A coalition of nearly 400 local and regional newspapers filed suit against Microsoft and OpenAI in the Southern District of New York on June 24, alleging copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. and a Digital Millennium Copyright Act violation. The case is led by Platkin LLP, founded this year by former New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin.
The complaint charges that OpenAI and Microsoft systematically and willfully crawled hundreds of newspaper websites, including content behind paywalls, copied millions of articles onto their servers, and used that material to train ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot without permission or compensation. A second theory adds a sharper edge: plaintiffs allege OpenAI knowingly stripped copyright management information from the copied articles, including author bylines, copyright notices, and terms of use, in willful violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1202(b).
The coalition seeks statutory damages, actual damages, restitution of defendants’ profits, and attorney’s fees. Platkin framed it clearly: the lawsuit “seeks to ensure these local publications creating original content will have meaningful protections in the AI era.”
The CMI stripping count is the smarter claim strategically. The New York Times litigation against the same defendants, filed in December 2023, required a months-long discovery fight just to get ChatGPT logs that could prove reproduction. A CMI count under § 1202(b) doesn’t need that detour: strip the bylines, and the violation is proven on its face. Local newspapers proving they published original work, then showing the bylines vanished in training data, tells a more straightforward factual story.
OpenAI and Microsoft haven’t responded to the complaint. The deadline runs 21 days from service.
James Okafor