Suno admits it took YouTube audio with YT-DLP, then says the labels can't sue over it

Suno has admitted in writing that it pulled audio off YouTube to train its model. The admission sits in a 26-page answer filed on September 1 in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, responding to the first amended complaint from UMG Recordings, Capitol Records and Sony Music Entertainment.

The line is short: “Suno admits that audio data was obtained from YouTube for use as training data using YT-DLP.” That’s Suno’s response to paragraph 49 of the complaint, which alleged the company used two tools, YT-DL and YT-DLP, to get around YouTube’s encryption and scrape recordings. Suno’s answer names only YT-DLP, and repeats the YouTube point at five further places in the document.

YT-DLP is an open-source command-line program that downloads audio and video straight off YouTube.

Then comes the turn. Suno argues that UMG and Sony cannot bring the stream-ripping claim at all, because they were never injured by it in the way the law requires.

Why Suno says UMG and Sony can’t bring the stream-ripping claim

Suno’s position is that one or more of the labels fail the injury test under Article III of the US Constitution. It also says they are not “person[s] injured” within the meaning of DMCA Section 1203(a), the provision that lets a private party sue over circumvention. If that holds, the labels cannot maintain a civil action over the alleged bypassing at all.

Both defenses are narrow on purpose. They cover only the circumvention claim, the one Judge Saylor allowed in August. The two copyright infringement claims the labels also bring are untouched, and these standing arguments are the only grounds on which Suno contests the court’s jurisdiction.

Suno had already told the labels about the downloading. In May 2025 it disclosed that it pulled audio files from YouTube with open-source tools including YT-DL and YT-DLP, according to Saylor’s order. What changed on September 1 is the form: a disclosure made during discovery is now a formal admission in Suno’s own pleading.

The rest of the answer runs on two older arguments. Suno’s first affirmative defense calls the training fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107, describing the model as “a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.”

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To the extent there is copying of copyrightable expression, that copying constitutes fair use. This is quintessential fair use.

The second defense says the claims are barred by copyright misuse and unclean hands, wording Suno has pleaded verbatim since its first answer in August 2024. It goes further and alleges the labels “have engaged in anticompetitive activities that extend an unlawful monopoly over the production and commercialization of music.”

How Suno’s answer lines up with Udio’s

Udio, sued alongside Suno in 2024, filed its own answer to Sony Music on April 29. It used the same wording on fair use and copyright misuse, down to the phrase “quintessential fair use.”

That matters for the direction of both cases. The circumvention theory attacks how the audio was collected, which is a separate question from whether training on it is fair use. A company can win the fair use argument and still face liability for the method of acquisition, which is why the standing challenge is where Suno is spending its jurisdictional argument.

Fact discovery in the Boston case closes on September 30, with Warner having settled and licensed back in November 2025. Sony and Universal are still in.