The New York Times, The Economist, Agence France-Presse and more than 40 other publishers have joined the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, expanding its membership to over 80 organizations across more than 20 countries.
The coalition, which launched in February 2026, aims to establish common standards and technical systems so publishers can track how AI systems use their content and negotiate licensing agreements. New members also include The Atlantic, Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers, and press groups from Japan, Mexico and Argentina. Founding members already include the BBC, Financial Times, The Guardian, the Telegraph, Sky News and the Associated Press.
Rebecca Grossman-Cohen, who leads strategic partnerships at The New York Times, said in a statement that “intellectual property protection and technological advancement can and must co-exist.”
SPUR does not license content on behalf of its members. Each publisher continues to negotiate its own deals. Instead, the group is developing shared rules and tools, including a Content Telemetry Standard that records when AI systems retrieve, cite or display publisher content so that usage can be tracked and compensated.
The expansion comes amid ongoing legal disputes between publishers and AI companies over the use of news content for training and generation. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright claims. The coalition’s approach focuses on creating practical standards rather than relying solely on litigation.
Source: SPUR Coalition announcement and Reuters reporting.
