Once upon a time, Hollywood waged a pitched battle against the VCR. Motion Picture Association chief Jack Valenti infamously told Congress that the home video recording device posed the same threat to the movie and television industries “as the Boston strangler [did] to the woman home alone.” Yet, the industry thrived after the Supreme Court greenlit the disruptive technology in the Sony Betamax case. Now OpenAI, along with Microsoft, is reaching back to the VCR hostilities to defend generative A.I. On Tuesday, their lawyers urged dismissal of key claims in The New York Times Company’s high-profile lawsuit against Sam Altman’s nonprofit–turned–for-profit outfit.