Conservative organizations are pressing a federal court in Manhattan to prevent AI companies from indiscriminately scraping the internet without compensating news organizations and other content providers. They argue that this could lead to an information monopoly and pose risks to national security, according to information obtained by The Post.
The Center for American Rights, a right-leaning nonprofit focusing on technology and telecommunications policy, presented its case in an amicus brief related to a significant copyright infringement lawsuit involving Sam Altman’s OpenAI and a group of news outlets.
The brief states, “If [superintelligence] is allowed to recklessly crawl the internet, even bypassing paywalls, it essentially removes the competitive edge from smaller companies and solidifies superintelligence companies as the primary distributors of information.”
It also claims, “This entirely removes any incentive for creators to provide free, open content and makes these superintelligence companies our sole source of news and entertainment.”
The document warns that this is a concerning possibility that contradicts the goals of the Trump Administration, which aimed to protect copyright and ensure a diversity of viewpoints, especially given Big Tech’s history of suppressing content that doesn’t align with popular opinion.
Plaintiffs, including well-known outlets like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, have accused OpenAI of using content without proper attribution or payment to train its AI models. OpenAI’s legal team contends that the use of the copyrighted material falls under the “fair use” doctrine.
The brief has notable supporters, including the Article III Project and the Internet Accountability Project, both led by Mike Davis, a lawyer who has strong ties to President Trump; along with the Bull Moose Project, Consumers For A Strong Economy, and conservative attorney Joel Thayer.
The brief warns that OpenAI’s understanding of copyright law could facilitate Chinese companies in stealing American intellectual property through “distillation” methods, where a more advanced AI model is trained using data from a less capable one without authorization, and at a significantly decreased cost.
Competing companies like Anthropic have noted that Chinese firms, such as Z.AI and DeepSeek, utilize illegal distillation techniques to develop advanced models at a fraction of the time and expense of their US counterparts.
“If the Court aligns with OpenAI’s broad interpretation of fair use, it would promote intellectual property theft by foreign adversaries and grant them legal protection to continue this practice,” the brief suggests.
The Times initiated legal action against OpenAI and major investor Microsoft in December 2023, claiming in a Manhattan federal court that the maker of ChatGPT had utilized “millions” of its copyrighted articles to create competing AI products.
This lawsuit later merged with others from various plaintiffs, including “Game of Thrones” creator George R.R. Martin, comedian Sarah Silverman, and the New York Daily News. A judge, Sidney H. Stein, rejected an attempt by OpenAI to dismiss the case in March 2025 but has yet to make a determination on the fair use question.
Recently, OpenAI found an ally in the form of the Justice Department under President Trump, which asserted in a court filing that leveraging copyrighted material to develop AI models does not breach the law.
The DOJ maintained that a setback for OpenAI “would restrict competition in the LLM market, as only the largest tech companies would have the resources to cover licensing fees.”
This position seemed to catch many in tech policy off guard, as it appeared to be at odds with the Trump administration’s own AI policy framework from March, which suggested Congress explore agreements requiring AI firms to fairly compensate media companies for their content.
Moreover, it has been reported that this Department of Justice filing took some critical agencies, including the US Patent and Trademark Office and the Copyright Office, by surprise.
The supporters of this recent amicus brief advocate for the Trump administration’s aim for a strong American presence empowered by Super Intelligence (SI), asserting that robust copyright protections would be essential to achieving this goal rather than obstructing innovation among US companies.
“Our objective with this brief is straightforward – to emphasize that an America First legal and policy approach values both the acceleration of SI and the protection of intellectual property,” stated Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights.
He added that especially with rampant AI theft from China, an America First policy means safeguarding America’s innovative edge through genuine respect for intellectual property.
Trump administration officials have openly expressed their worries regarding the threat of distillation from China and other foreign powers.
A memo released in April by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology accused “foreign entities, primarily based in China” of orchestrating “deliberate, industrial-scale” theft campaigns.
Pre-trial documents have already uncovered significant insights, revealing that executives at Microsoft and OpenAI privately expressed concerns about copyright infringement.
One Microsoft executive even voiced concern that the tech companies were potentially engaged in the “largest theft of labor in human history” to train their AI models, according to documents released last month.
A Microsoft representative claimed the director’s comments represented a personal view rather than a legal opinion and were not indicative of the company’s stance, stating, “Microsoft’s position is detailed in its court filings, which illustrate why these transformative uses comply with copyright law and why Copilot does not replace publishers’ journalism.”
