The New York Times and the companies that run the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel filed lawsuits against Brave Software, The Verge reported. The publishers accuse the maker of the Brave web browser of copying their material for a web index used by AI companies and allowing browser users to bypass their paywalls. The complaints bring both Brave’s index and a feature offered to its users into the publishers’ copyright dispute.
Key points
- The publishers allege that Brave charged AI companies for access to material in its web index.
- The complaints name Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere as recipients of allegedly copied content.
- The publishers also challenge Brave’s Paywall blocker, which the company promotes as a way to access publisher websites.
- The New York Times says Brave ignored repeated requests to stop. Perplexity calls the allegations “disinformation”.
Paid access to the Brave Index
In a complaint brought by the companies behind the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel, the publishers allege that Brave assembled an index by scraping websites and then charged AI companies for access to its contents. The complaint describes the product sold to those companies as “real-time online content from the Brave Index”. Its allegation concerns a supply of publisher material to other companies as well as Brave’s own use of that material.
The publishers say the AI companies used the index to train models, obtain material for answers to particular user questions, or do both. Their account names Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere among companies that allegedly received copyrighted content through Brave. The reported lawsuits are against Brave Software.
The alleged route matters to the conduct the publishers are challenging. On their account, Brave copied material from their websites, placed it in an index and offered access to that index for payment. The complaint characterises the material supplied to AI companies as “stolen copyrighted content”. Whether Brave was entitled to collect or supply it is the publishers’ allegation in the litigation, rather than an established account of the companies’ dealings.
Brave’s Paywall blocker draws a separate challenge
The publishers also object to a feature available to people using Brave’s browser. Brave promotes its Paywall blocker as providing access to “hundreds of top publishers”, according to The Verge. In the complaint, the publishers say the feature lets users get around their paid access restrictions without their consent. That allegation concerns what a browser user can reach directly, distinct from the complaint’s account of access sold to AI companies.
The complaint says Brave did not seek the publishers’ permission to enter their websites, copy their work or pass it to browser users and AI companies. It also alleges that Brave took steps that stopped the publishers from blocking its access to their sites. The publishers say Brave has not paid them for the copying and distribution they describe. Each of those assertions forms part of their case against the browser company.
Together, the two parts of the complaint concern different uses of the same publishers’ material. The alleged paid index access places Brave between publisher websites and AI companies. The Paywall blocker allegation concerns access by people using Brave itself. The publishers are asking the court to address Brave’s conduct in both settings, rather than limiting their challenge to the AI companies they name as recipients.
The Times alleges wrongdoing and Perplexity disputes it
Graham James, a New York Times spokesperson, said the newspaper had repeatedly asked Brave to stop conduct it considers infringing. He accused the company of having “flouted established copyright law” and said the Times had brought its lawsuit over Brave’s use of its content in Brave’s products and its provision of material to generative AI companies. Those are the Times’s allegations against Brave.
Perplexity, one of the AI companies named in the publishers’ account of the index, rejected the accusations. Jesse Dwyer, its chief communications officer, told The Verge that the Times was “overpaying its attorneys and underpaying its journalists”. He called the suit’s claims “disinformation”.
