Microsoft asks to dismiss New York Times's 'doomsday' copyright lawsuit

The tech giant said the lawsuit was near-sighted and akin to Hollywood's losing backlash against the VCR. In a motion to dismiss part of the lawsuit filed Monday, Microsoft, which was sued in December alongside ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, scoffed at the newspaper's claim that Times content receives "particular emphasis" and that tech companies "seek to free-ride on the Times's massive investment in its journalism". But in its response, Microsoft said the lawsuit was akin to Hollywood's resistance to the VCR that consumers used to record TV shows and which the entertainment business in the late 1970s feared would destroy its economic model. "'The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone,'" Microsoft said in its response, quoting from congressional testimony delivered by Jack Valenti, then head of the motion picture association of America, in 1982. In this case, Microsoft said, the Times is attempting to use "its might and its megaphone to challenge the latest profound technological advance: the Large Language Model."