OpenAI's "Fair Use Benefits Everyone" Post Rounds Up Court Briefs Backing It Against The New York Times
Primary source: OpenAI, "Fair use benefits everyone" (dated Oct 30, 2026; checked Oct 30, 2026 ~7 PM ET). Context: Authors Alliance and Wikimedia Foundation posts, both Oct 30, 2026.
Oct 30, 2026: The biggest AI copyright fight in the US just got loud from the sidelines. OpenAI published a post titled "Fair use benefits everyone" that collects excerpts from friend-of-the-court (amicus) briefs supporting its position that training AI models on copyrighted work is fair use.
It's a curated, one-sided collection, and the court has not ruled yet.
The case in one paragraph
The briefs were filed in In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, a consolidated case in the Southern District of New York. According to Authors Alliance, it brings together suits from book authors (including the Authors Guild and a proposed class) and news organizations "such as The New York Times, Daily News, and Ziff Davis," before Judge Sidney Stein. Authors Alliance says the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment this fall, oppositions came in Oct 23, and amicus briefs were due Oct 30.
What OpenAI's post says
OpenAI frames the NYT suit sharply. The post says the lawsuit "asks everyone to ignore a half century of legal history and progress, and toss aside the longstanding principle of fair use in their own narrow pursuit of an undeserved payday." That is OpenAI's characterization, not a finding.
The post then quotes briefs from:
- AI Progress
- American Council of the Blind, Association of Research Libraries, American Library Association, Consumer Technology Association & Business Software Alliance (joint)
- Authors Alliance
- Engine and Developers Alliance
- Foundation for American Innovation
- Joshua S. Gans (professor of strategic management)
- Kevin Kelly
- Matthew Sag (law professor)
- Michael Wall and Sarah Rose Siskind (musician/composer and comedian/writer)
- Public Knowledge
- Ron Suskind and Brian L. Frye (journalist and law professor)
- United States Government
OpenAI says the full filings "are available on the public court docket."
The key arguments quoted
A few lines from the excerpts OpenAI picked:
- Engine and Developers Alliance, speaking for startups, argues the purpose of training "is not to reproduce the works it learns; it is to build a general-purpose tool that others can adapt to new ends."
- The US Government excerpt says narrowing fair use to exclude LLM training "would be inconsistent with basic copyright law principles."
Not everyone in the "fair use" camp agrees with OpenAI on everything
Two Oct 30 posts from groups that filed briefs add nuance OpenAI's roundup doesn't stress:
Authors Alliance (quoted by OpenAI) says its brief "focuses on a single issue": whether "market dilution" counts as copyright harm. That's the theory that AI-generated works compete with originals even when they don't copy them. Authors Alliance argues it doesn't count, calling it "competition at scale, not substitution at scale." The group also says it takes "no position" on how OpenAI acquired its training data or whether particular outputs infringe.
The Wikimedia Foundation (not in OpenAI's list) filed its own brief on Oct 30 with a split position. It argues training LLMs that are "something new and different" should be fair use. But it says retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and similar "grounding" uses, which copy content and serve it back to users, "should not be considered fair" and should follow publishers' licenses. For Wikipedia, that means CC BY-SA 4.0 attribution.
Authors Alliance also notes that briefs "on both sides" have been filed, so OpenAI's roundup is only part of the record.
Why it matters
If the court treats training as fair use and rejects "market dilution," training on public data gets far less risky for AI builders. Wikimedia's training-vs-RAG split points to a possible middle path for publishers. Wikimedia expects the ruling to be "highly influential."
What's confirmed / not confirmed
Confirmed (from the sources above): - OpenAI published "Fair use benefits everyone" dated Oct 30, 2026, quoting the amicus filers listed above. - The case is consolidated in S.D.N.Y. before Judge Sidney Stein (per Authors Alliance). - Authors Alliance moved to file its brief Oct 29; Wikimedia filed Oct 30. - Wikimedia's brief backs fair use for training but not for RAG-style grounding.
Not confirmed / unknown: - When Judge Stein will rule on the summary judgment motions. No date is in these sources. - How many briefs were filed in total, and on which side. We did not review the docket. - Whether the court will accept every proposed amicus brief. Authors Alliance says it "asked the court for leave to file." - Any NYT response to OpenAI's post (none found).
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