Publishers Sue Brave Over AI Scraping and Paywall Bypass

The New York Times and a separate group of publishers filed lawsuits against Brave Software in federal court in Manhattan on November 2. The second case was brought by the firms that own the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel. Both lawsuits accuse the maker of the Brave browser of scraping copyrighted material and distributing it without permission or compensation.

The publishers say Brave created a searchable catalog of more than 30 billion webpages with a crawler they were unable to block. They allege the company offered AI firms paid access to the catalog, which could be used to train models or answer user queries. The suits name Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere as customers or recipients of content.

The complaints also challenge Brave’s paywall-blocking feature and accuse the company of blocking publishers’ advertisements while selling its own. The Times seeks an injunction and damages. It has also brought similar claims against OpenAI and Perplexity.

A Times spokesperson said the company had repeatedly asked Brave to stop the alleged infringement and filed suit to hold it accountable. Brave did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Perplexity’s communications chief rejected the Times’ allegations in a statement, criticizing the newspaper’s legal spending and journalism.

Publishers Take Brave to Court Over Alleged AI Content Theft

Publishers are challenging what they describe as a system that takes their work without permission, sells access to it and makes it harder to earn revenue from readers. The New York Times and a group that includes the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel filed lawsuits against Brave Software in federal court in Manhattan on November 2.

The suits allege that Brave assembled a searchable collection of more than 30 billion webpages and gave AI companies paid access to material for training models or answering questions. They name Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere. The publishers also accuse Brave of promoting a feature that gets users around paywalls and of blocking publisher ads while selling its own.

The Times says it had repeatedly asked Brave to stop the alleged infringement. It is seeking an injunction and damages, putting the dispute over creators’ control and compensation before a court. Brave did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Perplexity’s communications chief dismissed the Times’ claims and criticized its spending on lawyers, but the suits’ central allegation is that publishers’ copyrighted work was used and distributed without consent or payment.

Publishers’ Brave Lawsuits Put AI Access and Copyright in Conflict

The lawsuits against Brave place publishers’ demands for control over online material against the broad access that web indexing and AI services rely on. The New York Times and another group of publishers, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel, filed cases in federal court in Manhattan on November 2.

The publishers allege Brave scraped more than 30 billion webpages and sold AI companies access to its index for training models or responding to user questions. The suits name Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere. They also target Brave’s paywall-blocking feature and accuse the company of blocking publisher ads while selling its own.

The Times seeks damages and an injunction, and says it had repeatedly pressed Brave to stop the alleged infringement. Those are serious claims, but they remain allegations in lawsuits. Brave did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Perplexity’s communications chief rejected the Times’ position and criticized the newspaper’s legal spending. The cases now put the limits of scraping, AI access and publishers’ control of copyrighted material before a federal court.