POLICY · REGULATION · #2943
The New York Times and other publishers sue Brave, alleging AI scraping and paywall bypass
The New York Times and a group of other publishers — including companies that run the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel — filed lawsuits against Brave Software alleging the company unlawfully scraped and indexed publishers' content in a "Brave Index" and sold paid access to AI firms. The complaints also allege Brave's browser offers a "Paywall blocker" that lets users bypass publishers' paywalls without permission or compensation and names AI companies (Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, Cohere) as recipients of the indexed content.
KEY POINTS
- The New York Times and a group of other publishers — including companies that run the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel — filed lawsuits against Brave Software alleging the company unlawfully scraped and indexed publishers' content in a "Brave Index" and sold paid access to AI firms.
- The complaints also allege Brave's browser offers a "Paywall blocker" that lets users bypass publishers' paywalls without permission or compensation and names AI companies (Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, Cohere) as recipients of the indexed content.
- The case could set legal precedents about whether browsers and third‑party indexes can scrape and commercialize publishers' content for AI training and whether paywall‑bypassing features are lawful.
WHY IT MATTERS
The case could set legal precedents about whether browsers and third‑party indexes can scrape and commercialize publishers' content for AI training and whether paywall‑bypassing features are lawful.