News Plaintiffs File Response to Department of Justice Statement of Interest in OpenAI Copyright Litigation
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News organizations including The New York Times and Chicago Tribune argue the Department of Justice's fair use analysis favors the AI industry at the expense of content creators while ignoring internal evidence of "property theft."
News organizations led by The New York Times Company filed a response on September 28, 2026, challenging a Statement of Interest submitted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the ongoing copyright infringement litigation against OpenAI and Microsoft. The filing, Document #1633, was first reported by CourtListener and represents a coalition of publishers including the Chicago Tribune, Daily News, and San Jose Mercury-News. The publishers argue the DOJ's position, which suggests that training Large Language Models (LLMs) on copyrighted material constitutes fair use, is an uninformed assessment that lacks specific subject-matter expertise. The DOJ filed its statement on September 1, 2026, claiming that imposing broad copyright liability on AI training would be "legally incorrect" and "problematic."
Failure to Consider Internal Evidence
The news organizations claim the DOJ ignored critical evidence gathered during two years of discovery. This evidence includes internal documents and testimony from Microsoft and OpenAI executives. According to the brief, one Microsoft executive described the AI industry's use of copyrighted content as one of the "greatest property thefts in human history."
The filing asserts that the DOJ did not review the deposition transcripts of more than 70 fact witnesses or dozens of expert reports before forming its opinion. The publishers argue that senior executives at the defendant companies have privately acknowledged their products are "substitutive" and "destroy their supply chain" by undermining the journalism outlets they copy. ## Conflict with Copyright Office Expertise The publishers contend that the DOJ is asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to disregard the views of the U.S. Copyright Office. They argue the Copyright Office is the government agency with the actual statutory authority and expertise to address these issues. The brief cites a May 2025 report, COPYRIGHT AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: PART 3, GENERATIVE AI TRAINING, as a point of conflict. The news organizations state the DOJ's analysis contradicts the considered views of the Copyright Office and ignores the feasibility of licensing markets that the White House previously encouraged. ## National Security as Justification The DOJ's statement suggests a preference for the AI industry based on national security concerns. The publishers argue this is a justification courts have repeatedly rejected. They cite the case of Cable News Network, Inc. et al. v. Trump et al., where a court found the government offered little to back up asserted national security interests. The coalition of news organizations warns that failing to apply copyright laws to AI training creates a "doom loop." In this scenario, publishers can no longer afford to produce the original news content that AI products rely on to answer user queries. ## Demand for Independent Evaluation The plaintiffs are asking the court to give the DOJ's statement no weight at all. They argue the Department's position is divorced from the actual facts of the case and favors the unimpeded development of AI at the expense of creators. The brief insists the court must independently evaluate the fair use defense under 17 U.S.C. ยง 107. The publishers maintain that the AI industry is not burdened by the need to pay for the works it copies, and that the DOJ's intervention serves to bless what the plaintiffs call the largest theft of labor in human history.