Bypassing paywalls: US newspapers sue browser manufacturers
The New York Times and three other US newspapers are suing the browser manufacturer Brave. Among other things, they accuse him of copyright infringement. The background here is a function for bypassing payment barriers.
Disclosure to AI providers
The plaintiffs specifically accuse the company of copying journalistic content without permission, passing it on to AI providers and at the same time enabling users to bypass paywalls, reported Reuters. A lawsuit was filed by the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel. At the same time, the New York Times is taking legal action against Brave Software. The allegations are aimed in particular at the use of the Brave Index, a collection of recorded website content that the browser provider also uses commercially.
According to the plaintiffs, Brave sells various AI companies access to current online content from this index. These should be used, among other things, to train AI models or to answer specific user queries. Alleged buyers include Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere. Brave provided copyrighted content without the consent of the publishers and has not yet paid any remuneration.
Another point of criticism concerns the so-called paywall blocker function of the browser. Brave advertises access to content from several hundred large publications, even though they protect their articles behind paywalls. The newspapers accuse the company of circumventing appropriate protective measures and also preventing publishers from effectively preventing access through Brave. The New York Times bases its lawsuit on repeated, unsuccessful requests for Brave to stop the alleged copyright infringements. The company wants to prevent its content from being stolen and then used for its own products or to supply large AI providers.
Harsh response from Perplexity
The lawyer for the three other newspapers describes Brave as an intermediary that makes illegally copied journalistic content available to the AI industry. The fact that such content is obtained through an intermediary does not change its illegal origin. Brave, Anthropic, Mistral, SpaceXSI and Cohere did not initially comment on the allegations. Perplexity, however, denied the allegations.
The company’s communications chief said the New York Times paid its lawyers too generously and its journalists too poorly to detect the alleged misinformation in the lawsuit itself. The proceedings could further intensify the dispute between media companies and AI companies over the use of journalistic content. The focus is increasingly on the question of what responsibility technical intermediaries bear when they make protected content accessible for AI applications.
Priti Rajpoot is a technology journalist and contributor at ResearchSnipers, covering the latest in tech news, innovation, and digital trends across the world. From startups and AI to cybersecurity and consumer gadgets. She can be reached here: priti.r@researchsnipers.com
