# Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged paywall bypass

_Saturday, September 5, 2026 at 3:49 PM EDT · AI, Products · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

![Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged paywall bypass — Primary](https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/06/microsoft-xbox-spinoff-subsidiary-asha-sharma.jpg)

The Seattle Times and Newsday have sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies scraped their journalism while bypassing paywalls.

The complaint also alleges that the resulting models substitute for articles, reduce traffic and advertising revenue, strip copyright-management information, and sometimes attribute false information to the outlets. The article says OpenAI is a signatory to the EU general-purpose AI code, whose copyright chapter addresses circumvention of access restrictions, but notes the code does not reach alleged earlier conduct and the legal status of paywalls as rights reservations remains unsettled.

## Sources

- [The Next Web](https://thenextweb.com/news/seattle-times-newsday-sue-openai-microsoft-copyright-paywall-bypass-gpai-code-of-practice-copyright-chapter-measure-1-2)

---
Canonical: https://techandbusiness.org/newswire/VibVJMNc73mHz6CxLzxYb6
Retrieved: 2026-09-05T23:54:53.669Z
Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)