‘We’re Anti-Theft’: Why the New York Times Sued OpenAi and Microsoft

You've spent, what?

$20 million on this legal battle

against several big AI companies

for copyright infringement.

What do you hope to accomplish there?

Let me first just linger on the number you just said.

So we are two and a half years into this lawsuit,

two and a half years.

And we have spent well over $20 million on this lawsuit,

and we are not yet through discovery.

So when you think about like this, you know,

this original sin, this theft

of every creative work ever created, right?

Which is this immense wealth transfer from creators

and researchers around the world

to the biggest tech companies in the history of humanity,

that that sense of impunity

that they can just take our stuff is happening in part

because of how expensive it is

to enforce your rights, right?.

I mean, The Times, thankfully, we've worked really hard

to put ourself in a financial position

where we can enforce our rights.

Can you imagine being a small town newspaper

and being able to take on, you know, Google or OpenAI

or Microsoft or Perplexity or Anthropic?

Yeah, I mean, it's not gonna happen.

It's impossible, and so these companies have been backed

into this awful position.

Silicon Valley has tried

to portray our lawsuit as anti-tech.

They have. It is not anti-tech.

Yeah. It is anti-theft.

And anytime you hear the anti-tech line, I just want you

to picture Jensen Huang coming down onto the factory floor

of his NVIDIA factory, discovering that Sam Altman

has arms full of chips that he's snuck in,

he's armed full of chips,

and he's running out of the building.

What a visual.

And Jensen says, Hey, you're not allowed to take that.

And Sam Altman says, You tell me that I can't take this.

You're anti-tech, Jensen.

Right.

And you're gonna make China win. Right?

I mean, it's outrageous, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we are not anti-tech, we are anti-theft.