NYT demands Brave shut down its paywall blocker and end deals with AI firms

Key Points:

• The New York Times and other newspapers sued Brave Software, accusing the browser maker of illegally bypassing paywalls and selling stolen news content to AI companies, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere.
• The lawsuit claims Brave has generated over $100 million by copying and reselling publishers’ work without permission, while depriving publishers of revenue by blocking ads and replacing them with its own.
• Brave is accused of multiple copyright infringements, including direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement, as well as violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing paywalls through its default browser settings.
• The NYT seeks a permanent injunction against Brave, along with statutory damages, restitution of profits, and disgorgement of revenue from Brave’s alleged ad-substitution scheme.
• Similar lawsuits were filed by other newspapers against Brave, while Perplexity, an AI company using Brave’s search API, denied the allegations and criticized the NYT’s legal actions as disinformation and misdirected.