A prominent conservative attorney and political strategist is pressing the Trump Justice Department to reverse its newly filed support for OpenAI in a closely watched copyright lawsuit, arguing that the government’s position would let Big Tech companies copy and profit from “every creative work in America without permission or payment.”
Mike Davis made the case in an op-ed for Fox News, according to a report from Breitbart News, calling on the DOJ to “withdraw its statement of interest in the OpenAI lawsuit.” The department’s brief, filed last week, sided with the AI company in its legal battle with the New York Times, contending that training large language models on copyrighted material qualifies as fair use.
According to Breitbart’s reporting, the brief marked the first time the federal government has weighed in on copyright litigation involving AI training. Davis labeled the filing “ill-advised” and said it conflicts with the White House’s own AI policy framework released earlier this year.
A dispute over ‘fair use’
At the center of the fight is how courts should interpret the fair-use doctrine when it comes to AI development. Davis argued that the concept of fair use was originally meant to cover narrow situations β he characterized it as “largely intended for limited free use of copyrighted materials for educational purposes in classrooms” β and that expanding it to cover large-scale model training would effectively legalize unpaid scraping of creative content.
In his Fox News piece, Davis warned that the government’s stance would allow technology giants to commercialize the work of writers, artists, and journalists without securing licenses or providing compensation. He dismissed national security arguments offered in defense of the DOJ’s position, writing that claims about unlimited access being essential to compete with China amount to a “scare tactic designed to short-circuit property rights and the rule of law.”
“That argument is un-American and absurd,” Davis wrote, adding that the notion that the United States must “steal like China to compete against China” represents not a principle but “a surrender of the rule of law.”
Warning for creators and conservative outlets
Davis predicted that independent creators and conservative media organizations β outlets he credited with helping elect President Trump β would bear the heaviest burden under the DOJ’s position. Those groups, he noted, were already “systematically censored, de-platformed, and demonetized” by the same tech companies “now seeking a free pass to harvest their work.”
“Having largely lost the censorship fight, the left and its Big Tech allies are shifting to theft as the new method of control,” Davis wrote.
He rejected the idea that licensing arrangements would be financially ruinous for AI developers, pointing out that companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually operate with what he described as “near-limitless capital.” Giants like Google, he argued, “will still more than thrive if it has to pay” the creators whose work it uses.
Davis pointed to the music industry as a working model, citing how Spotify allows bars, restaurants, and other venues to entertain patrons with recorded music while ensuring musicians are compensated. The same principle, he suggested, could apply to AI companies training on text and other creative works.
He framed his argument around what he called the “4Cs” β children, communities, conservatives, and creators β noting that conservatives have long demanded that any serious AI policy protect those groups. The DOJ’s new position, he wrote, “fails those” constituencies.
Davis concluded by urging the administration to change course: “America must win the global AI competition the American way β through markets that respect property rights, not through government-sanctioned expropriation.” He added that restricting AI companies’ free use of copyrighted material is “simple common sense” and called on the Justice Department to “reverse this rare misstep and withdraw its statement of interest in the OpenAI case.”
Political stakes for the administration
The pushback from Davis β a well-known figure in conservative legal circles β puts a spotlight on an unusual split within the Trump-era policy landscape. The DOJ’s brief is not the first federal intervention in AI copyright disputes, but its alignment with OpenAI sits awkwardly alongside an administration framework that has otherwise emphasized protecting American creators and challenging Big Tech’s power.
The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI remains one of the highest-profile tests of how existing copyright law applies to generative AI. A ruling either way could reshape the economics of AI development, determining whether companies must license vast archives of books, news articles, and other content or may continue training models under the fair-use banner without payment.
For now, Davis’s op-ed adds a prominent conservative voice to the camp arguing that the administration should not be providing cover to AI firms in that fight. Whether the DOJ heeds the call remains to be seen, but the debate is likely to intensify as the litigation moves forward.
Source: www.breitbart.com β https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/09/09/mike-davis-urges-trump-doj-to-withdraw-ill-advised-support-of-openai-in-copyright-lawsuit/