DOJ Should Withdraw Its Fair Use Statement Supporting OpenAI in Copyright Lawsuit
Source: "Justice Department urged to drop OpenAI AI copyright fair use stance | Fox News." September 5, 2026. www.foxnews.com
The Gist
The author argues that the Justice Department made a mistake by telling a court that AI companies can freely use copyrighted books, articles, and other creative works to train their AI without paying creators. He says this hurts artists, writers, and independent media, and that AI companies are wealthy enough to license content properly instead of taking it for free, just like Spotify pays musicians.
Conclusion
The Trump DOJ should withdraw its statement of interest arguing that AI companies' training on copyrighted material constitutes fair use.
Premises
- The DOJ's position would allow Big Tech companies to scrape, copy, and commercialize creative works without permission or payment.
- The national security justification (that restricting AI training risks losing the AI race to China) is a flawed scare tactic, not a legitimate principle.
- This policy would especially harm independent creators and conservative media outlets who were previously censored and demonetized by the same Big Tech companies now seeking to harvest their work.
- The policy fails to protect the '4Cs' (children, communities, conservatives, creators) that conservatives have identified as essential to AI policy.
- AI companies have the financial capacity to pay for licensed content, as demonstrated by the music industry's licensing model (e.g., Spotify).
- Big Tech companies are not reliable defenders of American national security interests, as evidenced by Google's withdrawal from Project Maven while advancing China's Project Dragonfly.
- A free market approach respecting property rights, not government-sanctioned expropriation, is the proper 'American way' to compete globally in AI.
Assumptions
- Fair use doctrine should not extend to AI training on copyrighted works at scale.
- Requiring licensing payments would not meaningfully slow AI development or America's competitive position against China.
- The interests of individual creators and the AI industry are fundamentally opposed rather than potentially complementary.
- Big Tech's past behavior (censorship, Project Dragonfly) is relevant evidence for how the fair use policy should be decided.
- Property rights protections and national security/competitiveness goals are not genuinely in tension in this context.
- The DOJ's stated position necessarily leads to 'expropriation' rather than a nuanced legal interpretation of fair use.