News Publishers Block Internet Archive Web Crawlers

90 lawsuits have been filed by creators, including authors, musicians, artists, and news publishers, accusing AI firms like OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic of using copyrighted works to train models without permission. The Atlantic is involved in one such lawsuit against Cohere.

These cases highlight concerns about the future of creative labor. A 2024 court decision in Thaler v. Perlmutter ruled that works generated autonomously by AI cannot receive copyright protection, as copyright requires a human author. The Supreme Court declined to review this in March.

This leaves open questions about how much AI involvement renders a work uncopyrightable. The ruling has economic implications for industries reliant on monetizing intellectual property through licensing. Entertainment companies like studios, record labels, and book publishers depend on copyright to generate revenue from films, music, and books.

Major players have avoided fully AI-generated content to maintain copyrightability. Netflix's production guidelines warn against using AI for main characters, key visuals, or central settings without approval. Hachette pulled the book Shy Girl after allegations of AI-written portions.

These decisions reflect business pragmatism, as uncopyrightable AI content cannot be licensed or protected from copying. The prohibition incentivizes keeping human creators involved to preserve profitable IP models. OpenAI's video tool Sora, announced with a licensing deal with Disney, was shut down months later.

Sources suggested high costs and lack of popularity contributed, but the inability to copyright AI-generated output may have factored in, making large investments unviable.

The Copyright Office has suggested that human prompting alone is insufficient for copyright on AI outputs, though courts have not yet ruled. There are calls for harsher penalties on misrepresenting AI involvement in registrations.

“The Atlantic is involved in one such lawsuit, against the AI firm Cohere." — The Atlantic article. Advocacy group Fight for the Future launched a petition, signed by 100 journalists, protesting blocks on the Archive. They argue preservation is crucial for accountability, as the Wayback Machine tracks edits to articles. Some news organizations are seeking compromises with the Archive to limit access without full blocks.”