groups like ASCAP and BMI (they collect and distribute royalties on behalf of the writers). I think a couple sites tried going to court to claim fair use but lost pretty quickly. That’s pretty established law going back to the earliest days of music publishing. Just because they were publishing online instead of printing up songbooks doesn’t mean the laws change.
From the article, it doesn't look like these websites should be legal. Musixmatch also doesn't fall under fair use, I would think.