Brave Software sued by major publishers over AI scraping and paywall bypass

Brave Software copyright infringement artificial intelligence paywall bypass web scraping

The New York Times, along with the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel, have filed federal lawsuits against Brave Software in Manhattan. The publishers allege that Brave unlawfully scraped copyrighted journalistic content to build a web index of over 30 billion pages using an unidentified crawler.

The complaints claim Brave sells access to this index via its Search API to artificial intelligence companies, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere, to train models and generate user responses. The plaintiffs describe Brave as acting like a “burglar that misappropriates the content of publishers, and an AI ‘fence’ that sells stolen content to third parties.”

In addition to copyright infringement, the lawsuits challenge Brave’s “Paywall blocker” feature, which allegedly allows users to circumvent subscription restrictions. The publishers also accuse Brave of blocking their advertisements while displaying its own, thereby profiting from the circumvention of their business models. The plaintiffs are seeking financial damages, restitution of profits, and permanent injunctions to stop these practices.

Entities

Anthropic · Brave Software · Manhattan federal court · New York Times · Perplexity · Perplexity AI · The New York Times Company · US District Court for the Southern District of New York

Claims

What the coverage asserts, and how many sources carry each claim.

[● 13 SOURCES] The lawsuits were filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. ppc.land · bitcoinke.io · www.tokenpost.kr · itmania.ro · www.sbctv.gr · +8 more
[● 14 SOURCES] Brave allegedly sells access to its scraped content to AI companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. itmania.ro · www.sbctv.gr · iguru.gr · ppc.land · bitcoinke.io · +9 more
[● 15 SOURCES] The lawsuits allege that Brave provides a function that bypasses publication paywalls. itmania.ro · iguru.gr · ppc.land · bitcoinke.io · www.tokenpost.kr · +10 more
[● 14 SOURCES] Brave is accused of blocking publishers' advertisements while selling its own advertisements. itmania.ro · iguru.gr · ppc.land · bitcoinke.io · www.tokenpost.kr · +9 more
[● 8 SOURCES] The plaintiffs are seeking financial damages and a court order to stop the alleged practices. itmania.ro · ppc.land · bitcoinke.io · www.tokenpost.kr · iguru.gr · +3 more
[● 11 SOURCES] The New York Times and three other newspapers filed federal lawsuits against Brave Software on November 2, 2026. ppc.land · bitcoinke.io · www.tokenpost.kr · itmania.ro · www.sbctv.gr · +6 more
[● 6 SOURCES] The complaints describe Brave as acting like a “burglar that misappropriates the content of publishers, and an AI ‘fence’ that sells stolen content to third parties.” ppc.land · bitcoinke.io · itmania.ro · www.sbctv.gr · iguru.gr · +1 more
[● 14 SOURCES] Brave Software allegedly built an index of over 30 billion web pages using an unidentified crawler. itmania.ro · www.sbctv.gr · iguru.gr · ppc.land · bitcoinke.io · +9 more