New York Times and Others File Lawsuit Against Brave for Alleged Content Scraping

The New York Times has initiated legal action against Brave, a browser known for its privacy features, alleging that the company has engaged in unauthorized scraping of its content and has unlawfully distributed this material to various AI firms, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. This lawsuit was filed on Monday in federal court in Manhattan.

On the same day, other notable publications such as the Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel also filed a similar lawsuit against Brave, reinforcing the concerns surrounding digital content usage and copyright infringement.

The New York Times accuses Brave of functioning as a “supplier, dealer, and distributor of stolen copyrighted content” tailored for companies engaged in AI development. This accusation also extends back to previously filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Perplexity over similar allegations.

The lawsuit articulates that Brave operates like a burglar appropriating the publishers’ content. It positions Brave as an “AI ‘fence'” by asserting that the browser not only misappropriates content but also sells this stolen information to third parties. The lawsuit highlights that Brave has constructed an index consisting of over 30 billion webpages utilizing an undisclosed crawler, effectively circumventing measures that publishers put in place to protect their content.

Another point of contention is a specific feature of the Brave browser designed to bypass paywalls, alongside its strategy of blocking advertisements from publishers while promoting its own alternatives.

Since its inception in 2015, Brave has attracted approximately $250 million in funding from private investors, according to market reports. The New York Times seeks both an injunction against Brave and financial damages related to these claims.

Brave has yet to respond to requests for comment regarding the lawsuit.