The New York Times sues Brave web browser for AI scraping and bypassing paywalls
The New York Times and other publishers have sued the Brave web browser for allegedly scraping copyrighted content to train AI models and bypassing paywalls. The lawsuit claims Brave monetizes this content without permission or compensation.
Why it matters
This case represents a significant legal challenge regarding the intersection of web browsing tools, AI training data, and intellectual property rights.
The New York Times and a group of other publications have filed lawsuits against the company that makes the Brave web browser over alleged unlawful scraping to train AI and also letting users bypass their paywalls, as reported by Reuters.
According to a complaint filed by the companies that run New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel, Brave Software has monetized its index of scraped websites by, in part, providing AI companies with paid access to “real-time online content from the Brave Index.” The AI companies then use that index to train their models, access content to “respond to specific user queries,” or both. Brave has allegedly provided “stolen copyrighted content” to “many” AI companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere.
Brave also promotes “hundreds of top publishers” as being accessible through its “Paywall blocker” feature in its browser.
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