OpenAI Moves to Vacate Order Requiring 20 Million ChatGPT Logs in NYT Copyright Suit

Copyright fights rarely stay confined to IP law; they become proxy battles over control of new information infrastructures. When Google scanned 25 million books (2004-2011) the courts weighed fair use against authors’ rights and ultimately forced a narrower settlement, echoing the tension seen in Napster’s shutdown (2001) where privacy arguments were likewise mobilised but secondary to market power. Today’s dispute reflects two accelerating trends: (1) mass data-hungry AI models colliding with 20th-century copyright rules, and (2) the growing expectation that user data—even when stripped of names—can still be re-identified, making “anonymisation” a legally shaky shield. Whether the court lets a private publisher sift through millions of user conversations will influence future discovery norms for AI systems and could nudge legislators toward firmer data-governance regimes. A century from now, this skirmish may be remembered less for who won the lawsuit than for how early-stage generative-AI firms attempted to set privacy expectations while relying on expansive data scraping—much as the 1909 Copyright Act now matters mainly for how it framed the modern idea of intellectual property in the machine age.