Draft: a trade group representing the NYT, the Post, Disney, and NBCUniversal tells members that AI tools trained on their archives could break copyright laws
Ryan Barwick / Marketing Brew :
Context & Ripple Effects
This warning is the opening move in the archive-copyright fight: weeks after the trade group told members like the NYT, the Post, Disney, and NBCUniversal that AI tools trained on their back catalogs could infringe, sources reported [[a:841163|OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe meeting News Corp and the NYT to discuss licensing fees]]. A month later, IAC, News Corp, the NYT, and other publishers moved from warnings to organizing, forming a coalition to push for AI laws and lead a lawsuit against AI firms.
The significance is that the trade group converted diffuse publisher anxiety into a shared legal posture — treating archives as enforceable IP rather than fair-use raw material. Everything downstream, from the Alden newspapers' suit against OpenAI and Microsoft to Disney limiting AI use of its IP and suing Midjourney, runs through the position staked out here.
First-order effects
- Members including the NYT, Disney, and NBCUniversal gain a documented basis to treat their archives as potentially infringed assets, putting every AI vendor trained on that material on notice.
Second-order effects
- AI firms respond commercially within weeks — the reported meetings over a possible subscription fee for publisher archives show vendors preferring licensing to litigation risk, while the publishers' coalition prepares the legal hammer if deals stall.
Third-order effects
- As the NYT's own analysis frames it, the resulting lawsuits may either redefine copyright for AI or simply serve as leverage for more favorable licensing terms; the Disney case shows both tracks running at once — suing Midjourney while negotiating with OpenAI — and the WGA-AMPTP deal supplies the labor-side template of paid compensation for training use.
The trend: Publisher and studio archives are shifting from free inputs for LLM training to negotiated, licensed — or litigated — licensed assets, with the threat of lawsuit functioning as pricing power.