Arlington, VA – Yesterday, the New York Times and other publishers filed their response to the Department of Justice’s Statement of Interest (SOI) in support of Microsoft and OpenAI, in which the administration urged the judge to hold that copying any content to train AI models is “fair use.” The News Plaintiffs’ response to this SOI shows that the DOJ submission is contradicted by the evidence in this case, is inconsistent with the Copyright Office’s own comprehensive analysis, and relies upon meritless national security claims.
In response to this submission by the News Plaintiffs, Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, issued the following statement:
“The New York Times lays out a compelling, evidence-based case that there is no credible argument that OpenAI and Microsoft’s usage of copyrighted content to train AI systems should be considered fair use. These are some of the largest companies in the world that have already recognized – both publicly and in their now unsealed internal documents – that they need to license content, and they have the resources to do so. The federal government doesn’t expect electric utilities to provide power to data centers for free, and it doesn’t expect chip manufacturers to provide their products to AI companies for free, so why should publishers be expected to provide their content to AI companies for free?
This is not fair use. It is, in the AI companies’ own words, ‘the largest theft of labor in human history.’ And it is hugely detrimental to the health of the American economy. Copyright protections aren’t at odds with innovation, they fuel it. Strong intellectual property protections form the backbone of the American economy, and provide a clear differentiator between American and Chinese products.”
