NYT, Economist Among Publishers Joining Coalition to Curb Unpaid AI Use

3-line summary

• The New York Times, France's AFP, The Economist, The Atlantic, and Brazil's National Association of Newspapers joined SPUR (Standards for Publisher Usage Rights), a publisher coalition launched in February that now counts about 80 member organizations across 20-plus countries, funded entirely by members, according to Investing.com. Founding members include the Financial Times, BBC, and Associated Press.
• SPUR aims to stop AI companies from using or monetizing publisher content without permission, developing industry-wide standards and technical systems to help publishers track AI usage of their content and strike licensing deals; it recently introduced a "Content Telemetry Standard" for AI agents to log and report their media usage.
• The move comes as publishers escalate legal action over unauthorized use of their content in training large language models — USA Today and affiliated papers sued OpenAI for copyright infringement this month, while OpenAI and backer Microsoft face similar suits from the Times and others. A Reuters Institute report found Google search referrals to over 2,500 websites fell 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025. NYT strategic partnerships head Rebecca Grossman-Cohen said "intellectual property protection and technological advancement can and must co-exist"; neither OpenAI nor Microsoft commented in the report.

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