India’s Digital News Publishers Take Legal Action Against OpenAI Over Content Scraping

The Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), representing India’s major TV and print outlets, has intervened in a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

The association includes Times Group, Network18, NDTV, India Today Group, ABP Group and Hindustan Times Group

The case was initiated by Asian News International (ANI), with the Delhi High Court addressing key legal questions on November 19, 2024.

The DNPA argues that OpenAI’s extensive use of Indian copyrighted content—without authorization—raises serious concerns for intellectual property rights in the digital age, particularly in the news industry.

As global news organisations face similar issues with large language models (LLMs) scraping data, the DNPA highlights the threat of web scraping, where content is repurposed without permission, undermining publishers' intellectual property.

The association also notes that AI platforms, like social media companies, profit from news content without fairly compensating original publishers.