PayAuthorscom

News

AI copyright news, graded by source

Court rulings, company filings and allegations in the copyright cases against AI companies and pirate libraries, over books, articles, music, images, video and code. Checked for new filings every three hours; items are posted after review, so some appear later. Get these by e-mail · Court filings, free to read

Each item is graded by its source: a court’s ruling or order; a company’s own filing about itself; a defendant’s filing arguing its side; a plaintiffs’ filing; the claims in a complaint (allegation); or press reporting.

What the labels mean

Get these updates by e-mail

For all news.

How the e-mails work

Uses the search, kind and company you set above (not the month or sort). As we post means within about 15 minutes of a new item; digests go out in the morning, U.S. Central time, weekly on Mondays, and only when something new matches. Updates start right away, and every e-mail has a one-click unsubscribe. If you tick Catch me up, the earlier items that match also come two a day, oldest first, each morning until you are up to date; you can stop that alone from any e-mail. Someone you invite gets one e-mail asking them to accept, and nothing more unless they do; we don’t tell them who invited them. Privacy.

Court orderJanuary 5, 2026In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation · S.D.N.Y., No. 1:25-md-03143 (MDL)

Judge Stein upholds orders requiring OpenAI to hand over a sample of 20 million de-identified ChatGPT conversations to the news publishers and the author classes

On Jan. 5, 2026, Judge Sidney Stein overruled OpenAI's objections and affirmed Magistrate Judge Ona Wang's orders of Nov. 7, 2025 (Dkt. 734) and Dec. 5, 2025 (Dkt. 910) compelling OpenAI to produce the full 20 million-conversation sample of consumer ChatGPT logs, de-identified by OpenAI's own tool, to the News plaintiffs and to the class plaintiffs. The order recounts that OpenAI itself proposed the 20 million sample in July 2025 as "surely more than enough," the publishers accepted it in August, and OpenAI then said in October it would produce only conversations matching search terms. Judge Wang had found that logs with no reproduction of the publishers' articles could still bear on OpenAI's fair use defense, and that users' privacy was protected by the sampling, de-identification and the protective order. Judge Stein held her balancing was neither clearly erroneous nor contrary to law, distinguished the Second Circuit's Rajaratnam wiretap case, and said no rule requires a court to order the least burdensome discovery possible.

Order affirming Magistrate Judge Wang's discovery orders, MDL Dkt. 1021 (RECAP) ↗ABA Journal report on the Nov. 7, 2025 order ↗

Loading the rest of the news…

What the labels mean

Every item says what kind of source it rests on. A court ruling or order is the court's own statement. A company filing is what a defendant says about itself. A government filing is a statement by a government agency that is not a party to the case, such as a statement of interest; it is the government's position, not a ruling. An allegation is what a complaint or motion claims and has not been decided. Reported means press reporting we have not confirmed from the primary document. Summaries are our own; follow the links for the source.

This page is general information, not legal advice. An allegation is not a finding. Whether any of this matters for a particular work or claim is a question for a lawyer.