Ziff Davis CEO Rob Waters says that if OpenAI and other AI companies can raise large sums for data centers, they can also fund licensing agreements with publishers whose content is used in training and related uses. His comments respond to ongoing legal and policy debate over whether AI developers should be required to license publishers’ work.
Waters points to the U.S. Department of Justice’s position that mandating licensing could hinder competition. At the same time, he argues that licensing arrangements are already practical and that the feasibility of major infrastructure spending suggests money can be allocated to publishers. In this framing, the dispute is less about whether licensing is possible and more about whether it should be compelled by regulation or handled through other mechanisms.
Across the coverage, the central context is the DOJ’s concern about competitive impacts, contrasted with the publisher-industry view that licensing would be workable. The reporting emphasizes that the debate centers on competition policy versus content-rights economics, rather than on any single specific licensing agreement or court ruling in these accounts.
