Brave Sued for Content Extraction and Paywalls

A group of American media outlets, including the New York Times, accuses Brave of extracting and monetizing protected content and facilitating the bypassing of paywalls. The complaint cites paid access to a "real-time" index and names several AI players. Perplexity rejects the accusations, while other companies have not responded immediately.

The New York Times Accuses, Perplexity Responds, Others Remain Silent

Graham James, a spokesperson for the New York Times, claims that Brave has violated copyright law and ignored the newspaper's repeated requests to cease its practices. He specifies that the complaint aims to hold Brave accountable for using the Times' content for its own products and providing it to recognized and well-funded generative AI companies. Jesse Dwyer, communications director at Perplexity, criticizes the complaint by stating that the New York Times pays its lawyers too much and its journalists too little, and believes it contains misinformation. Brave, Anthropic, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere did not respond immediately to inquiries.

Permission Denied, Paywalls Bypassed, and Alleged Lack of Compensation

The plaintiffs argue that Brave never sought permission from publishers to access their sites, copy their content, or provide it to users or other AI companies. According to the complaint, Brave allows its users to bypass paywalls without the publishers' consent and has taken steps to prevent publishers from blocking the browser's access to their sites. The publishers also claim to have received no compensation for the use, copying, and distribution of their protected content. Furthermore, Brave highlights a "paywall blocker" feature that makes hundreds of major publishers' content accessible.

A Monetized "Real-Time" Index and Named AI Partners

According to the complaint filed by the companies that manage the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel, Brave Software has monetized an index of extracted websites by partially offering paid access to real-time online content to AI companies. These companies would use this index to train their models, access content to respond to user queries, or both. The plaintiffs accuse Brave of providing copyrighted content to Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. These accusations are part of a lawsuit led by the New York Times and other publications.