New York Times sues Brave browser for AI scraping and paywall circumvention

On November 2, 2026, The New York Times, alongside the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel, filed federal copyright lawsuits in Manhattan against Brave Software. The publishers accuse Brave of unlawfully crawling websites, bypassing paywalls, and selling scraped content to generative AI developers like Anthropic, Perplexity, and xAI. The New York Times seeks monetary damages and an injunction against Brave's practices.

Lawsuits filed against Brave Software

• ▪The New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel filed a lawsuit against Brave Software over alleged illegal web scraping
• ▪The New York Times filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Brave Software over alleged content scraping and paywall circumvention, seeking a court injunction and monetary damages

Allegations of AI data scraping and monetization

• ▪Lawsuits filed on November 2, 2026 allege Brave Software provided stolen copyrighted reporting to AI firms to train artificial intelligence models and respond to user search queries
• ▪Brave Software built an index of over 30 billion webpages using a crawler that prevents publishers from blocking access, according to a lawsuit filed on November 2, 2026
• ▪Daily News, Tribune, and Sentinel alleged Brave Software monetized its web index by providing AI companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere paid access to real-time online content from the Brave Index

Brave Software ad blocking and paywall bypass

• ▪Brave Software promotes a paywall blocker feature in its web browser that enables users to bypass paywalls of top publishers without permission or compensation, according to a lawsuit filed by the New York Daily News
• ▪Lawsuits filed on November 2, 2026 accuse Brave Software of blocking digital advertisements on publisher websites while selling its own advertisements within the Brave browser

Statements describing Brave Software conduct

• ▪In its November 2, 2026 court filing, The New York Times characterized Brave Software as a burglar misappropriating publisher content and an AI fence selling stolen content to third parties
• ▪An attorney representing three publisher plaintiffs stated that Brave Software is laundering pirated reporting for the artificial intelligence industry

Legal disputes involving Perplexity

• ▪The New York Times previously filed separate copyright infringement lawsuits against artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Perplexity
• ▪Perplexity chief communications officer Jesse Dwyer stated that The New York Times is overpaying its attorneys and underpaying its journalists