Brave Browser Sued by New York Times

The New York Times and several major newspapers, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel, have filed lawsuits against Brave Software. The accusations claim that Brave illegally copied articles from these news organizations and provided the content to artificial intelligence companies. The lawsuits allege that Brave helped users bypass paywalls to read paid articles for free.

The publishers claim that Brave collected their copyrighted content without permission and made money by selling access to AI companies such as Anthropic, Perplexity, and xAI. However, the allegations have not been proven in court. The newspapers argue that Brave engaged in the unauthorized practice of web scraping, where automated software collects large amounts of information from websites.

This process allowed Brave to gather articles and provide them to AI companies for training models or generating answers. The lawsuits also accuse Brave of selling the collected information through its search services. The publishers claim that Brave is profiting from journalism without adequately compensating the news organizations.

Additionally, the newspapers allege that Brave's browser features enable users to access paid articles without subscribing, potentially reducing subscription revenue for the newspapers. The publishers are seeking financial compensation and court orders to stop the alleged copyright violations. Brave Software has not yet responded to the lawsuits.