OpenAI Executive Praised Paywall Bypass in Unsealed Court Filings

Unsealed court filings from a copyright lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal that Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, responded "ah nice" to a researcher who discovered a way to bypass the newspaper's paywall.

The exchange underscores the legal conflict between AI developers and publishers. OpenAI and Microsoft maintain that their use of data is protected by fair use, while The New York Times demands compensation for its intellectual property.

In response to these disputes, financial institutions are developing infrastructure for agentic payments and micropayments. These systems would allow AI agents to programmatically pay fractions of a cent for specific articles or data points. Current developments include Mastercard's Agent Pay for Machines, Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, and the Machine Payments Protocol created by Stripe and Tempo.