Microsoft argues Supreme Court’s VCR ruling should doom NYT’s OpenAI lawsuit

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Microsoft urged a federal court to dismiss part of The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against itself and OpenAI, claiming that the NYT lawsuit is similar to the movie industry's attempts to kill the VCR in the 1980s.

Microsoft's filing in US District Court for the Southern District of New York begins with a well-known 1982 quote from Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) President Jack Valenti, who told Congress that "the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

"The analogy was part of an all-out effort by television and movie producers to stop a groundbreaking new technology," Microsoft wrote yesterday, comparing the movie industry's claims of copyright infringement to the NYT lawsuit in which both OpenAI and Microsoft are defendants. Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI.