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Comment by munchinator | Hacker News Reader

Why hasn't the Times also sued the Internet Archive? They've tried to block both the Internet Archive [1] and Open AI [2] from archiving their site, but why have they only sued OAI and not IA? The fact that they haven't sued IA which has comparatively little money would seem to indicate that this is not about fair use per se, but simply about profit-seeking and the NYT is selecting targets with deep pockets like OAI/MS.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2023/09/17/new-york-times-website-i...

[2] https://fortune.com/2023/08/25/major-media-organizations-are...

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Copyright doesn't stop the collection of content, it stops the copying, processing, & redistribution of content. Internet Archive acts as a library, so its widely accepted as fair-use when it makes collections of webpages available.

OpenAI's distribution is materially different to that of a library, so it's not a like-for-like comparison.

One of the main tests of copyright law (at least in the US) is if the entity distributing is _selling_ the copied/derivative work. It's unambiguous that OpenAI is selling something akin to derivative works, which is why NYT feels they can go after this claim. Meanwhile IA's operations don't create sales or incur profits, so while NYT's legal team may be able to establish that copies have been distributed, without the _sale_ aspect of the infringement, judges aren't guaranteed to side with NYT in an legally expensive PR nightmare.

What's wrong with that? If I was the NY Time's lawyers that what I would advise. What would it serve to bankrupt the IA, they can't pay anyway? These are corporations enforcing their rights against one another.

There is nothing wrong with profit seeking from your copyright. That's literally their entire business model...they publish copyrighted content which they sell for a subscription.

OpenAI and others could easily have negotiated a licence instead of just using the data. They bet that it would be cheaper to be sued, lets find out if they bet correctly.

Tangentially that's what Apple did with the sensor in their watch, it doesn't always pay off.

> What would it serve to bankrupt the IA, they can't pay anyway?

It would serve the termination of the infringement.

My point is that the Times doesn't particular seem to care about infringement per se, they care about getting their slice of the cut from that infringement.

It's like if a video game company or a movie company only attempted to sue illegal downloaders who had a certain net worth.

> It's like if a video game company or a movie company only attempted to sue illegal downloaders who had a certain net worth.

I mean yeah, no one's gonna bother trying to squeeze money out of Joe Schmoe with 10 bucks in his bank account over some pirated movies. If a company with billions and billions of dollars like Netflix started pushing out pirated movies instead, then obviously they'd be sued into oblivion, as they should be.

I think that the moment you start making big money from someone else's business is the moment that they get riled. That and when you really hurt their business. I suspect that the NYtimes thinks that IA is damaging them in the order of (possibly) $100k pa, and that it thinks that OpenAI is making in the order of $10M's from their content (and possibly doing some damage as well). It's an easy commercial decision to ignore one and go after the other - especially as going after IA is going to create some backlash as well.

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