New York Times sues Brave browser over AI scraping and paywall bypassing
Publishers allege unauthorized scraping
The New York Times and a group of publishers filed lawsuits against Brave Software, according to Reuters. They allege the company unlawfully scraped websites for AI training and enabled users to bypass paywalls.
A complaint from companies operating the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel says Brave sold AI firms access to real-time content through the Brave Index. The complaint names Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere as companies allegedly given copyrighted material. It says the index can be used to train models, answer user queries, or both.
Complaint cites paywall feature
The publishers also say Brave promotes access to hundreds of publishers through a browser feature called Paywall blocker. The complaint alleges Brave did not seek permission to access or copy publishers’ material, and did not compensate them.
The filing further claims Brave took steps that prevented publishers from blocking its access to their websites. These are allegations made in the complaint.
Times explains its lawsuit
Graham James, a spokesperson for The New York Times, said the company had asked Brave to stop what it considers infringing conduct. He said the lawsuit seeks accountability for using the Times’ content in Brave products and supplying it to major AI companies.
Brave, Anthropic, Mistral, SpaceXSI, and Cohere did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity’s chief communications officer, criticized the Times’ legal spending and said journalists could have identified what he called disinformation in the suit.
Key points
- The New York Times and other publishers sued Brave Software over alleged scraping and paywall bypassing.
- The complaint says Brave sold AI companies access to content in its index.
- Publishers allege Brave’s Paywall blocker offered access without their consent.
- Perplexity criticized the lawsuit; several other named companies did not immediately comment.